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American Morning

Talk With Host of 'Worst Case Scenario'

Aired July 29, 2002 - 09:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: We've had a string of reality television shows that have gone from the challenging, like "Survivor," to the more bizarre, like "The Osbournes." There's always room for one more, though, and the new show is called "Worst Case Scenario." Taken right out of today's headlines, it's designed to help people survive what might be their worst-case scenario, like accidentally driving a car into a flooded roadway or a lake. What if it happened to you? Would you know what to do in order to save yourself? Well, have no fear, the host of the television show "Worst Case Scenario" is here. His name is Mike Rowe, and it's nice to have you with us.

Good morning.

MIKE ROWE, HOST, "WORST CASE SCENARIO: Thanks, Jack.

Have no fear?

CAFFERTY: Have no fear.

ROWE: Maybe a little bit, not too much.

CAFFERTY: I mean, we were talking during the break, the situation over in Pennsylvania, I mean, these miners get up, go to work, have no idea what's in store for them. You never know what's around the next corner.

ROWE: Life imitating art, vice versa. I'm not sure which is which, but I know that Last time I was on CNN two weeks talking about the show, and we cut to some video in real life of a woman in car down in Orlando. Remember, she was teetering off the bridge. And for second, I thought, we were watching our show. A then a week later a family on Headline News, a family on a roof of a house in south Texas floating down the street. Worst case scenarios are real.

CAFFERTY: I mentioned in the introduction, the Boy Scouts meets Murphy's Law. Explain what that means?

ROWE: Well, the Boy Scouts have been saying be prepared for about 100 years now. And of course Murphy back in the '40s testing the rocket sled devices was the first to utter something along the lines of, if a thing has the possibility to go wrong, it almost certainly will.

CAFFERTY: Right. ROWE: So we certainly take both of those things to heart. The authors of the book did as well. You've seen the little yellow book, sold a few million copies.

CAFFERTY: Oh, yes, very successful.

ROWE: The show is basically an attempt to bring that to life.

CAFFERTY: Is the airwaves -- are the airwaves saturated with reality television to the point where it's lost it's cache. I mean, we have "The Osbournes" last season. Now we're going to have Anna Nicole Smith and Liza Minelli, and I mean, who knows what all -- how much reality TV can the public deal with, do you think?

ROWE: How much reality can the public deal with? I'm not really sure what reality TV means anymore, but I do know that on "Worst Case Scenario," we don't give away money, because how do you compete with a show that gives away a million dollars. What? You give away two million or five million? We don't get away anything. We don't eats bugs, or leaches, or snakes or anything; we basically make the information the star of the show. Right there is a woman who we teach essentially how to overcome a fear of heights. She jumps feet 50 feet into water. This guy -- this happens all the time, you have to jump from a motorcycle on to a speeding truck. You see it all the time.

CAFFERTY: You don't see it all of the time, but realistically, what are the odds of these kinds of things happening to you, or me, or Paula or any of us?

ROWE: We talk about things like quicksand, and we talk about things like getting out of truly Hollywood type of treacherous situations slim. The idea is, if we bring those situations to life, show them to you firsthand, a couple of things will happen. One, should you ever find yourself in such bizarre circumstance, you will have at least the working knowledge of how to get out.

But two, and most importantly, your antenna go up. You become a little more aware, a little more prepared of what's going on around you. I'm talking about maybe a manhole cover is not where it should be, or the elevator door is open and the car isn't there. It happens all the time.

CAFFERTY: People who live in New York particularly affinity for the kind of thing you are talking about. If you live in this city and function in it on a daily basis, you're bound to encounter the unexpected here. It happens all the time. Who is the gear girl?

ROWE: The gear girl is Daniel Bergio (ph). She is a stuntwoman. In fact, she doubles for Trinity in "Matrix" right now, but in some of the segments, she has an opportunity to appear to test out everything from gecka (ph) mounts to jetpacks. She crawls down buildings, she Flies through the air. Better her than me, is what I say basically.

CAFFERTY: You're sensitive to the critics, because some of them have been, shall we say, less than kind.

ROWE: Well, yes, we didn't a show for the critics. I understand.

CAFFERTY: Clearly.

ROWE: But you know what, the same criticism I'm hearing about this show, you hear things about "Fear Factor" or about "Survivor," all the things that strike people as possibly gratuitous. Now, all of a sudden, we're not giving away the money. We're not doing all the other things that people have been howling about.

So you know what, I'm not sure you have it both ways. But I do know, if you constantly come back to the information, you know, our screen is always filled with graphics, always filled with motion, and always filled with facts, and in the end, we know some of that is going to stick, whether it's how to put out a grease fire at home, or how to crawl out of quicksand somewhere in Africa.

CAFFERTY: Good luck with it. I hope it works well for you.

ROWE: We'll take it, because, Jack, luck is always something you want.

CAFFERTY: Absolutely, rather be lucky than good, right.

Mike Rowe, "Worst Case Scenario."

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