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still has the stuff
'Africa' debuting before a much darker America
By Kevin Downey
Tonight’s "Survivor: Africa" is the show's season premiere, but it is in fact much more.
It is a test of whether Americans still have an appetite for reality shows after all that has happened in the last month following the terrorist attacks.
Is reality TV, last year's craze, now simply too frivolous for a nation entering into a war?
The reality show that spawned countless imitators will be judged by how close it comes to attracting the 28 million people who regularly tuned into "Survivor 2" earlier this year.
Anything less will surely be interpreted as the beginning of the series' demise, and the demise of all reality TV.
But all that said, "Survivor: Africa" is expected to hold up just fine, although perhaps a bit off from last year.
Media buyers say the perceived cooling of viewer interest in reality shows following the attacks and military action in Afghanistan, and even the possibility of some preemptions from news coverage going forward, will not lessen interest in the show.
"I believe that ‘Survivor’ will be the least impacted of the reality shows," says Doug Seay, senior vice president at Publicis & Hal Riney.
"It’s probably the best-produced of all those shows. And every time they do it, they learn from the previous one and improve on it."
He adds that the show should benefit from people knowing what to expect after having watched two previous installments of the series.
"People are saying some of the psychology of the new TV viewing is that people are going back to the familiar," he says.
"‘Survivor’ is a pretty familiar format. You don’t have to learn anything new and the characters are fairly interchangeable."
One indication that it won’t be hurt is that after a brief drop-off, viewing of most other reality shows has bounced back, right along with the rest of primetime TV, which is on par with last season.
Ratings for reality shows fell in the past couple of weeks but that may have had more to do with people splintering off to watch fall season premieres than it did with a new distaste for the triviality of unscripted programs.
"The shows that struggled, post-military strikes, were shows that were not necessarily established," says Jack MacKenzie, senior vice president of entertainment at Frank Magid Associates.
"‘Amazing Race’ had just launched and then was off for a few weeks. So, it’s not at all surprising that its numbers were off."
Modestly rated shows like Fox’s "Love Cruise," CBS’s "Amazing Race," and NBC’s "Lost," in fact, had ratings increases of 6 to 12 percent last week compared to the week before.
And outside of skewing its average audience for the season, "Survivor: Africa" probably won’t even be hurt much by not having the Super Bowl lead-in that it had last year, when 45.4 million tuned in for the premiere of "Survivor: The Australian Outback."
"‘Survivor’ is a little different than the other reality shows because of the attention it gets in magazines and newspaper stories. There are stories on all the newsmagazine shows like ‘Entertainment Tonight’ and ‘Extra,’" says MacKenzie.
"So there are a lot of ways to gain exposure outside of the artificial launch of the Super Bowl."
"Survivor’s" only significant challenge is a renewed interest in "Friends" on NBC following a cliffhanger surrounding Rachel’s pregnancy.
That show had an audience of over 30 million for both of its first two episodes this season, which is the first time it’s hit that level for two weeks running since 1996.
Whatever impact "Friends" has on "Survivor" will be seen tomorrow when ratings come in for the first head-to-head competition between the two shows this season.
One thing that remains unchanged from last year is that the performance of "Survivor: Africa" will be compared to its predecessor. And that’s a lot for any show to live up to.
Although NBC usually took Thursday night in adults 18-49 last season, "Survivor 2" regularly beat "Friends" and posed the first challenge to the peacock network’s lead on the night in nearly two decades.
More impressively, "Survivor" boosted CBS’s adult 18-49 rating by 8.1 percent last year, while both ABC and NBC had declines.
And the network, which is notorious for its older audience, had a 1.2-year decline in its median age to 51.2. That still makes it the network with the oldest audience by four-and-a-half years, but the median age for "Survivor’s" audience was CBS’s lowest at 39.6.
Moreover, "Survivor" was the most-watched network primetime program last year by a margin of 7.64 million people. It averaged 29.8 million viewers per episode compared to "ER’s" 22.1 million.
October 11, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
-Kevin Downey is a staff writer for Media Life.
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