"Survivor" Race Card Played Out?

Diversity paid off. For Dancing with the Stars, not Survivor.

The ABC dancing competition, featuring a mix of somewhat-famous, sorta-famous and used-to-be famous personalities, waltzed off this week with its biggest ever season premiere. Meanwhile, the CBS castaway competition, featuring a headline-making array of racially and ethnically divided tribes, limped off with its weakest opener in more than five years.

Survivor: Cook Islands, the 13th edition of the reality show, was by no means a bust--not with 18 million people, pundits and op-ed columnists tuning in Thursday night.

CBS was quick to note the premiere "delivered the largest audience and highest ratings in key demographics for a Survivor episode since last February."

CBS was not quick to note the 18 million is, by a narrow margin, the shallowest audience pool for any Survivor premiere since the very first episode of the very first season, back in summer 2000.

Survivor is coming off its two lowest-rated competitions ever, Guatamala and Panama--Exile Island--low-rated being a relative term for the reality standard-bearer. (Last season, Guatamala finished in the Top 10; Panama--Exile Island just missed the cut.)

Still, when the network confirmed it would play the race card on Cook Islands, dividing its 16 contestants into four teams of black, white, Asian and Hispanic players, the move was perceived as an attempt to reenergize the fatiguing franchise.

As far as generating attention, the gamble worked--the NAACP, after all, didn't issue a press release on the eve of the season premiere of Celebrity Duets.

Though criticized sight unseen (but not by the NAACP, which said it was withholding judgment), the once-seen product garnered okay reviews.

"Survivor delivered an exciting and entertaining hour," critic Aaron Barnhart wrote for the Kansas City Star. "And the first results from the racial groupings seemed to vindicate the show's producers."

On Blogcritics.org, TV editor Jackie decided, "Okay, this looks like a good cast! I don't care how they're split up. It's great to see real diversity on the show!"

USA Today's Robert Bianco, however, was alternately offended and bored. "The show actually invited us to judge these players on an ethnic basis," he wrote. "Yet the ridiculous and oddly comforting thing about the premiere is that for the most part, if you closed your eyes and ignored the random references to ethnicity, you would never have known there was anything special about this Survivor."

More than one reviewer noted that the only racial stereotyping going on in Thursday's episode came from within the segregated tribes, not between the segregated tribes, who as, Bianco pointed out, rarely interacted anyway.

"There was little indication that the season had become what some have branded Survivor: Race War," Andy Dehnart wrote for MSNBC.com.

Agreed David Bianculli in a three-star review in the New York Daily News: "Dividing tribes along ethnic lines was just another way to keep the game fresh, introduce a new variant and get attention--all of which worked. Racist? It sure didn't seem like it to me."

In more mundane Survivor matters, Sekou Bunch, a 46-year-old jazz musician from Los Angeles, became the first X'd-out Cook Islands castaway. For those keeping racial score at home, Bunch was a member of the African-American-populated Hiki tribe.

On Dancing with the Stars, the indignity of being the first sent home belonged to MSNBC's Tucker Carlson, a member of the white-dominated cable-news clique.

Carlson's dismissal was watched Wednesday by 16.3 million, ABC said. His "performance" on Tuesday was even more widely viewed, with the show's two-hour third-season premiere averaging a work-week best 20.2 million.

In addition to becoming Dancing's biggest debut, the opener was the franchise's third-most-watched episode ever, behind the finales for seasons one and two.

If Cook Islands doesn't end up cooking for Survivor, Jeff Probst and company might to consider stealing a step from Dancing.

There, diversity is all about casting two former child stars (Joey Lawrence, Mario Lopez), one former NFL star (Emmitt Smith), one former mayor of Cincinnati (Jerry Springer), one former bow-tie wearer (Carlson), one soon-to-be-former Blink 182 wife (Shanna Moakler), two middle-aged actors (Harry Hamlin, Vivica A. Fox) and three others whose recognizability depends on one's familiarity with the Disney Channel (Monique Coleman), country music (Sara Evans) and/or ex-Backstreet Boys girlfriends (Willa Ford).

Whatever works.