Marvin Kitman

CBS pits 'Survivor' reruns against Olympics

(Los Angeles Times) -- Reruns are the most maligned institution in television, the lowest of the low in the creative food chain, and rightly so. Especially with the great rediscovery this summer that people will actually watch something new called original programming.

We've had to put up with not only repeats but threepeats and fourpeats. Even a classy show like "Everybody Loves Raymond" this summer has been breaking new ground by rerunning the same rerun -- the one about can openers -- two weeks apart. I didn't love it that much.

Then there is the wrinkle of networks' rerunning the Christmas shows, followed or preceded by the Halloween and Thanksgiving episodes -- all in July. Not even Mother Nature can rearrange the calendar in such an illogical way. Somebody at the networks should watch what they are doing. If the public has to suffer, why shouldn't the network programmers?

But all of this is nothing in the art of reruns compared with what CBS will be doing this month. We are about to see the archetype of reruns, the definitive stroke in counterprogramming, the most creative area of the diseased minds that run television. I'm talking about CBS' decision to start rerunning "Survivor."

The network, I'm sure, searched far and wide, scrutinized every nook and cranny of the schedule, looking for the ideal slot. It finally found the R-spot, the most satisfying erroneous zone. On September 15 at 9 p.m., CBS will start rerunning the summer's biggest hit every night through Sept. 29 (except on Sundays).

What else is on at 9 p.m. during that period? Let me check this out -- only the Olympics on NBC.

So when they are playing Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" and the greatest athletes who have survived four years of grueling preliminaries march into the stadium in Sydney, Australia, we will be able to see the 16 noble "Survivor" warriors of the Pagong and Tagi Nations restart their battle for the gold.

"Survivor," as you may recall, was the new drug released into the ether this summer. It was about to be listed by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration for its addictive nature.

There were people earlier this summer, such as Catherine A. Perz, a university professor from Victoria, Texas, who confessed they were ashamed that they couldn't stop following it. "Survivor" was an even more powerful addiction than TV itself, especially in summer rerun season.

The CBS reruns for these hopeless wretches are like medicinal marijuana for the terminally ill.

CBS is also performing a public service for those who are really sick, the handful of stubborn, irretractables who were above the show. "Not all of us got sucked in," explains Mark Alansky of Lansdale, Pennsylvania, "I didn't see one 'Survivor.'"

Rugged individualist Gloria Rahn of East Quoque, New York, sent me an affidavit attesting to the fact that she and no one in her circle was watching. "Therefore, I don't believe their ratings claims," she says of CBS. "Maybe people don't wantto admit it."

In another possibly unscientific study, Gene Ginsberg of Roslyn Heights, New York, polled eight people having brunch at his house last Sunday and found three who saw some of the shows and five who did not.

So it won't be a rerun for the Henry Thoreaus who might come in from the cold at their Walden Ponds.

There are also those who can't believe they really watched the whole thing. They may have imagined missing some detail. How could they have been so blind as to not see what Richard Hatch was doing when he was sticking the knife into somebody's back? The rerun will provide a chance to relive the thrill of losing and the agony of winning, or whatever the message of "Survivor" was.

In a sense, CBS is keeping alive the spirit of "Survivor 2000," passing the torch to another "Survivor," which, knowing the power of reruns, could be the eternal flame of TV.

But why are they rerunning it against the Olympics? It is a programming decision that will win for CBS the Olympic medal in dirty pool.

I must say this is the most despicable, filthy, lowdown, scurrilous dirty trick a network can play against another. I can't vilify CBS enough. How low can they sink in the villainous name of counterprogramming? The Olympics is an event so important that networks are delaying the new season so as not to diminish the public's enjoyment of the Sydney games, giving the best possible spin on the noble gesture of not starting new series until the week of October 2.

There are people who want to see the Olympics. Not everybody. I know some people who are planning to boycott the NBC show as a silent protest against the corruption and bribery involved in picking Olympic sites, a practice that has probably been going on since Athens beat Sparta in pre-televisison days.

The decision to rain on the other guy's parade by creating a state of continual viewing ambivalence is just the sort of malodorous, malicious villainy associated with Mel Karmazin, the mahatma of CBS-Viacom, the master rainmaker, the classic take-no-prisoners network executive.

This is not to say NBC wouldn't do the same thing if it had the chance. Certainly ABC was guided by the same search-and-destroy method of programming when it threw a surprise episode of "Millionaire" against the debut of "Survivor" in May. It makes you think there is no honor among thieves -- I mean network executives.

And yet CBS' action is so fitting, in a way, so Richardesque. If "Survivor" had any redeeming social value, Richard taught us that winning isn't everything: It is, as Vince Lombardi first observed, the only thing. Richard taught us the valuable principle, a guide to everyday living, that it's not the people who knife you in the back you have to worry about, it's the people who knife you in the front -- right on national TV.

With all the future job opportunities being heaped at Richard's feet after his highly principled victory, there would be nothing more suitable than his becoming a network suit. If I were Karmazin, I would make Richard my right-hand knifeman, despite the danger that Karmazin would soon find himself thrown out into the street.

I have one other constructive suggestion. Maybe CBS might change the order of the episodes. That would add more excitement to the reruns than the exclusive, in-depth 20-second "Up Close and In Person" interviews with the castaways inserted in the Olympian parade of commercials added by the creative arms of CBS programming. Let the games begin. May the most conniving, treacherous network win.

Kitman is the television critic for New York Newsday. His column appears regularly on CNN Interactive's Entertainment section. E-mail Kitman at MarvinKitmanShow@worldnet.att.net

(c) 2000, Newsday Inc. Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate.

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