Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2001 | 8:25 a.m.
Susan Jones doesn't hold back when it comes to expressing her disdain for CBS's reality television show "Survivor: Africa."
"If you missed the first episode, you didn't get any of it," the mother from Colorado said. She further explained that the show's progressive story changes so quickly, it's difficult to understand by viewers who are just tuning in for the first time.
Twelve-year-old Jamelyn Griffith, who watches the show regularly, "loves" it, but admits that she'd like to see more action between the starving tribe members who are competing for fame and $1 million on the plains of Shaba National Reserves in Kenya.
"That one part where they were on the bleachers," Griffith said, referring to an episode where the two tribes competed in a verbal quiz, "that was boring."
To CBS executives, such opinions as these are nearly as good as gold. Voices from the American mainstream help the network unravel the ongoing mystery of what draws and repels viewers from its television shows.
Since opening Television City, its research facility at MGM Grand, in April opinions have come rolling in as quickly as viewers can navigate the touch-screen computers before them.
In one of the two on-site screening rooms, viewers watch a television show selected by network executives, then answer questions regarding everything from who their favorite characters were, how they rate the storyline, whether they like the humor and whether they find anything to be confusing about an episode.
The information is then picked up by CBS executives, who feed the results to creative teams working on a show.
In a room designed for focus groups, interactive video monitors allow executives in New York and Los Angeles to interact with viewers who are discussing a certain episode of a television show.
"It's ongoing feedback," said David Poltrack, executive vice president for research and planning at CBS. "We're getting information every day."
The facility also serves as a tourist attraction and is tucked in the hotel's shopping promenade, where a mix of promotional signs, a spinning CBS eye logo and stacks of television sets blast highlights from CBS shows and shows produced by other Viacom networks including MTV, VH1 and Nickelodeon.
Viacom's Paramount Parks manages the research center. Partners include Sony and ACNielsen Entertainment.
Viewer response
For tourists, the experience is new and exciting, Andrew Redmond, supervisor of operations for Television City, said.
"It's definitely free," he said.
"The down side is the time restraint. A lot of guests come to spend a couple hours at MGM. So we try to make it short and sweet."
An average of 150 viewers participate in the process daily. Of that, about 100 meet the age and gender requirements, and 250 surveys are needed to complete the process for each show.
Selected shows are either pilot episodes that have not been seen, promos for upcoming shows or shows that haven't done well in the ratings, such as the now-canceled "Wolf Lake."
It turned out that viewers didn't like the show's storyline, Redmond said. They didn't think it wasn't strong enough. "A majority thought it should be a miniseries or an hourlong movie, instead of a weekly TV show."
Depending on the outcome of surveys, television shows could be tailored to better suit the interests of television audiences, he said.
For example, following a showing of "Big Brother 2" -- the reality show that aired over the summer on CBS, in which contestants locked in a house voted each other out -- viewers were asked which contestants they'd like to see more of. They were also asked who they would prefer to see interacting with each other. If it turned out there was an overwhelming preference for a particular pair, then perhaps future episodes would include more scenes with those two contestants talking.
If 19 percent of males said they didn't like "Survivor: Africa," Redmond said, "What they'll do is find a way to get those 19 percent to think it's a fair or a good show."
But Poltrack said that the survey results aren't totally throwing a wrench in the creative process. The comments are not a final determining factor, but rather information to work from.
For shows that are doing poorly in the ratings, however, the results from viewers at Television City can offer major input in deciding whether a show gets cut from the programming schedule.
CBS originally conducted audience research for its television shows in in Los Angeles and New York. In the 1970s the network moved all of its research facilities to Los Angeles. But CBS was concerned it was not getting a large enough volume of tourists, since they had to go out of their way to attend the screenings.
Because of the diverse cross-section of tourists that Las Vegas offers, including families, business travelers and entertainment seekers, CBS began exploring Las Vegas crowds more than 12 years ago by setting up each spring a facility at different hotels including Harrah's, the theme park at MGM Grand and Luxor. Some research is still conducted at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles.
Poltrack said CBS selected MGM Grand for its permanent facility because it was the city's largest hotel and had the most diverse demographic of individuals passing through, as well as major concerts and championship fights that bring in foot traffic from tourists staying at other hotels.
'Survivor' woes
During a recent screening of a "Survivor: Africa" episode, viewers wearing baseball caps, sunglasses, Windbreakers and fanny packs watched attentively as the tribe members on screen gossiped in hushed tones, competed in a flaming bow-and-arrow competition and discussed whether to end their hunger by eating nearby caged chickens.
"I hate the program," said Irene Wagner, who is in her 80s and was visiting from Florida. "It just doesn't seem to me to be anything that would be real or happening."
Wagner's husband Irving, 83, said he would watch it if someone else was watching it, but he'd rather limit his television-viewing time to shows such as NBC's "Law and Order."
Which is fine, representatives at the facility say, and in some cases all the better for raking in results based on what a viewer doesn't like about a certain show.
To ensure that visitors will sit through a screening of a show that they don't like, workers at Television City conceal the name of the show until visitors are seated in the screening room.
Telling them beforehand would bias the results, Redmond said. "If they don't like 'Survivor,' they won't come in."
Jones, a mother from Colorado who participated in the screening with her husband and two daughters, said that she would likely have a better understanding of "Survivor: Africa" if it began each week with updates and explanations of the previous shows, as well as primer of the show's premise.
Carol Griffith, Jamelyn's mother, said she likes the show and would love to watch it, except that it airs opposite NBC's "Friends," which she never misses.
There are a lot of circumstances that can keep a show's ratings down, Poltrack said, such as competition from other networks and the time that the show is aired.
A show could also just be mediocre, he said. It's not a failure, but not a full-blown hit either. If a show is not testing as a hit, then CBS will explore the shows that have the potential to be improved and try to turn a marginal show into a hit.
Looking back at the 1980s detective drama "Simon and Simon," Poltrack said the initial execution of the show was faulty. People liked the two brother characters but thought that the show was not well-written. So CBS kept the characters, but changed the writers.
Poltrack said the original pilot test for "Wolf Lake," which premiered this season, was not a top pilot performance but showed promise, and that there was a significant change between the original pilot and what actually aired.
But when the ratings were low and people were tested, the results showed that if people didn't watch the pilot episode of "Wolf Lake" they were confused by the ongoing story.
Other shows, such as the 1990s' "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" did much better in the research than CBS executives expected. The show featured an independent-minded woman doctor treating patients in an old, rugged western town.
"At that time there hadn't been a successful western in years and the industry was not sure if a western would do well ... The show tested better than the collective wisdom of all the executives involved."
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