Definitely Not the Opera

Who Wants to Be A Survivor? - A Perspective

  1. Whether or not we want to believe it, Survivor changed the face of prime time television. It was not a sit com, not a cop show, not even a documentary - it was sheer contrived reality. And millions - many millions of millions watched it? Why? Why do we watch anything? Because we like it - it appeals to something basic in us. And that something is different for each one of us. Each of us brings to anything we watch on TV all of what we are. A 50 year old Toronto Rosedale matron is going to react to Survivor differently than a teenager living in a housing project.
  2. And people who make TV know this and so they target shows to specific audiences. But Survivor broke all the rules - it attracted more children than Wonderful World of Disney, more teens than WWF Smackdown, more young adults than Friends and more 50 plus viewers than 60 Minutes.
  3. Why? What was it that appealed to all these people who all came to the show bringing such different backgrounds?
  4. I don't think it was because it was television with a difference - so-called "reality television" - where - like in Big Brother - you can follow what happens 24 hrs a day live on the Internet and which proves that most people's everyday lives are pretty boring to watch.
  5. Let's face it Survivor was a creative treatment of actuality. The producers filmed almost 18 hours a day for 39 days on the island. When they started editing they had about 700 hours which had to be put into 16 one hour shows. They created an almost fictionalized tale based on things that really happened to real people. And in doing so pushed all the right buttons to make us watch.

    6. And it pushed at least six buttons.

  6. We watched because we love a good story with tension among people we got to know - not actors acting a part but "real" people with real emotions in a real situation who weren't given a script. If this had been a movie starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts it would've been a flop. Yet the show was "cast - with non-actors to be sure but chosen for their looks, ability to cause conflict and - let's face it - their sex-appeal.
  7. We watched because we love soap operas - almost all of what we watch on TV is a soap opera of one sort of the other - Survivor was one of the best. It exploited our basic instincts both good and bad. But the good moments of support and caring, were far outweighed by the bad moments that were shown.
  8. We watched because there was competition, tension and conflict. All designed to grab our attention and hold it. One person carryng a bible is derided by another who says he would bring a bible to an island only to use as toilet paper.
  9. We watched because we love a verdict - just like it seemed the whole world watched and waited for the verdict in the O J Simpson trail, so every week we watched and waited for those last five minutes when someone at the tribal council was booted off the island. We couldn't help ourselves. It is an almost primitive instinct in us to like those kind of moments. Darwin meets democracy!
  10. We watched because by the time we got to the last four people - we not only thought we knew them, we also thought they weren't very nice people. And that left us feeling - like all good soaps do - that no matter what our problems - we were better off than this group of people.
  11. And finally we watched because we're voyeurs - whether we like to admit it or not. Once hooked on the castaways, we simply enjoyed watching what happened secure in the knowledge that we would never have to spend a month sleeping on a snake infested beach or dining on barbecued rat.