PAY & FTA TELEVISION - RADIO - PRESS May 16, 2002
Local Survivor fails fittest test
By Sophie Tedmanson
THE aim of the game was to outwit, outplay and outlast – but the Nine Network was banking on Australian Survivor to outrate the rest. Last January Nine's programming director John Stephens said: "There's no doubt Australian Survivor will be the jewel in our crown for 2002."
But the 13-week reality program did not live up to Stephens's rhetoric. Unfortunately, the show's catchcry of "is mateship worth more than money?", the bitchiness and backstabbing of the contestants and the knowledge that it was filmed in their own backyard, wasn't enough to keep viewers hooked.
After three months the Australian version of the enormously successful American Survivor climaxed last night with a live show announcing the winner of the $500,000 prizemoney followed by a reunion episode from Crown Casino, hosted by Eddie McGuire.
Despite Nine's clever publicity drive (they flew journalists, including this one, from Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide to the Port Lincoln set last year to see the action first hand), a strong advertising campaign and a budget reported to be about $8 million, the show did not deliver the audience the network was expecting.
It started well – the premiere episode on February 13 was watched by more than 1.4 million nationally, but within a month the viewers had dropped to just over 992,000. By the end of last week the show had averaged 1.1 million compared with the averages of 1.5 million and 1.2 million for American Survivor II and III respectively.
The problem appears to be that despite it being the first locally produced version of the show, it was the fourth Survivor screened in Australia. Local viewers used to laughing at Americans in the wilderness seemed to feel uncomfortable watching Australians doing the same thing. One advertising insider says sponsors are so unhappy with the lack of results, they have demanded recompense from the network.
The executive chairman of Australia's largest independent media buyer Mitchell & Partners, Harold Mitchell, says the problem was that the show premiered within a month of the final episode of the American Survivor III: Africa. "These types of shows wear out the fourth time around. It was always going to be a very difficult test," Mitchell says. "For it to succeed it would have needed to be more outlandish than what had gone before it."
Australian Survivor is one of 14 international versions of the show, which originated in Sweden and had an initial title of Expedition Robinson. Australian Survivor was thrust on Nine. The international contract for American Survivor dictated local networks had to produce their own version.
So late last year, the Nine Network sent 120 crew members and 16 Australian competitors – Sciona, Rob, Katie, Caren, Craig, David, Deborah, Jane, Jeff, Joel, Lance, Lucinda, Naomi, Sophie, Sylvan and Tim – to a site at Whaler's Way just outside Port Lincoln on South Australia's craggy West Coast. The show featured sharks, snakes, bitchiness, hair problems, sickness and even a little love interest – all set on a picturesque location highlighting the sea and rugged bushland. But that wasn't enough.
"The opening episodes lacked spark and a lot of people have said to me Australians simply didn't want to watch Aussies," Mitchell says.
Contestant Rob Dickson, who was one of the last to leave the Port Lincoln campsite, says he felt disappointed the show hadn't been as successful as he and the rest of the Survivors had hoped.
"It was disappointing because they put so much work into it and had such good people in the crew," he says. "I'm disappointed because it was really becoming a very good show in the last few weeks. But people who have stayed with it have probably had a ball watching it. I'd do it again any day."
Rob's arch-enemy on the show, Katie Gold, says coming in on the tail end of the public's obsession with reality TV dampened enthusiasm for the show. "When we were there we thought if they put it together really well it would have been really good to watch," she says. "But maybe it's just that people are sick of reality shows. At the end of the day it doesn't take away from our experience there – what we went through was just out of this world."
Australian Survivor executive producer Stephen Peters agrees: "We came hot on the heels of Survivor Africa, which had only just finished before we started. But it's also like trying to make an Australian Friends – you could never have the Australian Chandler or Monica."
Peters says during the three-month shoot, the crew "tried everything we could to make it look as good as we could, but there were certain expectations on the show.
"There was a lot of people who wanted us to fail and have gone out of their way to do that," he says. "That's been an ongoing battle. But we're pretty proud of how it's turned out. I've got no regrets about it and I'd do it again . . . but differently."
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