Survivor Creator & Visionary Producer - Charlie Parsons | Survivor, The Big Breakfast, The Word

Beyond Reality returns with a brand new season, and we're kicking things off with one of the biggest names in television. Charlie Parsons is the creator of Survivor and the creative force behind groundbreaking formats including The Big Breakfast and The Word.

As the creator of Survivor and Executive Producer of the US edition, Charlie has fundamentally shaped the landscape of modern unscripted television. In this deep dive, we discuss how great TV shows are made, the struggle to sell a genre that didn't exist, and what it truly takes to sustain a global phenomenon for over two decades. 

In this episode, we discuss:

• The Genesis of Survivor: How the original concept was birthed, the hurdles in convincing networks it would work, and the creative friction that helped refine the format. 
• Format Protection vs. Evolution: How Charlie navigates the challenge of keeping Survivor true to its core "non-negotiables" while allowing it to evolve across different international territories. 
• The Global Phenomenon: Reflections on the 51-million-viewer finale of US Season 1 and the realisation that the show had tapped into something primal about human nature. 
• Industry Survival: With commissions down and budgets tightening, we tackle the hard questions about how the industry can adapt in a fragmented media market. 
• Legacy: Why reality TV has endured the critics for years and how being called "the Godfather of reality sit

Whether you're a television professional, an aspiring producer or simply a Survivor fan, this conversation offers a rare insight into the mind of one of the most influential creators in television history.

CREDITS:
Host and Producer: Hayley Ferguson

ABOUT THE HOST:

Beyond Reality is hosted by television producer Hayley Ferguson. Over the past decade, Hayley has worked across many of Australia's biggest unscripted series, including Australian Survivor, Dancing with the Stars, Gogglebox, Big Brother and I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here.

LISTEN MORE:
If you enjoyed this episode, you might like to listen to the following episode:
Head of Unscripted Television, ITV Studios Australia – Keely Sonntag

Creative Director, ITV Studios Australia - Alex Mavroidakis

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#Survivor #CharlieParsons #RealityTV #TVProducer #BeyondReality #SurvivorAU #SurvivorUS #FormatDevelopment #MediaIndustry

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Hi, I'm Hayley Ferguson, and this is Beyond Reality, the podcast where I chat with the people behind the TV shows you love. Today I'm joined by a man who's been described as the godfather of reality TV. Groundbreaking producer and format creator Charlie Parsons. He's known for creating hit shows like The Word, The Big Breakfast, and the global phenomenon that is Survivor. I sit down with Charlie to explore the origin story of Survivor, the decade-long struggle of pitching a genre that didn't exist, and the legacy of creating a show that changed television forever.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

I went to a party and bumped into this guy who said I'm a TV producer too. What are you working on? And I said, Well, I got this show, Survive. When I told him what it was, he said, I really, really want to produce that. I said, Well, you're not gonna produce it because I'm going to produce it. And that was a guy called Mark Lynette.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

This is beyond reality. Hi Charlie.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Hi there, how are you?

SPEAKER_01 1:09

I'm good. Obviously, I'm so excited to chat to you today. As someone who has worked on Australian Survivor for the last decade, I've essentially built my career on the format you created. And I mean Yeah, and I've also, you know, I've I have been a fan. I've been watching since the very beginning. So this is really, I mean, to be dramatic, this is a dream come true to speak to you.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Well, that's very sweet. That's amazing. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

I'm really looking forward to chatting to you about your career and obviously the origin story behind Survivor.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Well, shall I just start? Shall I just go into it?

SPEAKER_01 1:46

To set it up, you're obviously a very accomplished TV producer. You've created formats like the Big Breakfast, the word, which UK listeners will be familiar with. And obviously you've created Survivor. You're the executive producer for the US Survivor. How do you explain what you actually do?

