Listen to me on TV CONFIDENTIAL:
As always, the further we go back in Hollywood history, the more that fact and legend become intertwined. It's hard to say where the truth really lies.
August 23, 2000
First Survivor
finale airs.
On this day in
2000, Richard Hatch, a 39-year-old corporate trainer from Rhode Island, wins
the season-one finale of the reality television show Survivor and takes
home the promised $1 million prize. In a four-to-three vote by his fellow
contestants, Hatch, who was known for walking around naked on the island in
Borneo where the show was shot, was named Sole Survivor over the river raft
guide Kelly Wiglesworth. Survivor, whose slogan is “Outwit, Outplay,
Outlast,” was a huge ratings success and spawned numerous imitators in the
reality-competition genre.
Produced by Mark Burnett (The Apprentice, Are You Smarter Than a 5th
Grader?), Survivor premiered on May 31, 2000, on CBS. The
show centers around a group of sixteen strangers who are stranded for 39
days in a remote location where they must fend for food, water and shelter and
compete in various challenges to win rewards and immunity from being voted out
of the competition by their fellow contestants. The voting takes place at the
so-called “Tribal Council” ceremony and after a contestant is voted off, the
show’s host Jeff Probst informs that person that “the tribe has spoken” and
asks the evictee to extinguish his or her torch.
As of May 2008, Survivor had been on the air for 16 seasons. The show
has been filmed in a variety of locations around the world, including the
Australian Outback (season two), the Amazon (season six) and Fiji (season 14).
Season 13, which was set in the Cook Islands, stirred up controversy when the
contestants were initially divided by race into four competing tribes:
African-American, Asian, Caucasian and Hispanic.
In 2006, season-one winner Richard Hatch was found guilty of tax evasion for
failing to report his Survivor prize money to the IRS. He was sentenced
to more than four years in prison. Other former Survivor contestants
have gone on to reap more success from their appearance on the reality show:
Season one’s Colleen Haskell landed a co-starring role in the forgettable 2001
comedy The Animal, while season two’s Elisabeth Hasselbeck (nee
Filarski) went on to become a co-host of the daytime TV talk show The View.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
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