CBS's Thursday 'Friends' gambit no sure winner

By Elizabeth White

     Before the first episode had aired, oddsmakers in Las Vegas were already picking the winners from "Survivor 2." 
     But a few days after that first episode, folks in the media business are still wary about predicting who will win the other survival contest on Thursday night, the one between "Friends" and "Survivor 2."
    "It’s a horse race," says Lyle Schwartz, senior vice president and director of media research at Media Edge.
    Only a few media folks are willing to give "Survivor" the outright win on Thursday night.
    "You can already see potential conflict between characters, which is essential," says Stacey Lynn Koerner, vice president of broadcast research at TN Media. 
   "The thing about ‘Survivor’ is that if you don’t know what happened that night, you’re out of the loop the next day. There’s going to be more taping of ‘Friends.’"
    Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University, says that CBS successfully capitalized on its Super Bowl opportunity.
    "CBS had to achieve one thing. They had one night with a great audience and they had to get people into the show," he says. "And for the most part they achieved it. It was a pretty good episode, and it’s going to give NBC a run for its money."
    But most who predict that "Survivor" will topple "Friends" are hedging their bets with wait-and-see qualifications.
    "I wish I had a crystal ball. I think it will be a tight race," says Brad Adgate, senior vice president and corporate research director at Horizon Media. "But if ‘Survivor’ does what it did over the summer, it will beat ‘Friends.’"
    Brian Lowry, a television writer for the Los Angeles Times, agrees. "I wasn’t bowled over, but I wasn’t bowled over by the first one. It takes some time for these shows to develop."
    And Shari Anne Brill, the director of programming services at Carat, says that NBC can’t be counted out yet.
     "‘Survivor’ will do well, but there’s a lot of stunting on NBC to compete with them this time. It will make for some interesting television. There will be a lot of channel hopping and taping."
    Most people also agreed that the first episode of "Survivor 2" showed signs of potential weakness.
    For one thing, the episode lost audience throughout the hour, something that almost never happens in reality TV. 
    CBS cited audience fatigue from the Super Bowl and a late start time on the East Coast as causes for the drop off. But these first numbers could still spell trouble for CBS.
    And it might be a problem that the cast is too good looking. That is, unless those in the media industry are less superficial than the general public.
    "They’ve potentially miscalculated by putting too much emphasis on looks," says Lowry.
    Koerner agrees. "I like the idea of looking at average people. There are more character variations to see in people who don’t all look great."
    And Thompson cites the most popular characters from the first "Survivor" as evidence that beauty doesn’t necessarily make for compelling television.
   "People like Rudy and all of the rest," he says. "Of the four left at the end, three were hardly what you’d call traditionally attractive people, and Kelly wasn’t that great. But they were the four most interesting people on the show," says Thompson.

-Elizabeth White is a staff writer for Media Life.

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