The basic premise of the television show, Survivor, was that two ‘tribes’ of 8 contestants each through competitions of various types would be whittled down to the point where the two tribes would merge into one.
When it just so happened that the competitions resulted in each tribe having exactly 4 members each… my reaction was, “How convenient.” Odd that one team didn’t have 5 members and the other 3 or any other combo. Having an even split ensures more tension among the two tribes and makes for better tv.
Of course, time will tell, and if Survivor II results in another 4/4 split I’ll know the fix is in.
How could the competitions be fixed? There were a lot of dragging of chests, boxes, etc in the competitions. Who’s to say that one box wasn’t made a bit heavier than the other team’s in order to give one team the edge. I doubt the tribe members are going to be in a position to compare the two weights. In another challenge, each team had to dig up a chest. You simply bury one chest a foot or two deeper than the other. Who’s gonna compare the two holes?
I think the producers rig the competitions to ensure that each tribe will have exacty 4 members when the time comes to merge.
No, I don’t think it was fixed. I like to think that I’m as paranoid as the next person, but I guess it depends on who the next person is.
I would like to think that putting people under the kind of stress that they were under would be dramatic enough, without fixing anything. The local newspaper ran excerpts of the book that said it was fixed, but nothing I read seemed particularly suspicious. If you have two teams with approximately the same skills, the chances of them winning an even number of matches over a period of weeks doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. It’s possible it may even have been more dramatic if one team had way more people. I’m not even sure why you think an even split makes for more tension? I would think that if one team got creamed in every competition, there might be more rooting for the underdog, or something.
Mark Burnett expressed surprise that Richard won, and I believe him. I think that group dynamics can work in interesting ways.
I certainly think that he manipulated the media, planted false clues, and edited the show to make Richard an even bigger surprise than he already was. The survivors themselves say that Richard was not as bad as he appeared on tape. I think that it was edited to make him more villianous.
First off, the tribes merged after each had banished 3 members, not four. The merged tribe, Rattana, had 10 members when it was formed. Here is the Tribal Council Voting History.
That being said, I don’t see why you conclude that there was a fix just because they both ended up with 5 survivors at the time they merged the tribes. Each tribe voted off one member every other week; no more, no less. Thus, after 6 weeks, each tribe would have lost 3 members. Since they both started out with 8, why is it hard to understand that it would be impossible for it to be any other way?
No, each week(3 real days) the two tribes would have some sort of competition. The losing tribe had to vote one of its members off.
Posters think it’s suspicious that tribes alternated wins, that MB possibly fixed it to prevvent one tribe having way more people because it would have unbalanced the show.
Both sides coming out even after six episodes was rather convenient, but hardly extraordinary. Remember, these were people taken from all walks of life; it’d be pretty surprising if they weren’t evenly matched. If it wasn’t 5-5, it would’ve been 6-4 easy. No fix here.
IMHO, waaay too much has been made of the impenetrably powerful TAGI ALLIANCE and the unbelievable, unbelievable foolishness of the (former) Pagong members. Remember, hardly anyone besides Richard and Kelly was really playing to win, so it’s not like they would’ve been heavy favorites anyway. Near the end, Rudy was little more than a cipher and Susan seemed to do everything short of biting the host to get tossed.
I, like most of America, was duped. Richard Hatch was a far more complex personality than CBS would have us believe. Yes, he was a little lucky, but the idea that he was some craven slug who spent all his time thinking of ways to get people tossed (and fishing, of course) was ludicrous.
No one will ever know if Greg’s final vote came down to luck…he’s rarely been straight with anyone, and he seemed to warm up to Richard for a while (certainly more than with Kelly). Regardless, I was still surprised that Richard actually managed three other votes for the top prize (especially Rudy’s, and whatever happened to his vaunted homophobia? Or was I duped about that too?).
So no, it wasn’t fixed…it was just made to look like it by lots of fancy editing. (Even Sean acknowledges that.)
(Reposting my message from the GD version of this thread, which I’m closing.)
First, it wasn’t 4 and 4, it was 5 and 5. (Remember, there was the Tagi alliance of 4 plus Sean.)
Second, how could they have set up the challenges to guarantee such a result? Maybe they could have played to certain strengths of each group? Perhaps, but in the challenge dealing with rowing, one would have expected Tagi’s Kelly to do well since she was a whitewater rafter. She certainly expected herself to do well. She blew it. Meanwhile, in the final group challenge, the obstacle course, Tagi won it by mere seconds. How could the producers have planned that?
Now, there are some serious accusations about the producers meddling in other ways. For example, in his unauthorized book, The Stingray, award-winning journalist Peter Lance provides information that the producers may have “suggested” to a couple of players who they should vote for. On a recent Rivera Live, Lance talked about some of his accusations and Sean Kenniff acknowledged that he and Jenna had not been the original ambassadors chosen by the tribes to discuss the merger – but that the producers interfered there as well (this mattered because Sean got drunk and revealed details of the alliance to Jenna, though she was obviously too stupid to act on that information).
For more information on this sort of thing, I suggest you check out The Stingray homepage and SurvivorNews.net. In fact, Lance just released an e-book version of his book yesterday.
Doc Moss posted, in the now-closed GD version of this thread:
Lance also claims that Stacey was voted off after the producer (Mark Burnett) convinced Sean and Dirk to swap their votes from Rudy to Stacey. This was apparently to make it look as thought the older folk on the show weren’t being targeted. (First 2 to go were Sonja and BB, had Rudy gone third, it wouldn’t have looked good.)
Notice that on the new show, the oldest contestant is a mere 53 compared to the original series having a 72 year old…
Actually, he did come out and admit that the whole “pick a number” thing was bogus and that he voted for Rich because he thought he should win. It was discussed briefly in the Peter Lance book I mention above, but it would take me a while to track down the exact page.
I don’t think he was ever made out to be truly homophobic – if you watched the whole series you saw him stating what he thought, but he also admitted that he became friends with Rich, and they had an “alliance 'til the end.” So it’s no surprise at all that he voted for Rich. Similarly, it’s no surprise that Sue voted for him after the way Kelly stabbed her in the back. And Sean had been feuding with Kelly for a while, so it’s no surprise for him to have voted for Rich, either.
Doc Moss: Yes, the thing about Stacey is what I was referring to in my earlier message about the producer encouraging a couple folks to vote a certain way.
Even if that one cannot be proven (because now people aren’t talking for fear of violating their contract and getting sued), Burnett admitted in his own book that a discussion between Gervase and a producer led to Gervase changing his mind about how he was going to vote.
David - Thanks…believe it or not, I actually feel a lot better knowing that Greg actually intended to vote for Girth Vader all along. Gotta check out that book sometime.
Though I wouldn’t put it past TV execs to fix a TV show, if they thought they could possibly get away with it, I can’t buy the notion that “Survivor” was fixed… except, of course, by the naked fat guy and his Alliance.
IF CBS had wanted to fix the outcome, they would’ve fixed it so somebody MUCH younger, more telegenic and more lieable came out on top.
Well, there’s “fixing” it and there’s “fixing” it.
Did they plan it like the WWF so they know who wins and who loses ahead of time? No. Did they interfere with the game play so as to make things better for TV? Yes. If similar things happened on other game shows, could those other shows get in trouble with the FCC? Yes.
Well, to add to the fix paranoia: Not only were there 3 of each team voted off before they were merged, but it alternated between teams. First one team lost the immunity challenge, then the other, then back to the other.