SPEAKER_00 2:07

That's very different. I don't know if I can ask you specifically answer that one specifically, but uh I guess you know that I come up with ideas and I try and deliver them. That's what I like doing. I mean, that's what everybody wants to do in whatever field of life they're in. And I guess you know, Survivor gave me this unique opportunity to come up with an idea which I knew would go far, but didn't know it would go as far as it has done. I trained as a journalist, actually. That's what how I got into television really, really way, way back. And um, I guess the journalism is all part of the sort of curiosity about human life, and that's what Survivor is about.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Yeah, I love that. I study journalism. I actually never worked as a journalist, but I find it interesting when I talk to other TV people, and there's a few of us that have sort of had that interest in journalism that has led to becoming a TV producer.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

Well, I mean, I think it's I mean, I thought honestly, I was going to be a written journalist. Not that that's a thing that exists so much now. As a child, I had a little local newspaper in my village where I was, and that's what I always wanted to do. And then I just got this offer television paid a lot more, and I got offered the job, and I took it, and as a result, you know, kind of started to do things which involved pictures, filming, creating stories on television. I mean, it's the same craft, but um but on television, and and I I started in a sort of news entertainment programme, and uh from there that's where I kind of moved towards more towards other forms, other genres, you could say.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Yeah. Given that you started as a journalist, where were you working? What were you doing in those early days?

SPEAKER_00 3:42

Well, right at the beginning, I was working on a local newspaper in London where the kind of stories were, you know, you'd go to a village fate and you'd report on that. Or in fact, where I was, there was, you know, there were some kind of race riots in the in the 1980s and 90s when I was reporting. Um, and you'd go to the local council and you'd learn about the law. It was quite a formal training scheme, you know. So you you knew how the constitution worked, you knew how life worked, if you see what I mean. You'd come back and you'd it was a twice-a-week newspaper, and you'd phone in your copy, and that would be you'd phone it into somebody who'd transcribe it and that would appear in the paper. That would be very exciting. And if you were lucky, your byline would appear, and if you were very lucky, you'd be on the front page. That world has completely disappeared. I didn't know it was going to disappear. But from there, I went to do a sort of similar kind of job, but on television, where the job was to find stories and put them on TV. And the show that I worked on was a kind of show which was about the funny stories of the week's news. It was quite trivial, but it was a very good grounding in finding people, talking to people, seeing if people would talk well, and so on. And from there, I went to work on a show called Network Seven, which was uh I suppose you could call it a it was a very ambitious, SAFTA-winning show, which basically was a two-hour magazine show. And in that, I did my first inter iteration, if you like, of Survivor. In that, we did in the I became the sort of series producer, the showrunner. This is in 1987, and as the showrunner, it had a magazine show, and it had lots of uh items which were designed to get people talking. They were sort of about four or five minutes each in a two-hour show, and you some of the items we sort of did in such a way that you had 12 minutes of that item throughout the show. It's a magazine. So um, one of those items was an item where we might I've got my team to find four people who were very different. In this case, one was a ex-soap star from Brookside, a big TV show in the UK. One was a tennis player called Annabelle Croft, who now actually reports for the BBC on tennis, one was an ex-convict who'd just been released from prison, and one was a stockbroker. And we all sent them to a desert island with a film crew uh and a VHS camera, as it was in those days, and without any structure at all, followed them. And with this ran on in three episodes in each program over three weeks. So, in other words, there was probably about 25-30 minutes of maybe a bit longer of TV of following them through it. And honestly, it was a sort of very, very raw, fascinating experiment. No idea how it would end up. And it was really it was really a documentary, I suppose you could say, but a documentary done by people who didn't really know about doing documentaries and long before sort of the you know the rules of engagement were defined. And what came out of it was some great TV. It, you know, there was some conflict in that people didn't get on with each other entirely. There was some sort of love in that one of the people fell for another. Uh, there was some hardship in that you know they had to deal with frankly very, very raw, much rawer than modern Survivor contestants, uh lifestyle living, and they had to work out to do with it. And you know, we had this sort of strange thing which actually happens in Survivor now, which is that um the crew and the people who are being filmed had to were really living in different worlds because it's quite an intense experience to be on on something like that. So that was my my my beginnings, if you like. I went from journalism to TV to entertainment, running my own show, and then doing a magazine show where I had the opportunity to try out different things, including something which turned out to be the little baby baby baby version of Survivor.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

I mean, this was all before reality TV, as we know it, even existed, and doing this kind of experiment, a social experiment with these four celebrities. What was it about that social experiment, that the content that you created for that magazine show that made you realize that the idea had legs?

