As a former member of the Parachute Regiment in the armed forces of his native Britain, Survivor creator and executive producer Mark Burnett is no stranger to danger. Almost two decades after earning medals for his service in campaigns in Northern Ireland and the Falkland Islands, Burnett brought a paratrooper’s penchant for peril to prime time when he adapted a modestly popular Swedish game show called Expedition: Robinson into American TV’s first reality megahit .

From its first bug-eating, torch-snuffing moments in January 2000, Survivor was more than just a contest of strength and agility; it became a phenomenon that immediately popularized a whole new genre—“reality TV”—in the 50-plus-year-old TV landscape.

After bringing an increasingly fragmented America together in front of the television for its tense firstseason live finale, Burnett’s brainchild began season two on Thursday nights. It continued its reign as “must-see TV”—to borrow a phrase from the network whose once-popular fare Survivor was now beating in the ratings.
 
Even its creator was surprised. “I had thought that Survivor would create great water cooler talk, much like [ABC’s 1990–91 drama series] Twin Peaks had done,” Burnett remembers. “I thought it would be a cult hit—but that it would not be that high in the ratings. We ended up getting both.”

Making His Mark
Now in its 13th semiannual season on CBS, Survivor has changed the look of much of what we now see on TV, with production values such as high-quality editing and camera work that have raised the bar for all other series. “It is shot beautifully, with all the care and attention of a major motion picture,” Burnett says proudly.

But the true legacy is the effect the show—and Burnett—have had on American pop culture. The reality genre spawned by the Survivor juggernaut has proved true Andy Warhol’s earlier tongue-in-cheek prediction that we all have 15 minutes of fame. Survivor alone has made stars not just out of its host, Jeff Probst, but also out of such ordinary folks as Colby Donaldson and Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who now co-hostsThe View.
 
And our common vocabulary will never be the same. Across the USA, even a nonviewer can’t help but know what it means to be “voted off the island,” now that “the tribe has spoken.”

A Magic Ingredient?
As Survivor invented many of the mainstays we now fi nd in other reality shows (e.g., the weekly competitor elimination and the concepts of “immunity” and “alliances”), its competition became a test of cunning and guile, of mental as well as physical stamina—and Burnett thinks that’s the key to its success.

“The most important dangerous feeling for the show is emotional danger,” he explains. “There’s definitely physical jeopardy to the show because there are dangerous snakes in the jungle. But then you overlay that with the raw, visceral emotion you feel as you play the game, knowing each week you may be sent home. The greater jeopardy is the feeling that you’re not wanted, that you don’t belong. If you look back in your life, the worst feeling is always that someone doesn’t want you. That’s a much more powerful feeling than the fear of being bitten by a snake.”
 
In fact, a few years earlier, Burnett had already mined his own background as an outdoorsman to create physical feats for the competitors on his earlier series, Eco-Challenge. But, he notes, “I also learned about storytelling there.” And so, he insists, when it comes down to the secret of his success in creating unscripted programming like Survivor and his subsequent hits, “It’s simple, emotional storytelling. Are the characters compelling, and am I taken on a vicarious emotional journey?”

“There’s no secret sauce here,” Burnett adds. So how is a poor Survivor supposed to wash down all those bugs?