'Survivor' Participants Go for Sponsorships

N E W   Y O R K, Aug. 24, 2000 -- — Just when you thought you’d had enough of the rat-eating, conniving, severe-weather-enduring cast of CBS’ phenomenal hit show Survivor, think again.

Although the show concluded Wednesday night with the selection of the final survivor Richard Hatch, you’ll probably have a hard time reading a newspaper or magazine, or watching television and not run across one of the island castaways in the coming days.

Through various product endorsements and TV deals, the Survivor finalists are abandoning their food foraging skills, and instead hawking milk and athletic shoes. Even Survivor losers stand to gain financially from their island adventure.

For those of you who have somehow managed to avoid the hype, Survivor is a reality-based television series in which 16 strangers used their athletic and mental skills for more than a month to get food and not get voted off the island by their peers.

While the final ratings are still to come, preliminary figures had 51 million viewers tuning in to CBS Wednesday night to see Hatch, Sue Hawk, Kelly Wiglesworth and Rudy Boesch in their final showdown for the $1 million cash prize. That makes it the most-watched TV program this season except for the Super Bowl.

Thanks to CBS, we’ll never think of physical stamina or interpersonal skills in quite the same way.

Got Milk?

On the same day as the final season episode Wednesday, the creators behind the “Got Milk?” campaign unveiled their latest installment — the final four Survivor finalists posing behind a tropical backdrop, each sporting a trademark white milk mustache. (For you trivia buffs, the ad photo was shot on a Los Angeles beach a week ago, not on the South China Sea island, where the series was taped.)

Another “Got Milk?” ad featuring the sole survivor is scheduled to debut in newspapers and magazines beginning today.

So did the milk ad creators know who the winner was before Wednesday night?

Actually, no, says Sal Taibi, senior partner at Bozell in New York, the advertising agency responsible for the milk campaign for America’s dairy farmers and processors. Hoping to prevent leaks of the final winner, the milk ad creators shot individual pictures of each of the final four contestants. USA Today, for example, wasn’t expected to be notified until around 10 p.m. Wednesday about the winner and subsequently which ad to run, Taibi explained.

The milk ad campaign uses celebrities to help spread the message that milk is not just for kids — and the Survivor finalists are certainly celebrities.

“There’s nothing hotter right now,” Taibi said. And the new milk ad will be out today when everybody is talking about the final Survivor show, he added.

Tiabi declined to disclose how much each of the final four were paid to don milk mustaches, only saying they each were paid the same “group celebrity” rate versus an “individual celebrity” rate, think teen sensations ’N Sync versus Britney Spears.

Even Losers Can Win

The milk industry isn’t the only one clamoring for the final survivor. Reebok International has signed the winner to a year-long ad campaign.

The new ads may debut during the launch of the second Survivor season, scheduled for January 2001. John Wardley, vice president of brand communications at Reebok, said the new ad campaign is a natural extension of its existing Survivor-themed spots in which two guys try to survive precarious situations and juggle good and bad advice from one another — just like on the show.

“We haven’t written anything yet” on the new campaign, Wardley said. “It will depend on the person [finalist].”

But you don’t necessarily have to be a Survivor winner to benefit financially from your island appearance.

Survivor Jenna Lewis, the cute 23-year-old castaway, who was voted off the island, was offered somewhere in the neighborhood of $500,000 to pose nude for Playboy, according to various media reports. When Lewis squirmed, Playboy upped the offer to $750,000.

Lewis ultimately decided to leave nudity to fellow castaway and winner Hatch, the corporate trainer from Newport, R.I., and expert fisherman, who paraded on the show in the buff.

And for at least two contestants, Hollywood has come calling.

Dr. Sean Kenniff, the neurologist with the nipple ring, recently signed on with the syndicated TV magazine show Extra as a medical correspondent, a spokeswoman for the show said.

And Gervase Peterson, a youth basketball coach from a Philadelphia suburb, has taped a guest appearance on the TV sitcom The Hughleys.

Survivors aside, the biggest winner may be Viacom, the parent company of CBS.

The network was charging about $600,000 for a 30-second commercial spot on the final show, unprecedented for summer TV. And Viacom has already reported its spring-quarter profits got a boost from the first episodes of Survivor and analysts say the company’s summer results should show an even bigger bounce.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.