Survivor Beats Friends

February 2 -- A bunch of bug-eating nobodies narrowly bested America's favorite prime-time sextet last night as CBS's Survivor: The Australian Outback broke the winning ratings streak of NBC's longtime Thursday champ, Friends.

Evidently viewers agreed with TV Guide's Matt Roush's assessment when he pronounced, "Survivor is an event. Friends is a TV show."

The most highly anticipated prime-time showdown found Survivor II with a 17.1 rating and a 25 audience share, while a 40-minute, "super-sized" Friends episode had a 16.6 rating and a 24 audience share, according to overnight numbers from Nielsen Media Research as reported by The Associated Press.

The cutthroat reality show increased its lead in the second half hour, despite more overall viewers for both shows. Survivor had a 19.8 rating and a 28 share, the last 10 minutes of Friends had a 17.4 rating and a 24 share, and a 20-minute Saturday Night Live special — which featured a Survivor spoof — had a 13.7 rating and a 19 share.

(One ratings point equals 675,000 homes, while the share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show. More precise ratings numbers are due later today.)

'Jerky' Kel Is BootedOn the second episode of Survivor — the first aired Sunday, after the Super Bowl — Ogakor tribe's Kel Gleason got the boot, after he was suspected of hoarding food. The Army intelligence officer was accused by Jerri of secretly scarfing smuggled-in beef jerky. Despite his denials, the rest of the tribe ganged up to vote him off, even his supposed ally, Maralyn, who had earlier encouraged the tribe to apologize for their unfounded accusations.

According to the New York Post, it wasn't beef jerky, but, er, another kind of jerky that had Kel wandering off alone. The lad was reportedly caught not in the act of eating, but masturbating — a scene left out of last night's episode.

On the first episode, it was Kucha tribe's Debb Eaton who was booted, again unanimously, demonstrating that this new batch of survivors learned the value of a strong alliance from the first show.