'Survivor' no longer the office cooler ruler

Hard times for most other reality shows

The four finalists of "Survivor: Africa": Clockwise from top left, Ethan Zohn, Tom Buchanan, Lex van den Berghe and Kim Johnson

By Thurston Hatcher
CNN

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- A neck-and-neck presidential campaign was in its final months, Firestone was frantically recalling millions of tires, and flames were ravaging the western United States.

But what were we talking about at the end of August 2000? Tribal councils. Roasted rodent cuisine. And as Letterman gently put it, "that naked fat guy."

Back then, "Survivor" speculation was everywhere, inescapable, all-consuming.

Seventeen months later, CBS is airing the two-hour finale of its third "Survivor" installment Thursday night, and Americans may be hard-pressed to name any of the four finalists, much less their strategies, their alliances or what rural African delicacy they were required to ingest.

'Survivor: Africa' at a glance Finalists: Ethan Zohn, 27, professional soccer player, Lexington, Massachusetts Lex Van Den Berghe, 38, marketing manager, Santa Cruz, California, Kim Johnson, 57, retired teacher, Oyster Bay, New York, Tom Buchanan, 46, goat and cattle farmer, Rich Valley, Virginia Prize: $1 million Time: 8 p.m. EST Thursday, January 10 on CBS, followed by live reunion at 10 p.m.   QUICKVOTE Are you going to watch the 'Survivor: Africa' finale? Yes Maybe, but I kinda lost interest in 'Survivor' No View Results   RESOURCES EW.com: EW picks the 'Survivor' winner  Photo Gallery: Catching up with reality TV

"This time, you mention the word 'Survivor' and you can almost hear the crickets chirping in the background and the sagebrush blowing across the town," says Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York.

No longer a phenomenon

But for all the lack of office-cooler buzz, "Survivor: Africa" is still doing quite well for itself, thank you, not to mention the network.

Last week's second-to-last episode drew its largest audience since the October 11 premiere, placing fifth in the weekly Nielsen ratings even though it was up against the Rose Bowl's college football championship. A week earlier it was No. 2 in the ratings.

"The fact is that 'Survivor' had really high ratings, and take away a lot and you've still got a lot left," said Larry Lichty, a professor of radio, television and film at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

So now it's simply a highly rated show, but perhaps no longer a phenomenon. Some blame goes to NBC's resurgent "Friends," which has drawn particularly strong ratings and in what may be its final season.

Still more goes to the events of September 11, although not simply because the public wasn't exactly in the mood for simulated reality programming when there was plenty of truly brutal reality to reckon with.

Donny Osmond braves a tankful of worms in "Fear Factor," one of the few reality shows that has had ratings rivaling "Survivor." Many others have been canceled.

"This time, because there was something else a little more important in the headlines for these newsgathering operations to deal with, they virtually didn't cover this at all," Thompson says. "Consequently, I would say on the order of several million people who probably would like to have watched 'Survivor' might not even have known it was on."

And there's another factor in the diminished attention on "Survivor" and other reality shows like CBS' "Big Brother," Fox's "Temptation Island," and ABC's "The Mole" -- which the network yanked off the air shortly into its second season.

It's a tale as old as television, Lichty says, noting that "Gunsmoke" and "The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp" were huge TV hits in the mid-1950s that led a stampede of imitators to the small screen. But by the 1960s, the Western's popularity had begun to plummet.

"Once you have three or four choices, then you're going to begin to dilute the audience, and so you're going to automatically have sort of a decline." he said, explaining that it follows almost a perfect bell curve.

"The challenge or the mystery of TV programming is, is this a big wide curve? How high does it go and how long does it last?"

Thompson agrees, calling it a typical network practice.

"They absolutely strip-mined this genre, and they wore it out to a great extent," he says. "It was really cool the first time you watched someone eat a maggot. But the 25th time, not so interesting anymore."

A perfect bell curve

Even if "Survivor" and the reality TV genre may not be quite the hot commodity it was a year ago, it's probably way too soon to count it out.

MTV's long-running "Real World," after all, is already providing room and board for a new generation of slackers. NBC's "Fear Factor" kicked off its new season Monday after drawing big ratings last summer, and the network is unabashedly putting it up against the Super Bowl with a "Fear Factor" featuring Playboy Playmates.

Lichty says previous TV trends have followed a perfect bell curve, a dramatic rise, followed by a subsequent sharp fall.

"The challenge or the mystery of TV programming is, is this a big wide curve? How high does it go and how long does it last?"

According to Thompson, a good long while.

"Reality has taken a major hit," Thompson said. "But it's far from dead, and some form of this stuff is going to be on television for at least the next century, if not longer."