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Well, I think that what what I realized, which I which I think is, you know, throughout all the things which make a story, which is what journalism is about, which is what telling stories is about, is you know, that humans have interesting stories to tell. And frankly, very simple idea, which was you know, send four people, you know, which we structured as a team, you know, all the people who worked on the program with me, and I was the showrunner, and I had a great team, uh, you know, all enhanced by making it better. I knew I knew I knew it would be good TV before we did it, and it was great TV when we did it. It actually started it actually started out, by the way, in the studio, where the so it was an element of a game, I suppose. And we started out with our four contestants choosing what something they wanted to take with them. And we had, I remember we had an axe, we had it a chicken, which one of them chose, but obviously actually it wasn't that chicken which went to this island of Sri Lanka where it was filmed. Um so I think what I realized was that actually you could bring out a lot of what constitute you know the basics of humanity by creating a structured situation which you know made it good TV. And it was only when I had my own TV company doing other programs, and the job was to to develop TV shows and make them, get them made on air, that I thought, I wonder if I can turn this into something a bit more commercial, something which basically had a long-running, long-runningness to it, which is really how that idea, which was a documentary, as you say, sort of pre-dating reality TV, became reality TV because the the job I knew I had to do was to sort of structure it in such a way that it would last for longer, that it could be repeated with different people, and would be just as interesting and and real, I suppose.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

Yeah, wow. It was just such an innovative concept. And you know, you're talking like the 80s is when this idea first kind of came to you. I guess from running your own show, the magazine show, you then went on to later create your own production company, Planet 24, with Sir Bob Geldof and Lord Wahid Ali. What was that period like for you creatively? Because you were creating some big shows there. Like, you know, the Big Breakfast was something that revolutionized Breakfast TV in the UK.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

I mean, I was on a roll, I have to say, you know, in that in that structure, you know, of those three two brilliant partners who I had, you know, Wahid was the sort of business brain. I mean, we all did a bit of it, but he was the business brain who could, you know, study it and see what you know what might lead to something. Bob was the person who enabled us in Goddess Meetings, and I was the mad creative one. Um, and you know, the first show we did was actually The Word, which was this late night TV show on Channel Four, which revolutionized the late night slots in Channel Four because it brought an audience to TV which it hadn't done. But it was a very wild show, and I was sort of specializing in those days, as was the magazine show, in doing programs for the under under 35s. I was under 35 at the time, just um, and you know, I can't say there was anything except I felt I must have had an instinct and been quite confident, even arrogant. And so I kind of knew what would work, I can and I could teach that to a brilliant team. On the Word, for instance, there was and on this magazine show I mentioned, Network 7, it was called, there were so many items which later became Tater separately became TV series in their own right. In fact, and on The Big Breakfast, what we could say in those days was television was much more concentrated, so there were fewer channels, and that meant that you you wanted more things in each each thing. But there were so many things which came from those shows. Like, for instance, we had um on Network 7, while I was the showrunner, we had a thing called True or False, and it was a very simple idea, which was every week there'd be a sort of short documentary where they we'd tell an incredible story, some were true and some were false. Very simple idea, you know, great to deliver because there's so many wacky true stories, and there are so many fake stories which could be true but which aren't. And it was an example of a of what I realized, I suppose, which is that you know, it starts with a germ and it builds into it starts with a seed, I suppose, and it builds into a plant because you and that you know, there was another one which we did on Network 7, which is called Life Swap, where literally, you know, we'd swap people's, we'd swap some teenager from a working class family in the north with some very posh kid in Chelsea, you know, and and it was great TV. So when we're doing Planet 24, it was an extension of that because I wanted to make programs which made people talk about, which were great TV, which worked, and which were about people. And and it, as I say, it came from a curiosity, which is the most important feature of being a good journalist, I think.

SPEAKER_01 13:24

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I love how you talk about that life swap because I obviously there's wife swap and you know, so many shows like honestly, all of it.

