Switching to Survival Mode

Cautionary tales were all the rage when network television began putting real people in extreme situations for ratings, but take away one giant fiasco--Fox’s “Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?” which featured a bushy-tailed groom with a restraining order in his past--and the only casualty so far has been network credibility, a negligible target to begin with.

Tonight, CBS will celebrate what amounts to an Academy Awards night for its “Papillon” meets Club Med “reality” hit “Survivor,” with up to 40 million viewers tuned to the two-hour finale, which is to be followed by a one-hour “Survivor” reunion show, hosted by Bryant Gumbel of CBS’ “The Early Show.”

“Survivor,” based on an earlier Swedish show called “Expedition Robinson,” has come a long way since stranding 16 people on a remote island off the coast of Borneo with nothing but their own wits, a production crew and regular visits from a hunky TV show host to keep up their spirits.

And then there were four--tonight, between the hours of 8 and 10 p.m., the remaining survivors, already media darlings, will be whittled down to one, the winner determined by contestants who’ve already been voted off the island (they vote during what are called Tribal Councils, which take on the sober aspect of a Camp David Middle East peace accord). The final survivor will walk away with $1 million.

CBS and corporate parent Viacom Inc. will walk away with considerably more, as advertisers, some of them movie studios pushing new releases, have shelled out as much as $600,000 for a 30-second commercial, CBS has said, although some of the spots, pre-sold in multimedia packages before “Survivor” went on the air, will go for less.

Still, for the last 12 weeks, CBS has watched with building glee as 18- to 34-year-old viewers have sampled the network like never before, tuning in Wednesday nights at 8 and rooting for or against various members of the Pagong and Tagi tribes, as the two teams of peer groups on the island are called. The castaways climb trees and play parlor games for rare treats, but mostly they talk to a TV camera about who is harshing their island mellow.

The show’s audience has been growing steadily (the penultimate episode last Wednesday cracked the 30-million mark), but more important to CBS are the kinds of viewers watching. When “Survivor” premiered May 31, the average age of a CBS viewer was 53, the oldest among the big four networks. According to a network estimate, that median age today is around 48, with last week’s “Survivor” episode drawing a median age of 39.5 (last season, “Nash Bridges” was CBS’ youngest-skewing show, at 48.1). Last week also marked the first time CBS’ weekly median age was younger than one of the other major networks, in this case ABC’s.

“Survivor,” then, is CBS’ Viagra--a magic pill that has made the network virile among young viewers, enabling it to swing with the young folks as unapologetically as Hugh Hefner. After tonight, “Survivor” goes dark until Jan. 28, which is when “Survivor 2: The Australian Outback” is set to debut after the Super Bowl. The “Survivor” Web site will stay up for die-hards, but without the pill, it remains to be seen whether CBS can stay, um, vigorous with younger viewers in the intervening months.

Clearly, “Big Brother,” which is kind of like “Survivor” only set in a tacky house in the Valley decorated after an incredible sale at IKEA, is no “Survivor” (teens and twentysomethings sniff that they’ve seen better friction play out on better furniture on MTV’s long-running “The Real World”). CBS, which paid a reported $20 million to the Dutch production company Endemol Entertainment for the rights to “Big Brother,” has been programming the show like a rave, airing it over the summer six nights a week. But “Big Brother,” while adding to CBS’ bounce among younger viewers, has been on a roller coaster ratings-wise, drawing as few as 5 million viewers on Saturday nights and as many as 17 million on Wednesdays, when it comes on after--you guessed it--”Survivor.”

Unlike “Survivor,” “Big Brother” hasn’t ascended to guilty pleasure among critics. “The unexamined life may not be worth living,” the New Yorker’s Nancy Franklin wrote, in her assessment of “Big Brother,” “but the unedited life is not worth watching.”

“What they had hoped to do was take advantage [of ‘Survivor’] by transferring some of that audience over to ‘Big Brother,’ which really hasn’t happened,” said Bill Carroll, vice president/director of programming for the Katz Television Group, a consulting firm. “The only thing they can do is what they’re doing now, which is expose the ‘Survivor’ audience [to] some of the promotion [of shows] they’re going to run in the fall and hope that they’re going to attract them back to CBS to watch ‘Bette’ or some of the other shows they have.”

To be sure, the image of a college dorm lounge full of CBS converts watching a sitcom starring Bette Midler is a stretch. CBS has been cross-pollinating “Survivor” with abandon, throwing its castaways on both “The Early Show” and “The Late Show With David Letterman”--after Letterman, who will have the “Survivor” winner on Thursday night, openly complained that CBS wasn’t positioning the show to help his ratings.

CBS will begin rerunning “Survivor” Sept. 13, against NBC’s coverage of the Olympic Games, airing the repeats on consecutive nights except Sunday. Castaways have also shot promos for CBS comedies and dramas, and guest appearances on shows are also possible (i.e. throwing Rudy Boesch, the 72-year-old retired Navy SEAL, on an episode of “JAG,” the CBS naval drama).

Rudy is among the four survivors left tonight. The others are Kelly Wiglesworth, 23, a river guide from Las Vegas; corporate trainer Richard Hatch, 39, of Newport, R.I.; and truck driver Susan Hawk, 38, of Palmyra, Wis. More than the others, they are poised to capitalize on their newfound fame and/or infamy, with CBS said to be mulling myriad offers.

Reebok has promised to give a one-year endorsement deal to the “Survivor” winner. Jenna, voted off some weeks ago, may follow in Darva Conger’s footsteps and pose in Playboy. Sean Kenniff signed to become a medical correspondent, whatever that means, on the syndicated tabloid show “Extra.”

Hatch, who ran naked on the beach and has played his role as lord of the flies to great effect (he’s kept his Tagi alliance together to the bitter end), takes his sanctimony to the radio airwaves, becoming a talk show host next week in Providence, R.I. (the fact that he is gay means that, somewhat accidentally, CBS has raised the bar on network diversity, giving audiences what amounts to a gay villain).

Hatch was one of about 6,000 people who applied to become a contestant on “Survivor.” By contrast, CBS says nearly 50,000 people applied for the next installment in Australia. For the network, in other words, more pills are on the way.

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* “Survivor” finale airs tonight at 8 on CBS.