CBS Screws Up, Gives Fans Bogus Tips
Credit: USA Today
In a 1980 summer cliffhanger, CBS made "Who Shot J.R?" a nationwide catchphrase and protected the closely guarded secret from fans of Dallas. Twenty years later, the network seems to have done it again, foiling investigative journalists and nosy fans on the Internet. Los Alamos and the Pentagon should be so lucky.
But CBS wasn't without fault. Several glitches at the start of the season left a trail of clues before the network caught on and joined the game by releasing false information.
Network flubs
Episode 1-2: A split-second frame in the show's introductory theme song included an image of the final nine contestants seated at a tribal council meeting. It's a picture of the two tribes combined, thereby spoiling any suspense about who was knocked off in the previous episodes. This information, combined with CBS previews and frame-by-frame analysis of footage provided to Access Hollywood and Entertainment Tonight, allowed the detailed-filled fan Web site SurvivorSucks.com to accurately predict the exiled members until they were hoodwinked by the show's producers with a string of red herrings.
Episode 7: A group of contestants was shown walking toward a tribal council meeting. Gervase is wearing an immunity necklace, an event that did not occur until Episode 8. That led viewers to conclude that Gervase was safe from expulsion for at least one more week.
Episode 8: CBS Web masters inadvertently posted that evening's episode summary nearly six hours before the show aired on the East Coast, spoiling the fun for anyone who happened to view CBS.com. The Web site was then taken down for repairs until later that evening. However, there is speculation that CBS may have purposefully leaked the summary on the site to make its Web masters appear like bumbling idiots, which in turn gave credence to a previous theory (see "The 'X' theory" below) that the Web site had leaked the identity of the winner: Gervase.
Episode 9: Trailers pictured Richard carrying the immunity necklace. Another editing mistake. He did not win immunity in this episode, but the image led fans to predict correctly that he would win immunity in Episode 10.
Red herrings
The "X" theory: A Canadian college student earned his five minutes of fame when he announced he'd discovered the winner of Survivor. The fan, who goes by the name CAPLOCK, uncovered a hidden area on the CBS Web site where images of contestants are stored. All but Gervase's picture were crossed out with a scarlet "X," leading some to believe he was the winner. The X Theory was invalidated when Gervase was booted in Episode 10. Producer Mark Burnett later admitted to staging the hidden image.
The "final four" image: In the introduction to Episode 8, a quick image showed what appeared to be the final four contestants at a tribal council meeting. The pictured castaways were Kelly, Gervase, Richard and Sean, with only four torch lights visible. Like the X Theory, this conspiracy theory was scotched when Gervase was expelled. Burnett and production team member Marty Dugard admit to digitally altering a tribal council image to remove other cast members. "We underestimated the mania," Dugard told Alberta, Canada's Edmonton Journal . "All of a sudden, it was like 'OK, if you guys are going to play that game, let's see what we can do to play with your minds a little bit.' "