SPEAKER_00 13:32

I mean, it's astonishing. If I could go back, start, start around there, I could make so much money. I mean, I didn't realize all this at the time because it just came from my head. But it was so it was so much the case that you know the things that you know, if you look back at those shows, they weirdly still stand up to today. And you can see on Instagram they have things like 90s legacy TV and they have clips, and you think, oh my god, that's great. Obviously, some of the things that some of the look is a bit weird and so on, but there's so many of those things which are were very small, which grew. I mean, I'm not claiming monopoly on all those things, but it came very instinctively to me. So Planet 24 was a breeze and such fun and all-absorbing, and you know, because I was living it and loving it and hating it because it's kind of exhausting too. Um, and you know, I I got off on the fact that, you know, when we're doing the word, it's every Friday, um, you know, and uh we were preparing the whole week. And when we when we got to the Big Breakfast, which was a morning show for two hours every morning, Monday to Friday, you know, I got I was there for that too. So it was kind of like a really big role, and you know, the qualities of both of those were they were very short, sharp pieces, which were very inventive by a great team of people who constantly, constantly came up with ideas. It was like a it was a factory of ideas with talented people and talented people on screen.

SPEAKER_01 15:01

Yeah, and I mean, what would have been the most memorable piece of TV you shot during that time, like whether the Big Breakfast or The Word?

SPEAKER_00 15:09

The thing is, my memory is terrible. There are lots of things which, you know, were fabulous. Like, I mean, you know, uh in a quality way, you know, we had some great performances on the word, which, you know, were the first performances of bands like Nirvana doing a lot of first time they ever did live TV. You know, Oasis, same, you know. So there was a lot of that. But there were also some pretty great stories which, you know, were sort of amazing and things that have happened. So on The Word, for instance, we did a story about uh Jeff Stryker, the gay porn star, you know, long gone probably. Um no, maybe not. Um, but you know, long gone as a porn star. But you know, it was quite, I mean, quite brave in the 90s. This was this was, you know, this was before gay marriage was legalized. We were doing stories like that, which kind of was exciting. Um, we did a story on um the LAPD and you know, uh doing a sting on some prostitutes in LA with Danny Bear, and she had to wait, wait to do this sting, and it was kind of awkward. You know, there were lots of things like that. So, you know, it was a daily excitement, I would say, we we had. Um, you know, on the Big Breakfast, you know, David Bowie came in once and did the sound because this Big Breakfast was like a zoo show where everybody involved, you know, was part of the show. I mean, I can't even quite remember the circumstances, but he basically operated the boom for the whole of the Big Breakfast until he got to the interview. You know, David Bowie did David Bowie did. It's extraordinary. Tom Hardy was there as a model, aged about I mean, he looked like a child, but he was about must have been about 18 or 19. It was a, you know, it was an amazing, it was an and I remember also, you know, the spice girls came. I was such an arrogant so-and-so, but you know, the spice girls came into the into the work into our offices to try and get themselves. I think they were trying to get themselves on the big breakfast. You know, they just they just kept walked in, you know, and just kind of with the idea of sort of pitching themselves. And I was probably I probably shut the door and said, Oh, you know, let the music book a deal with that. I mean, there was a whole load of stuff like that. I mean, I wish I could remember it all, but I do, you know, it they were heady days basically.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

I mean, at what point of the Spice Girls' career was this? Was this at the very beginning?

SPEAKER_00 17:25

Before they'd become famous, before that anybody knew who they were. I mean, you know, long before that. Between the first and the second series of the word, we did an audition for the next word presenter. And uh we had it, we and the job they had to do was to interview this band that nobody had ever heard of, uh, which was who'd done a sort of uh one video which hadn't really gone anywhere where they were a teenage band. Take that, they were uh basically they came in and spent a whole day just pretending to be real stars, which of course they became, being interviewed by would-be presenters. That was the way around it, was it 1991 or whatever it was. Wow, long time ago.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

That's amazing, you know.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

Michael Hutchins and Paula Yates, you know, that was on uh you know, Paula Yates interviewed Michael Hutchins on the Big Breakfast, sadly, in a way you could say. I mean, it was so endemic to 90s culture that you know the experiences that one had from I had and all the people working on it were amazing.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

