Lord of the Ratings

Staying Alive is more than a game in CBS's Controversial new mini-series

Four scantily clad men and women trudge through the mud, their faces and bodies camouflaged with leaves, desperately hunting for a scrap of meat in the dense jungle. They communicate with their hands, a language only they know, a language they invented so that they don't scare off dinner. Suddenly, a man in the pack yelps and falls to the ground. The other three panic, not knowing what's wrong. Did he step in a ditch and sprain his ankle? Or had he been bitten by the Sea Krait water snake, the world's most venomous serpent? The experts had warned them about that, but nobody really thought it would happen. Suddenly somebody snaps, running off into the woods alone in a blind panic. What will happen to him? Tune in next week.

No, this isn't another movie version of _Lord of the Flies_. This is a possibility for a real situation on "Survivor," and this summer, it's coming to network television, along with a similarly unpredictable show, "Big Brother." Although on the surface, these shows seem harmlessly entertaining, disturbing undertones peek through under closer inspection.

These two shows are the latest imports from Europe. ABC scored a huge ratings boost with England's "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" CBS hopes to match this with Sweden's "Survivor" and the Netherlands' "Big Brother," which has finished its run there and is currently filming in Germany.

However, German politicians have raised questions about the moral tone of these voyeur shows. They have called for a ban of "Big Brother," saying it violates media laws protecting human dignity. Bavarian official Erwin Huber calls the show "a new dimension in sensationalism... and voyeurism." But the laws' vagueness have prevented any action against the show, which has been very successful for the RTL II network, which had previously focused its programming on American reruns and soft-core pornography.

Is CBS trying to exploit this controversy for ratings success? The eye network does survive in the ratings wars between the Big Three, but just barely. And with flagships shows like "Touched by an Angel" and "60 Minutes," it often fails to capture the lucrative 18-49 demographic. So is CBS willing to air these shows which exploit their contestants in an attempt to win back the youth audience?

The first of these shows, "Survivor," is currently in production and slated to begin airing on a weekly basis starting Wednesday, May 31. Jeff Probst, of VH-1's "Rock & Roll Jeopardy," will serve as the host of this island odyssey, whose motto is "Outwit, Outplay, Outlast." In mid-March, sixteen castaways (eight men, eight women) were dropped on an uninhabited island in the South China Sea. They must build their own shelter and gather their own food. They are allowed only one "non-survivor tool" from home, like a picture or a hairbrush, but nothing else. They will have no contact with the outside world.

Every three days, the group will gather for a "tribal council," at which the castaways will vote to kick a member off the island. When there are only two castaways left, the last seven people kicked off the island will return to vote for the champion, who will walk away with one million dollars (a seemingly magic number in TV game shows these days).

The concept behind "Big Brother" parallels "Survivor". Five men and five women will be locked in a house with, you guessed it, no contact with the outside world (save the occasional vocal communication with "Big Brother" himself). Every moment in the house is recorded by 28 cameras (all equipped with night vision) and 60 microphones. Not even the shower is safe.

Every other week, for as many as one hundred days, the roommates will meet to secretly elect two people as candidates for dismissal from the group. Then, the audience will choose which of the two they no longer want to see via a telephone poll. The last person remaining wins $500,000.

Life in the house will not be easy. The inhabitants will live a "Back to Basics" style, with no modern amenities. They must grow their own vegetables in a garden and raise their own chickens for meat.

CBS will air the show not one, but five nights weekly (following ABC's lead with "Millionaire" last summer). If that's not enough, streaming video will broadcast over the Internet 24 hours a day. The inhabitants have yet to be cast, but the application (which can be downloaded from the CBS website) is due soon.

The concept behind these shows is not entirely new. MTV scored success with "The Real World" in the early '90's. This evolved into "Road Rules," another show that struck a chord with the key youth demographic. But "Survivor" and "Big Brother" go much further with their voyeuristic overtones. While "The Real World" taped just about everything that went on with the participants did, the conditions were nowhere near as severe as those of the eye network's new shows. The Real-World-ers interacted with the outside world as normal people would; they just had cameras following them around.

However, the "Survivor" and "Big Brother" casts are cut off from reality. They exist in a world apart from their friends and family. The TV execs are basically locking people up for our enjoyment. Isolation like this cannot be healthy, especially under the conditions of the contest. The "Big Brother" house isn't very roomy, with two bedrooms, one bathroom, an eating area, a kitchen, and a living room for ten people. So, the inhabitants are not only sequestered, they're also a bit cramped. While the tropical island of "Survivor" may seem like paradise at first, the high temperatures and humidity, coupled with frequent rain, mosquitoes, and dangerous animals, probably help it keep away droves of tourists seeking the perfect vacation destination.

What does this say about the people who are willing to go through with this (albeit for a potentially large reward)? One of the "Survivor" castaways is a single mother of three-year-old twins, whom she was willing to abandon for more than a month. Would you really want someone like this on your team if you were trying to survive on an uninhabited island? Could you really put your trust in this person, knowing she has already deserted her own children at a critical time in their childhood for a chance to win a million dollars?

The issue of trust itself presents a problem. The shows pit the contestants not only against nature but against each other as well. While they must work together to ensure that basic needs are met, they must also be wary of whether they will be voted off the island by the person helping them build the hut. This undercurrent of uncertainty is frightening-the contestants must go through this ordeal not knowing whom they can trust.

CBS CEO Leslie Moonves admits that a psychologist friend has encouraged him not to go through with these voyeur shows. While he has not pulled the shows from the summer lineup, he has ordered additional screenings of potential contestants. Applicants must endure a battery of psychological and physical endurance tests, but who can really predict what will happen under conditions that are, to say the least, adverse? The German TV execs acknowledged this, and set up a "safe room" in their "Big Brother" house, where the contestants can meet with a psychologist without the pressure of the cameras and microphones. But CBS's current plan doesn't involve a similar "safe room." CBS press representatives declined to comment on the shows.

Controversy over game shows is nothing new to the American public. The drama stretches back to the quiz show scandal of the 1950's involving "Twenty-One", which recently returned to the air on NBC. In more recent times, who can forget February sweeps' most talked about event: the marriage of Darva Conger and Rick Rockwell on Fox's "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?" That annulment was just finalized two weeks ago after it was discovered that Rockwell had a restraining order filed against him by a former girlfriend. (Darva's response to the whole fiasco: "Oops.") The execs at Fox vow to avoid further exploitative programming (this from the network of "When Animals Attack" and "World's Wildest Police Chases"). The "Multi-Millionaire" event proves that even careful background checks can miss something, and in the high-stress situations of "Survivor" and "Big Brother," even a small oversight in the psychological or physical tests can explode into a serious issue.

Regardless of controversy, these shows are likely to score high ratings for CBS. Buzz about these shows has been building since they were first announced. The Dutch version of "Big Brother" netted a 53.6% market share for its finale, and its winner went on to national fame. The German version's website has logged over 90 million hits, despite (or perhaps because of) the conflict.

But is this popularity necessarily a good thing? How far will American television go? All around the world, even more shocking game shows exist. In England, game shows like "Don't Forget Your Toothbrush" involve people performing sometimes lewd and embarrassing acts for a surprisingly small amount of money. This is mild compared to some of the Japanese and Australian game shows. Are American TV executives so concerned about ratings that they are willing to put anything on television, regardless of its moral implications? From the latest two imports from Europe, that certainly seems to be the case.

This summer CBS will bring voyeurism to the masses, and from early indications, the public will love it. But be careful, because next sweeps period, the Eye may be watching you...