Thanks to American Seafoods and its chief executive, the U.S. seafood industry will receive a little national TV coverage on Friday night.
Bernt Bodal, CEO of Seattle-based American Seafoods, will be featured on “Undercover Boss,” a popular CBS program that hauled in more than 10 million viewers last Friday night.
The award-winning show, which debuted in February 2010, follows executives who give up the comfort of their corner office to examine, in disguise, their company’s inner workings. Working alongside their employees, they witness the effects of their decisions first hand and get an up-close look at the good and the bad. They also discover their company’s unsung heroes.
According to CBS, Bodal joins a crew as a deckhand on a fishing vessel off the coast of Alaska and, despite previous deckhand experience, isn’t quite prepared for what he encounters. In a 30-second clip of the upcoming episode, one of Bodal’s employees says, “I think he’d be good for a desk job.” Bodal faces rough waters, fish guts and backbreaking work. The CEO reaches his boiling point after being lowered into a piping-hot pit at a processing plant.
The episode airs at 8 p.m. EST; it’s this year’s third episode. The show just switched from Sunday night to Friday night and last week crushed its network TV competition, pulling in 10.7 million viewers.
American Seafoods is one of the United States’ largest seafood producers; it’s also the biggest harvester in U.S. Bering Sea fishery with approximately 45 percent catcher-processor market share.
