One of the most successful of the new breed of reality television programs is CBS TelevisionÆs Survivor, described by industry analysts as a cultural phenomena borrowed from Europe in which 16 men and women maroon themselves for as long as 39 days on an isolated tropical island (Poniewozik, 2000). To produce and film this television series, technicians, directors, cameraman, and others must also accept this isolation and living conditions that are minimally if definitively better than those of the contestants who appear on the show. This report will analyze Survivor from a producerÆs perspective.
Survivor is cast with non-actors drawn from among a population of ôordinary people.ö In the first American version of the program, which lasted 13 weeks, over 13,000 applications and videotapes were received, according to executive producer Mark Burnett (Poniewozik, 2000). Sixteen individuals ages 22 to 72 left home to build an island society on Pulau Tiga off the coast of Malaysian Borneo. With minimal supplies and few rules (e.g., no violence, no cutting down trees) they formed into tribes and each week the castaways who were selected for strong personalities and their potential for conflict, voted one member off of the show (Keveney, 2003).
Critic Leslie Ryan (2003) stated that Survivor relies upon careful selection of contestants but uses a relatively small budget, particularly in comparison to the salary heavy situation comedies and dramas that dominate mainstream television programming. Survivor was distributed in prime-time and characterizes itself as an unscripted drama rather than a reality television show.
Now in its seventh edition, Survivor is appreciated by advertisers, who pay premium prices for ad spots during the program. Survivor has attempted several different formats, including one in which female tribal members competed against an all-male tribe. According to Ryan (2003), the formula works well i...