Todd Palin Snags Spot on NBC Reality Show

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ERIC THAYER/Reuters/Corbis

Todd Palin, husband of Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, attends a town hall meeting on teen pregnancy prevention in New York.

If current trends continue, Alaska will be grappling with a serious resource shortage: the state is running out of Palins to appear on reality television.

On the same day that America’s favorite teen mom Bristol Palin premiered her very own Lifetime series, her father, Todd Palin, also signed on to star in an NBC reality show.

Todd Palin, husband of former Vice Presidential candidate Sarah and father of Bristol, now 21, has enlisted to star in NBC’s Stars Earn Stripes, a series which will feature celebrities competing in military training exercises, Entertainment Weekly reports. Palin will join the ranks of celebrity co-stars like singer Nick Lachey, Olympic gold medalist Picabo Street and boxing champion Laila Ali.

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Palin’s not really billed as a “star,” but rather as an Alaska businessman. Still, it appears he boasts enough celebrity cred to join the eight-person cast of competitors. Each contestant will be paired with a current or former member of the U.S. military or a law enforcement agency. Each week, the teams will face off in contests ranging from long-distance target shooting to helicopter drops, with one celebrity/expert duo eliminated at the end of every episode. Executive produced by Mark Burnett (The Voice and Survivor), Dick Wolf (Law & Order) and David A. Hurwitz (Fear Factor), Stars Earn Stripes debuts with a special two-hour episode on August 13.

Mama Grizzly herself is no stranger to reality television; her own series, Sarah Palin’s Alaska, launched on TLC in late 2010 but wasn’t renewed for a second season. And Bristol made her reality TV debut that same year on ABC’s Dancing with the Stars. With any luck Todd’s new show will see better feedback than his daughter’s reality series, Bristol Palin: Life’s a Tripp. Critics aren’t loving it, despite its seemingly foolproof Kardashian-esque approach to the glamorous trials and tribulations of young motherhood. Meanwhile, aspiring producers take note: Track, Trig, Willow and Piper are still without shows of their own.

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