| Burnett vs. the Internet: Who's telling the truth? 04/24/2001 By / The Dallas Morning News Mark Burnett, lord and master of Survivor: The Australian Outback, suddenly is acting clueless these days.
No.1, he doesn't know who wins. Or so he says. No.2, he claims to be entirely unaware that several Internet entities, led by the mysterious "ellipsiiis brain trust," have been correctly picking evictees since Episode7 while also providing precise information about who wins weekly immunity challenges.
"It's news to me," Mr. Burnett says of the dead-on Internet projections. "You're the one who's telling me. That's how much attention I pay to it. It's of no interest to me. Ratings are the bottom line here. If indeed there were millions and millions of people reading these [Web] sites and still tuning in, that's even better.
"It's good news either way," he says. "All I know is, we've improved creatively this year over the first year. And critics and large numbers of viewers have appreciated it. And things are better than ever."
Mr. Burnett, as always pressed for time, is hurriedly talking on the phone from the set of Combat Missions, a new cable series he's producing with Survivor I star Rudy Boesch as host. In January, while facing a roomful of TV critics at a CBS-sponsored interview session, Mr. Burnett initially punted when asked whether Survivor II's winner was being kept secret "even from the cast until the very last night."
"I don't want to talk about which episode and how we're going to do things," he said.
But when pressed about whether the show's 16 competitors knew the winner, Mr. Burnett answered, "Yes, they know who won."
He now admits to lying rather than risk revealing that the show's $1million champ would be announced live.
"What was I gonna say? First of all, I was caught short. I thought, 'Holy [bleep].' Had I said, 'No,' the live aspect of the last show would have come out in newspapers the next day. So I could do nothing but say, 'Yes.' I felt bad. But on the other hand, I have a responsibility to the network. I'm not a bad person."
CBS waited until April 11 to announce that "the sole survivor will be revealed live" from Los Angeles on the May3 two-hour finale. Mr. Burnett says that "even I don't know who wins. No one knows. Those votes [from seven jurors] were sealed that night at tribal council. They're in a vault. And [host Jeff Probst] will pull those names out of the voting urn live. And he will be as surprised as I am."
Internet speculation about the winner lately has turned ugly as next Tuesday's deadline for a writers' strike nears.
An alleged television screenwriter who dubs himself one of the six "TV Apostles" says he hopes to sabotage Survivor II because unscripted "reality TV is a massive threat to my livelihood." Purporting to have impeccable inside information, he has declared Tina Wesson to be the show's "overwhelming victor." So far, his sequence of evictees has been accurate.
But another "Apostle," also supposedly a disgruntled screenwriter, has contestant Keith Famie claiming the big prize. Both say that Texan Colby Donaldson will be bounced on this Thursday's episode, although Las Vegas oddsmakers have him as the favorite to win.
"All I can say is, it's a free country," Mr. Burnett says. "I live in Los Angeles, and many of my friends are writers and actors. I sincerely hope there isn't a strike. There will be some 'reality' people out there who don't have shows on who are hoping for a strike. But I've got my shows on the air, and I don't have any more I want to put on. Nothing good comes out of thinking bad thoughts."
During Survivor I, which premiered late last spring, Mr. Burnett admitted to having "great fun" spreading disinformation that led predictors down several blind alleys. Now, he claims to be blissfully ignorant of Internet intelligence and no longer interested in "playing the game" on that terrain.
In short, he can't be bothered anymore. Survivor II is nearly in his rearview mirror as he firms up plans for this fall's third edition, which will originate from the Amazon or Africa, Mr. Burnett says.
"I'm absolutely more divorced from the external stuff floating around," he says. "The first time around, no one knew if this kind of TV would work. So, while figuring it out, it's natural as a human being to look at everything, including the Internet. Well, we did figure it out. Now we just do what works, and we don't let the other stuff interfere. We just go about our business."
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