On Monday, September 11, the 34 women who tried out for the local reality ogle-fest Maine Model received an e-mail from the show’s creator and executive producer, John Marshall:To all Maine Model 3 contestants, At this time, we are no longer casting for Maine Model 3. The show has been postponed until next November. Thank you for your interest in the show and please try again next time around. Sincerely, John.
Maine Model was created to be Maine’s answer to the national hit reality show America’s Next Top Model, in which a handful of comely maidens compete for the title of hottest chick in America. The Maine show had run for two semi-successful, resoundingly goofy seasons on the local affiliate of UPN, WPME. But a few weeks ago, around the time the merger between Model’s UPN and the WB officially birthed the new network CW, the show was suddenly canned. Though the Portland CW affiliate’s Web site, www.mytvportland.com, still has a promo for Maine Model on its home page calling the show “Maine’s longest running reality TV series,” Marshall says the show is most definitely on hiatus, mostly because he’s got other Maine reality programs in the works that take priority.
“We’re in the process right now of doing our home energy makeover show, we also have our poker show continuing, and our Destination Portland show. And two people [on the production crew] are having babies,” he explains. “It just became a logistics question in terms of what we could actually, physically get done.”
Marshall says Maine Model’s unexpected beauty sleep has nothing to do with his network changing hands, or rumors that he couldn’t find any sponsors for the show, since, Marshall insists, Maine Model cost “truly next to nothing; if it was $500 that would be stretching it a little bit.”
Those of you who don’t want to live in a world where a Maine beauty playing with fish or mucking around in a swamp just doesn’t make for successful television can take heart — Marshall intends to begin shooting Maine Model’s next season this spring after another cringe-inducing casting call at the Maine Mall in South Portland. Stay tuned.
