'Survivor' Tsunami

Of course none of the castaways would be a hot commodity if we already knew which of them is the winner. CBS and the contestants aren't the only ones who helped keep the lid on. Lots of bystanders who could have spoiled the fun kept their mouths shut, too. For several weeks, conventional wisdom held that Gretchen, who had taught at the Air Force Survival School, was the winner. "All my friends knew that I came home two weeks before I was supposed to. They could have said, 'She's No. 7. She's not it'," she says. "I'm so proud of everyone for respecting me." Why did they, and everyone else, keep quiet? Sometimes, like when we wouldn't give away the bizarre twist in "The Crying Game," America loves to keep a secret together. "Even stodgy journalists don't want to spoil it," says Professor Thompson. Two of the "Survivor" contestants, B.B. and Sonja, still don't know who won. "I don't want to know," says Sonja. "I opened my Christmas present early one year and it spoiled it."

Not everyone has been willing to wait. A few weeks into the show, a crafty Web site calling itself survivorsucks.com predicted who would be booted off next. It based its forecasts on clues gleaned from the show itself. During the third episode, one eagle-eyed fan noticed that the opening sequence featured a new tribal-council scene--with only nine people, as opposed to the 14 people who still remained on the island at that point. Using that apparent slip, the survivorsucks.com folks deduced--correctly--who the next five victims would be. CBS didn't make that mistake again. In fact, it went on the offensive. The next time the show changed the opening council shot, in week eight, it featured only four people: Gervase, Rudy, Sean and Colleen. Was this another slip? Would they be the final four? For a while survivorsucks.com thought so. "It was a Trojan horse," says Paul Sims, who maintains the site. "Some people believe that video footage was digitally doctored." CBS won't confirm or deny that, though it admits waging a disinformation campaign. "We've been able to throw a couple of curve balls," says CBS Television president Leslie Moonves.

Ironically, Moonves passed on the show three times before finally agreeing to give it a shot. Now "Survivor" has almost singlehandedly revamped CBS's image from the old-fogy network to one of the hottest spots on the remote. The median age of its prime-time audience has dropped four years since "Survivor" debuted. On Thursdays, when every Survivor (except Greg) has appeared for his or her first post-expulsion interview, ratings for "The Early Show" have gone up 25 percent over last year. Even Letterman's ratings have improved somewhat. "We were struggling with an image problem here. We were considered the nice, solid performer, but a little on the safe side," says Moonves. "It's great to be the network that has the water-cooler show."

The money isn't bad either. CBS had presold almost all the advertising spots, which means it got far less than it could have for a program with gargantuan ratings. But it's found a few ways to cash in. Ads for the last hour, which the network didn't sell until the last minute, have gone for as much as $600,000 each. Then Moonves got really crafty: he added a live, hourlong "town hall" special after the two-hour finale where all 16 contestants will reunite to watch the show and talk about their experiences with a studio audience. All told, the three-hour extravaganza could take in $17 million. And that's not even counting the good will that will be generated nationwide by pre-empting one night of the dreadful "Big Brother."

CBS isn't wasting time starting on "Survivor 2." It'll debut on Jan. 28, right after the Super Bowl. Despite the phenomenal success of the original, Burnett plans to change the formula a bit. He's relocating to the Australian outback; it's isolated and picturesque, and there aren't man-eating predators. And he's hoping the contestants will play rougher next time. Burnett says he should never have let the teams fraternize on the boat trip out to Pulau Tiga. "They were very friendly. There wasn't enough tension between the two tribes," he says. Some "Survivor" fans say Burnett must amp up the pressure in order for the sequel to succeed. "The most fun thing about this was having those people figure out how in the world to play the game," says Thompson. "In 'Survivor 2,' every single person will be going into the outback with a Ph.D.-level knowledge of the history of 'Survivor.' The innocence has been entirely lost."

In any event, how could a second "Survivor" cast ever measure up? What could top Stacey's hissing at Sue, "You switched your vote!" after Sue stabbed her in the back? Who could dream up a goofier voting plan than Sean's alphabetical system? ("It was very strategic," he insists. "The proof of the pudding is that I never won immunity, I didn't ally with anybody and I beat out everybody else except the alliance.") Who could be more outrageously un-P.C. than Rudy?