'Surviving' the Race Card

So the producers of CBS' "Survivor", finding that their franchise is running into the inevitable boredom of audiences over the show's concept, have decided to grab pre-season headlines by playing the race card in its upcoming fall run. As most know by now, the new twist in the Fall 2006 run of the show will be its use of race as determinants of team membership. Africans-Americans will compete on one team, opposed by teams of whites, Asians, Hispanics, etc.

The question, of course, is whether the strategy will play with viewers, or whether the younger demographic highly courted by advertisers will run.

General Motors is voting with its feet. A prominent advertiser since the opening of the show in July 2000, GM is immediately dropping out of "Survivor". And they're not alone: Coca Cola, Home Depot, United Parcel Service and Campbell's Soup also are dropping the show.

Collectively, the sponsors accounted for 18 percent of all the advertising revenues generated by the program in 2006.

This is not good news, even when the advertisers insist the decisions to drop the show have nothing to do with the racial format. But others are explicitly upset with the race card being part of the new "Survivor":

• New York City officials say the program will promote racial division and are calling for CBS to call it off. "The idea of having a battle of the races is preposterous," City Councilman John Liu said. "How could anybody be so desperate for ratings?"

• "I hate it," James Pritchett, professor of anthropology and director of the African Studies Center at Boston University, told The Boston Herald on Thursday. "This program is drumming up every old stereotype, and I don't think it is going to be useful at all. What next, a show pitting Jews and Muslims and Christians against each other?"

• Millennials may not find the new format amusing. USA Today's David Andrukonis notes that "Gen Nexters of different races live together and think nothing of it. Nearly all the young people [interviewed by USA Today] talk passionately about the work that lies ahead before society truly functions as though it were color blind."

The students in Mass Communication and Society will be talking this term about the ways that media represent race. Lots of questions follow: Will CBS' gambit challenge traditional notions of racial division? Does it help society accept diversity?