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May 15-21, 2006
IS SURVIVOR
SLIDING ON A
SLIPPERY SLOPE?
By Steve Beverly
Webmaster, TVgameshows.net
Aras Baskauskas' $1 million victory Sunday night on Survivor: Exile Island drew the traditional Ric Flair whooos from the live audience in New York City and the concurrent explosion from his friends and family via satellite in Los Angeles.
However, the numbers of Americans who made Baskauskas' verdict over Danielle DiLorenzo a night of appointment television were distinctively fewer than in any of the past Survivor finales.
The question begs: is Survivor finally hitting that ultimate downward slide which eventually claims every show on television?
Last week, in an incisive review in Media Life Magazine, Toni Fitzgerald wrote: "Survivor may simply be showing natural signs of age. The reality show is in its (12th) season and many reality programs don’t make it past three or four."
While the series continued to dominate its Thursday night time slot in March, April and early May over NBC's declining sitcoms, Survivor met its match against ABC's hot Dancing with the Stars. Tom Bergeron and friends defeated the castaways in all but one of the shows' five head-to-head Nielsen matchups.
Add to that two instances when Fox stunted with a special Thursday night edition of American Idol and Survivor was not the automatic 8 o'clock hour of choice.
Jeff Probst and company is in no danger of cancellation. However, of genuine concern is the falloff in overall ratings and among 18-49 age viewers, even without Dancing and Idol in the mix.
Last Thursday's semifinal fell to a 5.7 in 18-49 age adults. While dominant over the supersized pentultimate episode of Will and Grace and the first 20 minutes of an expanded My Name Is Earl (averaging a 3.4), the Survivor numbers were off 17 percent from the same week a year ago.
Ironically, just three month ago, Media Life was proclaiming while the 18-49 demographic was off by double digits for Survivor, the show was picking up steam with teens. In fact, for the first six shows of the Exile Island edition, male teen viewers were up 48 percent year-to-year while teenage girls increased 29 percent. A number of media analysts speculated the pickup came, in part, becuase of Fox moving The OC to a later hour Thursday nights.
Game show historian Jim Blalock says the Survivor erosion is of natural consequences. "CBS has asked more of this show than any other in the 'reality' crowd," Blalock said. "Instead of one of these a year which runs 17 to 20 episodes, like American Idol does for Fox, you have two a year and on a program which presents an elimination finish and an ultimate champion, only the hardcore fans don't eventually burn out on two of these. It makes the ending of a single Survivor less special over time."
Fitzgerald speculated when CBS releases its fall schedule this week, Survivor could end up on Wednesday or even Sunday but added "that seems like a drastic move despite the show's declines."
Neither move seems likely for a variety of reasons. First, CBS is expected to gamble by moving its strong Without a Trace to a Sunday night hour after Cold Case to replace its aging and departing made-for-TV movies. Even with the continued strength of the original CSI at 9, CBS would be mortgaging Thursdays by moving two of its three hours in one year.
Some thinking suggests CBS could do worse than attempt to counter NBC's new Sunday night NFL franchise with Survivor at 8, Without a Trace at 9 and a new crime or medical drama at 10. Cold Case could essentially swap slots with Survivor and open the door to build a new hour-long drama Thursdays at 10.
Television history suggests mass movement can create mass disaster. In the fall of 1975, CBS opted to uproot the bulk of its Tuesday night lineup, M*A*S*H, Hawaii Five-O and Barnaby Jones en masse to Fridays to challenge NBC's blockbuster night of Sanford and Son, Chico and the Man, The Rockford Files and Police Woman. With a terrible lead-in from lame sitcom Big Eddie, Sheldon Leonard's return to TV as an actor, not even the incomparable M*A*S*H could battle Chico. Five-O and Buddy Ebsen likewise slid. All three CBS favorites fell out of the Nielsen top 30. Before Christmas, M*A*S*H was back on Tuesdays to form the lead-in for new hit One Day at a Time. Jack Lord and Barnaby were dispatched to Thursdays, where they quickly returned to the top 20. For both Survivor and Trace to be uprooted would be a huge risk, particularly considering football is not the juggernaut----but ABC's monster trio of Extreme Makeover/Home Edition, Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy.
Second, a move to Wednesday would be equally risky. CBS's The Amazing Race, which has been renewed despite a stiff decline, has only fallen further in an early Wednesday slot and may be held back as a midseason replacement next season. While NBC is not expected to send Deal or No Deal into a second night of duty next fall, that is always a possibility while Fox holds a trump card of potentially casting the results night of Idol as an earlier hour-long offering next February.
Regardless of the erosion, CBS owes a lot to Survivor. Consider how the network went 17 years without a series to win the 8-9 slot Thursdays until 2001. From the moment The Cosby Show and Family Ties teamed to detonate Magnum, P.I. in 1984, CBS was adrift in the Nielsen sand Thursdays, particularly in the early hour. Trying and failing with everything from The Price Is Right to 48 Hours to a Canadian import (Due South) and a cheapie, more violent knockoff of Fox's favorite (Top Cops), CBS was recommended by some wags to give back the first hour of Thursday nights to its affiliates.
As Les Brown wrote in his acclaimed book, "Television: the Business Behind the Box," "The loss of a night of programming can often take years to rebuild." In CBS's (and ABC's) case, try decades where Thursdays were concerned.
