To Promote Show, Newscasters Went Coconuts

Talk about deadly. Talk about stunningly tedious and lowbrow. Spending an evening with this group was like swimming through quicksand attached to an anchor.

My favorite moment in Wednesday’s “Survivor” finale came when host Jeff Probst fetched Richard, Kelly and Rudy for their last “immunity challenge” and told these pop-culture ragamuffins to “put on something comfortable.” As opposed to top hats and spats.

My second most favorite moment came minutes later when the Jeffster--he is a hologram, isn’t he?--announced to them with the gravity of Charlton Heston as Moses: “The island has embraced you as one of its own.” CBS missed a chance by not throwing in a thunderbolt.

Embracing all of us, actually, were the tentacles of Madison Avenue and a network that again did not shrink from using even its newscasters as tawdry peddlers on behalf of the entertainment division. It’s CBS News, as we once knew it, that isn’t surviving.

How desperate for diversion was the U.S in the summer of 2000? Don’t ask. Put aside the state of the media. If the Nielsen ratings are right about 58 million tuning in to Wednesday’s two-hour “Survivor,” what does that say about the state of the union?

This could become a campaign issue. Instead of the bigger defense budget that Republican George W. Bush is calling for, much greater is the need for unlimited federal spending to study the psyches of Americans helpless to resist TV hype.

And was there ever hype, including those hucksters at KCBS again getting in touch with their inner shill Wednesday by decorating their news set like the “Survivor” island. “We’ve all got palm leaves in our hair around here and are eatin’ outta coconut shells,” chirped anchor Ann Martin. No, the coconut shells were attached to their necks.

“Survivor” made even that evening’s “Crossfire” on CNN, with TelePrompTer-reading co-host Mary Matalin wondering: “Is reality TV really crowding out reality?” Such hand-wringing, when there is no reality in “reality TV,” any more than there was in the GOP and Democratic conventions, whose relatively light coverage by the big three networks she lamented.

In any case, here’s one viewer who approached Wednesday night’s concluding “Survivor” already Jennaed, Gervased, Sued, Kellyed, Rudyed and Richard Hatched to the max. And I hadn’t even watched the show more than a couple of times in its 13 weeks of life.

As for the final foursome, Rudy stayed stony, Sue teed off on Kelly, and Richard won the million and the car, after explaining himself to the castaways who had already lost but were brought back to choose between him and Kelly. For a moment, I thought the series might run another 13 weeks just to accommodate his speech:

I came to play a game that I played while playing it as the game was to be played the only way I could play the game that we had to play as if it was a game . . .

Or something like that.

So much for the tightly edited and scripted “Survivor” being reality, moreover. Note that six of the seven castaway “jurors” revealed to the camera, when voting for a winner, whether they had picked Richard or Kelly. The exception was Greg, who was shown casting his vote to break a 3-3 tie. Either he didn’t say he voted for Richard, or, much more likely, CBS edited it out to juice the suspense as it did throughout the series.

And on Wednesday night’s “Survivor: The Reunion” special that CBS ran afterward--with morning news anchor Bryant Gumbel as host--a couple of the castaways said that while on “Survivor” they were ever cognizant of putting on a show for the multitudes.

A show that may run interminably. If the gaudy ratings endure, CBS may institutionalize its summer windfall as an annual event like the Super Bowl. Picture it: “Survivor XXX.”

Coming in September are the reruns (“Back to the Island’), and in the works now is the next “Survivor,” being taped in the Australian outback. “The landscape may have changed, the tests remain the same,” Probst announced during “The Reunion” special, standing perilously atop a tall waterfall as I wished for a sudden gale wind.

Even if good people can disagree on the appeal of “Survivor,” no one can dispute how CBS News has prostituted itself while relentlessly promoting this series as if it were a meaningful news story instead of a phenomenon that the media themselves have helped inflate with their own gaseous psychobabble.

The real castaways are the journalists who took part in this. More blurring of the line separating news and entertainment? What line?

Take the bricks-for-brains news clowns at KCBS--Wednesday’s culprits including anchors Martin, Jonathan Elias and Gretchen Carr--and their leaders, news director Roger Bell and General Manager John Severino. It was surprising only that they didn’t do a tasteless segue to “Survivor” from the recent tragic story of the Russian sailors who didn’t survive their sunken submarine.

Bad though, was Elias’ sheer giddiness over “Survivor,” and his co-anchoring with Carr a tacky promotional half-hour, “Countdown to Survivor,” from a beach that appeared to be in Southern California. This was a news program?

What turns newspeople into such ethical Lilliputians? In this case, one of three things:

* They don’t know better.

* They do know better and don’t care.

* They do know better, and do care, but haven’t the backbone or integrity to resist, especially after tasting the money and fame that anchoring here can bring.

“The surprise stunt by Richard on David Letterman’s show--you won’t believe it!”--the prompter-reading Elias proclaimed on the station’s 11 p.m. newscast Wednesday. That followed the CBS program headed by Gumbel. A sample from him: “Coming up, we’re gonna talk romance on the island. What did and didn’t happen.”

Douse that flame. This viewer has spoken. It’s time for “Survivor”--and its merchandisers on the news--to go.

*

Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He can be contacted by e-mail at howard.rosenberg@latimes.com.