A history of reality television (part three): Big Brothers, Amazing Races and naked castaways - TV Squad

July 9th, 2008 | by cwalton |
A history of reality television (part three): Big Brothers, Amazing Races and naked castaways - VIDEOS - TV Squad by Richard Keller

The summer of 2000 started out to be a typical one for television: repeats, theatrical movies edited for television, repeats, shows that needed to be burned off because they were so bad, and repeats. It was a formula that hadn’t really changed for the Big Three networks in several years. And, it was one that viewers had gotten used to as they mourned the last episode of their favorite series and waited with eagerness for the new season to begin in September.

Then, something happened. CBS decided to air a ‘game show’ about a group of strangers stranded on a tropical island. Survivor began at the end of May and continued into the end of August. Along the way it gained more and more fans and produced more and more publicity for both the show and the network. By the last episode, on August 23rd, Survivor had become a huge success as well as one of the highest rated original shows ever to air in the summer.

Little did CBS know that this summer replacement show would begin the Reality Revolution and change the landscape of network television forever more.

The concept of Survivor was pretty simple: put a number of strangers together in a remote location, strip them of all of their creature comforts (food, clean water, shelter), then have them team up into ‘tribes’ that would work on various challenges in order to win valuable prizes. Think of it as a live-action version of Gilligan’s Island with Thurston Howell doling out cash. Or, a slightly more civilized version of Lord of the Flies. Despite the simplicity of the concept there were a few twists to all of this.

First, rather than being a genuine team effort, much of the game emulated more of the phrase ‘Survival of the fittest’ with every man and woman for themselves. Next, immunity was provided to tribes or individual players when a challenge was won. Third, fellow tribe members could vote for one of their own to be removed from the show during the Tribal Council. Hence, the reason for immunity.

Add to this tribal switches, tribal merges, rewards of luxury items, eating items that weren’t really considered food, and the fact that they were tired, dirty and hungry. Combine it all together and it led to less-than-friendly interactions and secret agreements between castaways who were and were not in the same tribe. Which, in turn, led to dramatic television and the emergence of stronger characters that became immediate fan favorites. For instance, the always naked Richard Hatch became a personality fans either loved or hated (or both) during the first season. Same could be said for the retired Navy SEAL Rudy Boesch.

Those elements are what brought the viewers back to the Survivor week after week. Plus, it was practically the only game in town during the summer of 2000. Besides Who Wants to Be a Millionaire on ABC and the Summer Olympics, Survivor was the only other original regular series programming on at that time. That’s why, after the series premiere, the show pulled an average of 28 million viewers each week, and a whopping 52 million viewers for the season finale.

Read the entire article at A history of reality television (part three): Big Brothers, Amazing Races and naked castaways - VIDEOS - TV Squad.

  Tags: ace, cast, cbs, episode, tv

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