Television: Survivor 2 Back to Reality

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So much depends on a raw cow's brain. At least it does if you are Mark Burnett, executive producer of Survivor and Survivor: The Australian Outback, with a rich deal to produce Survivors 3 and 4 for CBS and a big, fat secret to guard--the outcome of a game that drew almost 52 million viewers for its finale last August. On that secret rest millions of dollars and the fortunes of a network. So pose him an innocent question--Is it true the S2 contestants ate raw cow's brains?--and you will get a stone-faced, "I can't say."

Within the paranoid world of Survivor fandom, it is almost plausible that any revelation about the cow's brain--that crucial fact!--could lead some talented detective to the solution and bring down the house of cards. ("Raw cow's brain? Yes...it all fits! The winner is Colby!") Last year rabid fans scoured video stills and images swiped from CBS computers to glean clues, some accurate, some not, about which Survivor would next get booted. But Burnett played the would-be spoilers like a baby grand, impishly editing footage and planting red-herring files at the official website to flummox them. At the S2 location, besieged by journalists spying from the air and infiltrators trying to break in on the ground, 25 guards, some on horseback, some wearing infrared glasses, patrolled the 25-mile perimeter around the camp ready to escort intruders away. Burnett insists the guards are always polite, but he adds, "I'm very serious about security."

In this game-within-the-game lies something essential about Survivor. Much ink has been spilled about the show's meaning since it conquered TV last summer. Yes, it's about the voyeuristic impulse. Yes, it's about greed, brains and stamina. Yes, it's about a television business in flux. But in a word, Survivor is about control.

Control of information: CBS placed everyone from the new contestants to the casting director off limits to interviews and required journalists visiting the set to sign legal agreements not to reveal certain news. (TIME turned down a visit under those conditions.) Control of the cast: the Survivors can be fined $5 million if they spill the beans, and CBS has ironfisted control over their show-biz futures of a kind known to few besides boy-band recruits and '30s movie stars. Control of the spoils: the series is a brilliantly conceived marketing device used to promote the CBS schedule, from Bryant's Early Show to Dave's Late Show, and it has advertising built right into the content. Control, if indirectly, of network programming: as a rash of new reality TV (a term Burnett disdains) arrives, S2 lands like an 800-lb. kangaroo to battle NBC's venerable "Must-See TV" lineup. And control of the audience. Until the debut, Burnett and company plan to tease you to death about S2 and make you like it.