Reality Tv's Real Survivor

For years, Mike Darnell had his tombstone all planned. "I used to say I'd put: however he died, I hope he caught it on tape," Darnell says. "I don't think that anymore." Perhaps that's because this year he got a good look at what death might, professionally speaking,look like. Darnell is the Fox TV executive who gave the world Rick and Darva and the whole "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?" insanity. Ten months after that public humiliation and serious talk about his job, he still won't discuss the mess in detail. "Oy vay, do we have to recount the story? It was a hard time," Darnell says. One question then: if he could do it over, he'd certainly do it differently, right? Pick a groom without a restraining order in his past. Get a bride who's a better sport. Or how about just skip the cursed show altogether? Wrong. As Edith Piaf might have said if she watched trashy TV, Darnell regrets nothing. "Would I go back and erase that show from last year? Absolutely not," he says. "It was a show that in its concept worked. It was a good show."

Darnell is just being modest. The fact is, "Multi-Millionaire" might have been the most important TV show of 2000. We're not joking. Before the tribe ever spoke on "Survivor," it was "Multi-Millionaire" that established "reality" as the new must-see TV. It was the show that demonstrated how real people without a script can be infinitely more interesting than most sitcoms and dramas. If things go wrong--as they did so deliciously with "Multi-Millionaire"--so much the better. That only proves that on reality TV, anything can happen. One day two strangers get married; the next, people eat rats and get naked on a beach. And the proof, as they say in Hollywood, is in the ratings. For the first time since the 1991-92 season, the networks stopped losing their prime-time audience to cable last year. As Regis would undoubtedly point out, those viewers didn't all come for reality. But the 23 million people who tuned in to "Multi-Millionaire" and the 51 million who watched the "Survivor" finale certainly helped. More important, reality turned network TV into water-cooler talk again. "There was a certain blaseness at the networks, what with the 'multichannel universe' and the Internet and this and that," says Gail Berman, Fox Entertainment president. "These two shows proved that if you create something that taps into a vein, people will come back to network television."

Darnell, 38, has been preaching the power of reality for years. A former child actor ("Knots Landing," "Welcome Back, Kotter"), he stumbled into his edgy brand of TV while working as a young executive at Fox. "A producer walked in one day with what he said was a videotape of a 1947 alien autopsy," says Darnell. "I got Kodak to date the film, and they said it was either from '47 or '67. That was enough for me." Darnell parlayed "Alien Autopsy" into a series of wild programs: "When Animals Attack," "World's Scariest Police Chases," "Busted on the Job." For years, he--and Fox--were the only ones who'd touch reality. "The bottom line is that people don't care if it's a reality show or a comedy or a Western," Darnell says. "They just want to be entertained."

So why did reality finally go public in such a big way? "This felt to viewers like brand-new television," says Darnell. "We've twisted sitcoms 90,000 different ways. But reality shows have not been twisted yet." That's a big yet. This winter, the network lemmings will unleash the hoards of reality programs they bought in the wide wake of "Multi-Millionaire" and "Survivor." Every network has at least one reality series. Darnell--whose next show, "Temptation Island," debuts Jan. 10--says he expects reality to soon make up as much as 20 percent of network fare. For a guy whose work was dismissed as "gone, over" by his own bosses after the Darva debacle, that must be a wonderful vindication. "I hesitate to use that word because I never felt nonvindicated, but the year is ending on an up note in a lot of ways," Darnell says. One of the oddest ways comes from the Netherlands. While Fox has said it will never produce another "Multi-Millionaire," Dutch TV created a version this October. It turned out to be even more controversial than its American source. After the show aired, the media discovered that the Dutch millionaire was gay. If the marriage doesn't last, maybe we can fix him up with Richard Hatch.