ABC cracked a vulnerability on Thursdays when Who Wants to Be a Millionaire hit big in 1999-2000. CBS took a major risk when it moved CSI, which was performing so-so on Friday nights, to challenge WWTBAM and two NBC Must See TV sitcoms head-on. The forensics drama not only passed the Peacock offerings, it became the first series to consistently beat Millionaire head-to-head, taking enough older viewers away to knock Regis Philbin into third place in the Nielsens many weeks.
Still, CBS----which had its first genuine Thursday hit since Knots Landing (the network's Diagnosis Murder was a respectable but distant and older-skewing runner-up for many of its nine seasons)----was dumbfounded in mounting a challenge in the night's opening hour.
Once Survivor became television's surprise megahit of the summer of 2000 (an estimated 73 million viewers saw the final 15 minutes when Rich Hatch became the first winner), CBS faced the same dilemma it did with the lightly-heralded Northern Exposure in the '90s and Hee Haw, its previously biggest summer hit of all-time, in 1969.
The initial school of thought, which had a significant amount of support in the CBS board room, was to return Survivor for a second campaign to the Wednesday night slot where the adventurers dominated throughout the summer of 2000. ABC was becoming greedy by expanding Millionaire to a fourth night and some sentiment at CBS was to challenge the hotseat head-on.
Then-CBS Entertainment President Les Moonves saw a bigger picture need than confronting a single night of Millionaire. Moonves' view: introduce the second Survivor as the coveted Super Bowl lead-out and take your chances against NBC's aging Friends. Even if Probst and cast could not pull off what they did the previous summer, Moonves saw Survivor as CBS's best shot at eroding the massive young demographic edge NBC had built over more than two decades. A close second would be equivalent to victory.
The end result was beyond the imagination of CBS researchers. Survivor defeated the near-invincible Friends in eight of their 11 head-to-head matchups, won the full hour every week and drew record young demographics in the time slot. Aided by the win of Tennessee nurse Tina Wesson, as adept a game liar as the best imposters on To Tell the Truth, Survivor performed stronger in Southern markets than it did in the summer of 2000. CSI had the lead-in which propelled it to become television's number one show. The eventual addition of Without a Trace gave CBS a dominant night it had not enjoyed since the combo of Magnum-Simon & Simon-Knots in 1983-84.
Two years ago, Tim Goodman of The San Francisco Chronicle saw the erosion of Survivor coming in the midst of the proliferation of docudateries and Survivor knockoffs. "Viewers seem to be tiring of cheap gimmicks and short-term tricks on reality shows," Goodman wrote. "It's the franchises that raise the value of the genre."
Just as Millionaire was the franchise for the revival of traditional game shows in prime time in 1999, Survivor spawned all of the game opera competition shows. Big Brother comes and goes for CBS in the summer but has never been the monster hit which has ever given the network cause to consider a regular season version. The Apprentice showed signs of becoming a second franchise in the genre but too much Trump and possibly wearying of a format in which one person arbitrarily decides the outcome has led to a fast slide for Mark Burnett's NBC business game.
Survivor may be on a slow slide because of its extensive gimmicks and twists. Even Probst himself said a year ago, "I hope we never do another all-star edition." A consensus of critics analyzed the damage which may have been done with Survivor All-Stars. Two contestants quit the game before it ended, one because of her mother's terminal illness and Sue Hawk because of an altercation with her old nemesis Hatch during an Immunity Challenge. Hatch's arrogant personality and insistence on nudity during portions of the game turned off viewers, according to focus group research, far more than in the original edition, and the romance/engagement of ultimate winner Amber Brkich and runner-up Rob Mariano drew mixed reactions.
Several columnists took CBS to task for extending the show an additional week for a popularity poll. That allowed viewers to vote a $1 million prize for their favorite contestant (Rupert Boneham). "That cheapened the show," said Blalock. "Everybody loved Rupert but he didn't win the game either time he played and that extra night virtually told the audience we're going to give him $1 million just because we like him. Why play the game?"
Survivor still has plenty of pull. The 10.1/17 in total ratings for the Thursday semifinal was still more than 40 percent better than the Will/Earl combo on NBC. However, that figure is off nearly 13 percent from last year.
The potential challenge for next season: ABC is expected to announce this week a September start for the third edition of Dancing with the Stars. If the celebrity players are compelling enough, the ballroom may well be favored to dethrone the island in the fall Nielsens.
PREVIOUS COVER STORY INTERVIEWS/FEATURES
Vanna White of Wheel of Fortune
Bob Juch of Millionaire
Sheetal Shetty of Deal or No Deal
Wink Martindale
Did Richard Karn Get the Shaft on Family Feud?
Bob Boden, Laura Chambers on Peter Tomarken
Bil Dwyer of I've Got a Secret
Don Knotts: a TV Legend Leaves Us
Robert Purdum: $132,000 Wheel Winner
Adam Wade of Musical Chairs
Michael Davies: His New Sony Deal
Nipsey & Adam: They Were the Pioneers
Peter Marshall
Player of the Year: Brad Rutter
Lin Bolen
Betty White
Jeopardy! college champion Nico Martinez
Deal or No Deal's Scott St. John
Harry Friedman
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