Wow. I mean, it's such a crazy time. There were so many celebrities passing through your doors, but you know, it was a daily occurrence for you.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

Yeah, well, I think it's because I'm not interested in celebrity per se. I'm actually interested in people per se. So it's sort of it's oh if I'm honest, it sort of washed off me. You know, it was just a fun job producing great TV and wanting to get the best out of anybody who was on the program or who was behind the program. And you know, of course, I learned so much. I learned so much from my colleagues, I learned so much about teams, I learned so much about the business, I learned so much about dealing with people. I mean, it was you know, it was a fabulous time for me. You know, I and yet, as I say, sometimes I hated it too because it was so all-absorbing, it was quite difficult to get life, you know, in perspective.

SPEAKER_01 19:17

Yeah, television is so hectic, and you were doing a you know, late night show and a morning show. Absolutely, yeah. Live television. I have to know though, did the Spice Girls actually ever make it on?

SPEAKER_00 19:30

Oh, yes, a lot later though. I don't think they made it as a result of them turning up in the in the office. I don't think. You know, the dates all merge into one for me for me. Years later, I I met um uh Mel B and she said, Oh my goodness, we so wanted to get on that program. I I've done, I think it was the Big Breakfast, as I said. We so wanted to get it, you know. I was slightly obsessed by it. You know, it was it's a funny old thing, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 19:56

I mean, we could talk so much about the big breakfast, but I do want to talk about Survivor. So obviously, you uh had this production company, um, you were making all these live television shows. In the back of your mind, you had this idea for Survivor. Can you talk me through how the concept was developed?

SPEAKER_00 20:16

So I had this idea that I had the I knew it was there was something in it, I didn't know precisely what, and it needed some time and to work it on. And I knew that the requirements of it, as I say, were to be long-lasting in so many ways. And you know, so you could re repeat it, it would be a long series and it would be structured in some way. So I I need I knew all those things were so it was in and in a production company like Planet 24, which at its height employed about 150 people. We had a development department, which was two or three people who whose job was to come up with ideas and we'd pitch them to various networks and so on. And obviously, it was on the slate there. And so um, quite early on in the Planet 24 life, that was in the slate, and you we sort of worked on it, we tried things out, you know, we'd had lots of discussions about it, we put it on paper. This won't work, that won't work. What's gonna hold people? And even in that early stage, there was some interest in it. I mean, you know, we pitched it out. I remember we pitched it to ITV, or oh, I actually it was to Grenada, which was a company in a smaller TV company, which was one of ITV's companies, and they were very interested, but they couldn't persuade ITV, the big company, to take it on as a 13-part series, which is what by that time I wanted it to be. They wanted to do a two-hour special. I felt quite strongly that as a two-hour special, it just wouldn't, you know, it would disappear basically, because you know, the the key to it was getting to know those people and those people becoming heroes, you know, and and understanding them by the you know, especially the ones at the end, understanding, understanding motivations and so on. But we it was already a game. We'd already in introduced at that stage some of the structure, so we knew that it was survival, we knew they had. To do things on the island, we didn't know about the way that they would be eliminated, and we didn't know that there would be tribes in that way. Anyway, what happened was after the big breakfast was a huge success, Buena Vista, which is a company in America, distribution company in America, said we really want to do this show, The Big Breakfast in America, because it was you know it was a rip-roaring success. And so, you know, after a lot of negotiations, they wanted to eventually give us a whole development deal because I wanted a development deal rather than just the big breakfast. And as part of that development deal, um we would come to Survivor later. But Big Breakfast, I went over there and it all looked great, and we even got a pilot out of it. But they'd sort of the classic development style, especially with American companies, they'd sort of changed their minds a bit about the big breakfast in that they didn't want it at breakfast time, which is kind of quite difficult because it had been designed, they wanted to call it the big day, because they realized, even though, in a way, when I look back, it was a bit ridiculous, they realized that in different markets was different times, which is fine.

SPEAKER_01 23:22

The time zone difference, you mean?

