LOS ANGELES - For one night at least, Americans couldn't care less whether Al or George W. makes it to the White House in November.
As up to 40 million television sets tuned into the CBS network last night, the only question on their minds was which of the four remaining contestants would be the last standing on the runaway hit show Survivor.
(We won't reveal the winner because there are several more episodes to play on TV2, Tuesdays, 7.30 pm.)
The programme, a version of New Zealand's Treasure Island with far more vicious politicking and a contestants' diet of maggots and rats, has become the ratings phenomenon of the northern hemisphere summer and threatens to transform the face of prime-time television.
Unlike scripted dramas or sitcoms, its stars cost little or nothing yet they have become as recognisable, and sought after, as any bona fide prime-time actor.
There are no agents or managers or stylists or personal trainers to accommodate. The show requires no writing talent other than a basic formula worked out in advance by the producers.
And although the winning survivor walked off the island with a cheque for $US1 million, after 16 episodes that works out at a little over 10 per cent of the salary commanded by any one of the six principals on Friends.
It's a bargain-basement laugh all the way to the bank.
Not only has Survivor rejuvenated the ailing CBS network in one fell swoop - creating a ratings bonanza for the show and for spin-offs and morning talk-shows where the contestants are interviewed - it has also lodged a near-heretical thought in the minds of all network executives: Actors and writers, who needs 'em?
People call Survivor a reality show, but the secret of its success does not lie entirely in the voyeuristic pleasure of the maggot-eating or the other endurance tests.
Rather, what makes it so compelling is the sheer human drama of individuals scheming to stay on the island and the wonderful unpredictability of each episode.
Survivor doesn't just obviate the need for writers and actors, it might even be better than scripted drama. Who would have guessed that Rich, the 39-year-old corporate trainer, would declare his homosexuality and roam the island stark naked?
Or that Greg would talk into sea-shells as though he were on the phone and run off into the woods with the sexy heart-throb of the show, Colleen? Or that Ramona wouldn't stop throwing up, even before she was forced to eat maggots for dinner? This is stuff the executives would never dare put out in prime time if they knew it was coming.
The shifting sands of alliances and betrayals in the South China Sea has been something of a cross between I, Claudius and Alex Garland's The Beach - only with shameless product placement and plentiful advertising breaks priced at $US600,000 a 30-second spot.
The money and celebrity-milking have been quite blatant. Most of the participants now have agents, who have booked them appearances on soap operas and TV dramas and - in the case of the two young lookers Colleen and Jenna - fielded offers to pose naked for Playboy.
A sequel is, of course, in the works - this time set in the Australian outback - and will begin airing in January.
Together with Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, an equally compulsive game show on ABC, the new television trend has writers and actors quaking for their future.
- INDEPENDENT
TV: Ratings bonanza in reality shows
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