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on Thursday. So what?
Network lacks the backup forces for a true victory
By Elizabeth White
Last Thursday, CBS’s "Survivor 2" tumbled NBC off its perch as the evening's longstanding dominant network, booting "Friends" in the butt as it did so.
CBS certainly won bragging rights, and it's certainly the network's intent to claim them.
But a larger question looms, larger even than the egos of the CBS suits this crisp Monday morning.
Having won, what have they really won?
NBC still won the night, with four of the five top-rated shows for the evening. "C.S.I." couldn’t pull off the win among adults 18-49 against "Will and Grace" and "Just Shoot Me" at 9 p.m. And "ER" showed just how badly CBS needs a third hour before it can really win Thursday night.
Unfortunately for CBS, the network has already laid all of its best cards on the table-- "Survivor" and "C.S.I."-- and it has nothing else up its sleeve.
"Survivor 2" has only 13 episodes, meaning that CBS can only hang on to this season and hope to develop a suitable third hour by next fall. And that’s assuming that the writers don’t strike and that the public doesn’t suffer reality fatigue.
As far as moving an existing show, CBS has already sacrificed Friday night by moving "C.S.I." On the first Friday without the crime drama, CBS finished a distant third in households and was nearly non-existent among adults 18-49.
And on Saturday, the "XFL" on NBC outscored CBS’s usual winners, "Walker, Texas Ranger" and "The District." Moving an existing show would cost CBS another night.
None of this is to say that "Survivor 2" didn’t manage one of the biggest television upsets in a long time. In the seven years "Friends" has been on the air, no regularly programmed show has ever beaten a first-run episode of the sitcom in that time slot among adults 18-49.
And "C.S.I." defeated Emmy-winning "Will and Grace" in households on the first try, thanks entirely to its "Survivor 2" lead-in.
But what "Survivor 2" has truly done better than any other program is to show how vulnerable NBC is on Thursday nights. Even if the reality phenomenon fades and CBS slides back into obscurity for adults 18-49, NBC will never again have such unquestioned control of the most lucrative night of the week.
UPN and the WB have had some success all season programming against NBC. "WWF Smackdown!" is the UPN’s highest-rated show, while "Charmed" and "Gilmore Girls" are two of the WB’s strongest shows this season.
But not even full seasons of the WB and UPN are a serious threat to NBC. In one night, "Survivor 2" made Thursday a free-for-all among the networks.
Fox is entering the fray this sweeps with caught-on-tape specials. And like the other networks, Fox found success this past Thursday, with an adult 18-49 rating 20 percent higher than it was the first Thursday of sweeps last year.
ABC still has "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" at 9 p.m., which it moved last February in a gambit similar to CBS’s this year. "Millionaire" also had immediate success targeting NBC on Thursday, but couldn’t hold onto the audience for long. And this past Thursday, "Millionaire" finished third for the hour, quite far from the top of the mountain, where it was last February.
But in the meantime, NBC’s lineup has aged another year, making it even more vulnerable to "Survivor 2’s" attack this year. Now that the other networks smell blood, NBC’s only hope is to find a rejuvenating new hit and to find it fast.
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Elizabeth White is a staff writer for Media Life.
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