'Survivor' Finds A Way To Beat the Heat in Thursday Premieres
There's sexual heat and then there's equatorial heat, and they faced off on Thursday night.
Viewers were given a choice: watch beautiful people in bathing suits walk down the runway in nicely applied make-up, or watch attractive people in bathing suits squash tarantulas and eat guppies while covered in mud and filth. Apparently the babes and stud muffins of ABC's "Are You Hot?" would have been better served starving themselves and eschewing shampoo and conditioner, because in the battle of premieres, CBS' "Survivor: The Amazon" won easily. With NBC on autopilot, throwing guest stars Jeff Goldblum, Demi Moore and Sally Field into their regular "Must-See" line-up, and FOX offering only a repeat of Monday's much maligned "Joe Millionaire" clip-show, hotness and survival seemed to be going head to head. "Survivor: The Amazon's" real competition was the ratings for past installments of the franchise and charges that the show is in an unstoppable decline. Buoyed by the show's "men vs. women" premise, "Amazon" averaged 23.26 million viewers between 8 and 9:30 p.m. That is a slight improvement over "Survivor: Thailand," which averaged just under 23 million viewers when it debuted in September, and only a small drop from the 23.8 million viewers who watched "Survivor: Marquesas" this time last year. "Survivor: Amazon" also avoided a drop in 18-49 numbers, with a 9.1 rating/ 24 share.
/>"Are You Hot?" wasn't nearly as successful. For ratings purposes ABC broke the two hours of coverage into an lead-up special "Countdown to Hotness" from 8 to 9 and the premiere, "Are You Hot? The Search For America's Sexiest People," from 9 to 10.
"Countdown to Hotness," which focused on the hotness audition process, had an average audience of 7.4 million viewers and a 3.1 rating/ 8 share among Adults 18-49. Thongs, nipple-rings, and Lorenzo Lamas led to a minor ratings surge for "Are You Hot?," which averaged 10 million viewers. The bump from 9.6 million viewers in its first half-hour to 10.4 million from 9:30 to 10 may be attributable to viewers making a shift from the Amazon. While these numbers placed ABC in a distant third for the night, they're still a large improvement for the network over its standard Thursday night averages. The premiere of "Are You Hot?" was ABC's highest-rated Thursday debut in eight years and showed leaps of 4.6 million total viewers (and a 181 percent bounce in adults 18-49) over regular programs in that slot this season.
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