What was the impact of Survivor on reality television?
Survivor is really a pioneering show. It really blew up because it was the first of the network shows. The Real World, the pioneering show, was on MTV. But it doesn’t have the same audience level; it doesn’t have the same panache. When CBS did one of these shows and it was such a hit, that’s when things really exploded with reality television. Mark Burnett is still to this day the gold standard of reality show producers, in my opinion. He handles the biggest budgets for his shows; I think he has the most consistently high rated network shows and he has also proven that he can do it, not just in Survivor format, but also in The Apprentice format and other things that he has created very successfully.
