Survivor 2 Back to Reality

MONTY BRINTON/CBS
Can a new version in the Australian outback-and lots of imitators-remake the regular season?

(2 of 2)

How well they cash in will largely be up to CBS. The first group of Survivors got a taste of post-Survivor show biz, mainly on shows from CBS or its Viacom siblings, including JAG, Becker, Nash Bridges and UPN's Freedom. But the network retains control over their availability. Jenna Lewis and Gervase Peterson had to turn down $10,000 to open a Best Buy retail store, for fear of alienating sponsor Target. Even Hatch was denied the chance to be a host of NBC's Saturday Night Live, and CBS kiboshed his plans for a Survivor book. "Basically, CBS owns the rights to their stories in perpetuity," says journalist Peter Lance, who was to co-write with Hatch. (In his own book, The Stingray, Lance charged that Survivor producers tried to influence the game's outcome--a potential FCC violation--which CBS denies.)

CBS, on the other hand, is ready to ingest S2 revenue through every conceivable orifice. The first Survivor was an advertisers' bargain, with most ads sold in advance for far less than the ratings would have commanded. Now it's time to back up the money truck. S2 is reportedly getting more per ad than ER, the reigning revenue champ--all for a show that has never aired in the regular season. And as on the past Survivor, in which contestants quaffed Bud Light and used an Ericsson phone, there will be product placements from the likes of Reebok, Doritos and Target.

But the greatest potential prize is the head of Jennifer Aniston. CBS daringly slotted its hit against longtime NBC hit Friends, hoping to bolster its own schedule and cripple TV's most successful slate for its rival. "When you have a weapon like Survivor, you use it," says CBS-tv president and CEO Leslie Moonves. Analysts like Survivor's chances. Says Guy McCarter, senior vice president and director of entertainment marketing for media buyer OMD USA: "Friends will take a hit." Many viewers, he suspects, will tape it and watch S2, a blow to the sitcom's value.

NBC's new entertainment president, Jeff Zucker, has said the network will counter with celebrity stunt casting on Friends and lineup changes. But it will be a bloody good fight, not just for ratings but possibly for the future direction of TV. Friends--a scripted hit with actors who get more expensive with every contract--is the old-line antithesis of Survivor, a moneymaking machine with disposable stars and no writers. (Even its product placements may be a sign of TV's future, when digital video recorders could allow viewers to skip traditional commercials.)

And if a looming writers' strike hits this summer, some of the cheap reality shows likely to fill the airtime could stay on after the strike ends, especially if Survivor demonstrates the genre's viability. That may also depend on the continued success of a wave of just-debuted knock-off reality shows that began last week (see boxes)--not unlike the game shows that, exactly this time last year, assumed it would be easy to mimic Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Say, what time is Winning Lines on anyway?

But imitators' success or failure won't matter to S2 if the casting and intense outback conditions deliver the goofiness, queasiness and drama of the first. Oh, and about that raw cow's brain? "They eat all parts of the cow," Probst confides coyly. "We give the contestants the staples of the outback, and that means all parts of the cow, raw. But we cut it up for them." With 14 fresh episodes of last year's biggest pop-culture hit and a buff, bikinied cast, CBS thinks it has the raw, red meat its audience wants. Let's hope it didn't go bad in that hot Australian sun.