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finale for 'Survivor'
Viewer #s will be off but CBS show still has gas
By Kevin Downey
Tomorrow night's finale of "Survivor: Africa" may be eliciting a collective yawn from the media that once praised it, but that doesn’t mean viewers aren’t interested.
Far from it.
While it may seem that "Survivor" is imploding the way ABC’s "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" did, most media researchers think 28 million people or more will watch the concluding episode.
Admittedly, that’s about half the 52 million who watched the first "Survivor" finale in the summer of 2000, when Richard Hatch finagled his way into the $1 million winner’s circle.
And it’s a decline of about 10 to 20 percent from the 36 million who tuned in for last season’s "Survivor: The Australian Outback" finale.
Still, the two-hour "Survivor: Africa" will almost certainly be among the season’s most-watched shows.
"I think this one will perform at about 90 percent of what the last one did," says Susan McClellan, national TV and radio analyst at Empower MediaMarketing.
"I don’t think CBS is disappointed because it’s done a lot for them on Thursday, which a year ago was non-existent."
Roy Rothstein, vice president and director of national broadcast research for Zenith Media, envisions a slightly steeper drop.
"I think it will do well. But will it be as big as the last one? Probably not. They’ve been running about one-third below where they were, so the finale may be 20 or 25 percent less than they had last time."
Even with those numbers the show should put to rest at least some of the speculation that it is on the verge, facing the same sort of tumble in viewer interest experienced by "Millionaire," which began to see sharp declines about 18 months into its run.
"You can’t knock a top-10 show," says Rothstein.
"Everyone’s talking about the demise of ‘Survivor,’ but I’m saying ‘demise nothing,’ it’s still a major hit. I’d like to think that a top-10 show won’t fall apart the same way that a game show would because it’s really not a game show."
One major difference between the two shows is that "Survivor" hasn’t burned itself out from airing multiple weekly episodes the way "Millionaire" did.
"Survivor" also has something going for it that "Millionaire" hasn’t had since its earliest days: young viewers.
"Survivor" is among the youngest-skewing shows on the Big Three networks, with a median age of 39.6 last season. Its audience, in fact, is about 12 years younger than the average CBS viewer.
That’s in contrast to "Millionaire," which has one of the oldest audiences, at over 55 years, of any network show.
"Survivor: Africa" ranked No. 2 among adults 18-49 last week.
Its average audience of 19.5 million is remarkably consistent week-to-week, even though it has declined from last season’s 29-plus million viewers.
The decline probably means "Survivor 4," which will premiere sometime after NBC finishes airing the Winter Olympics in February, will continue the downward trend.
Still, "Survivor" is among the most-watched shows on television. And it launched the most serious challenge to NBC’s "must-see" lineup in nearly two decades when "Survivor: The Australian Outback" debuted on Thursday last year.
"Thursday is the hottest night on TV and it’s the hottest night on CBS," says Rothstein. "Because of ‘Survivor,’ ‘CSI’ has become a major hit. That is a well-scripted show with a good cast that’ll be around for a while."
This year was the first in which "Survivor" got its start at the beginning of the regular season. Not only did the show face tougher competition with original episodes of most network shows, but it also went head-to-head with a rebounding "Friends" on NBC.
That show has typically had an audience of over 20 million each week and often hits the mid-20-million mark, or about 25 percent more than it averaged last season.
This week’s competition should be relatively light against "Survivor: Africa," though.
ABC is airing figure skating on Thursday, Fox has a block of its lackluster "Family Guy," the WB is running repeats of "Angel" and "Charmed," and UPN will air its strong but much smaller "WWF Smackdown."
And while NBC will have an original episode of "Friends," it will air a repeat of "Will & Grace" at 8:30 p.m. And the two-hour "Survivor" finale will conclude against NBC’s weakest Thursday show, "Just Shoot Me."
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SURVIVOR: AFRICA Weekly Audience - People 2+ |
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| Week of: |
Viewers (000) |
Weekly |
| 24-Dec |
18,920 |
2 |
| 17-Dec |
19,600 |
3 |
| 10-Dec |
18,400 |
7 |
| 3-Dec |
19,280 |
3 |
| 26-Nov |
17,800 |
9 |
| 19-Nov |
17,700 |
10 |
| 12-Nov |
19,710 |
8 |
| 5-Nov |
20,550 |
5 |
| 29-Oct |
18,730 |
11 |
| 22-Oct |
20,430 |
8 |
| 15-Oct |
19,590 |
6 |
| 8-Oct |
23,840 |
2 |
| Average |
19,546 |
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Source: Nielsen Media Research |
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January 9, 2002 © 2002 Media Life
-Kevin Downey is a staff writer for Media Life.
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