Doing More Than Surviving: Final Installment Even Beats ‘ER’

The final installment of “Survivor” again proved to be a huge ratings attraction but burned considerably less bright than the inaugural edition last August.

More than 36 million people were watching the two-hour finale at any given moment Thursday, peaking at nearly 41 million during the final half-hour, when Tina Wesson was presented as the $1-million winner. That compares with 52 million and 58 million, respectively, for the first staging of the contest, which had the benefit of playing against summer reruns instead of NBC’s “Must-See TV” lineup during a ratings sweeps period.

Those results were below most projections, though CBS still dominated from 8 to 10 p.m., exceeding the combined audience for NBC, ABC and Fox. A reunion show that followed, hosted by Bryant Gumbel, slipped to 28 million viewers but nevertheless pulled off the almost unheard-of feat of beating an original episode of NBC’s “ER” (21.6 million). The victory marked only the second time a program has defeated an original episode of the titan medical show; in 1994, “ER’s” first season, the CBS miniseries “Scarlett” beat an “ER” episode head-to-head.