SPEAKER_00 23:24

The time zone difference, which is fine. They sort of realize this rather late in the day, it has to be said. Um but they also wanted to at some for some people to put it out at six o'clock in the evening. And you're sort of thinking, well, that's that's really not, you know, it's when I'd originally when we'd originally developed the Big Breakfast, we'd really worked it out in as a morning show. It was not ever an evening show. Anyway, it's fine. We did a pilot. It was it wasn't bad actually. We even, you know, we found a house in it somewhere in a which is Big Breakfast Takes Place in a house. We found a house somewhere in in some suburb in LA. And it was it was actually quite a good show, but they passed on that. And the executive in charge, Michael Davis, said, Have you got anything else in your slate? And I said, Well, I've got this show, Survive, as it was called then, without S-U-R-V-I-V-E um exclamation mark. And he said, Oh, tell me about it. And he really liked it. So I got a team there. We spent six weeks developing it, eight weeks maybe, and most of the elements came out of that. We just concentrated on it. We also filmed things and we did office, we sort of worked it out in the office because what you often do in a show like this is you you sort of almost do an office pilot. I know it's not the same, but for the structure, it's very useful. And the things that really came out of that was I knew it needed a lift halfway through the series, which became the sort of a meet. I knew it needed the mechanism, which became the tribal council. I realized you didn't want to eliminate people without them having a say. You needed the vote at the end to make it to justify the journey, if you see what I mean. And you know, there were sort of certain things we realized which were pretty important, like it should be as representative as possible of the majority of people, and the people should be heroes, not villains. We realized we needed those people to be people that people could root for and love. Obviously, there are going to be bad people and bad things in them, but we wanted it to be a positive experience, and we wanted a prize. I think it was at that stage we said a million million dollars. We that's what we actually said. Let's make it a million dollars. We did when I think about it because I'm just visualizing the development document we did. So so the majority of the elements which make it up now are still there. I mean, and I was very confident about this. I thought this is an amazing show. I mean, and in our development document, which we uh uh were going to take out when a Vista and us were going to take out and sell, um, as if mocked up from 1994 or five, I'd say, there's a mocked-up front cover of a people magazine or Time magazine, which looks exactly like the mocked-up covers you see for the 50th uh you know American series of the castaways on Survivor. We mocked it up because we thought this is going to be the most talked-about show in America. We just knew I just knew it. You know, I was so confident about it. And this document was a very large document. It's probably about, well, there are three documents. One of the documents was the idea with the structure, uh, with the mocked-up pictures, uh, with the big prize, you know, the front page had a million dollars on it. Another of the document was kind of the production notes, which were, well, how are we going to do it? Because they'll have to give up their job if they're going to do it. How many weeks are there? What's the insurance things? What are the dangers of it? And the other thing I think was the cost. I can't quite remember. There were three, I remember. Anyway, so we had this. I mean, and honestly, I don't think most uh most developments are as detailed as that. I mean, but we I'd really I and my team had really worked on it. And Michael Davis, the executive, was pretty enthusiastic about it. Unfortunately, during this time, Disney took over ABC. Disney and Buena Vista are connected, so that we had to pitch it to ABC to begin with. Anyway, we pitched it to ABC and um they really liked it, but they couldn't quite see what genre it fitted in. It was it was a problem for them because it wasn't an it wasn't a traditional entertainment show which has a shiny floor and you know variety written all over it. It wasn't a um factual documentary program because it was so sort of structured. It wasn't a drama, even though every episode was dramatic. And and you know, and it wasn't a comedy, which was weirdly where we sort of seemed to end up, but it wasn't a comedy, nor was it meant to be. So they spent quite a lot of time puzzled. They liked it, but they passed because you know they have to, you know, it's a problem for broadcasters that it's hard to take on something new when it in your in an organization when you're in a silo. Well, it feels like such a risk because it it didn't exist, it didn't exist, and of course, absolutely, and they were relying on a track record of a Brit who they'd never worked with, who was known to be quite wild, and it was a lot of money, you know. Even the prize was a lot of money, and certainly giving a million dollars, which was the most that'd ever been given for a show at that time, you know, was made them nervous, you know. And that these were all our calling cards too. So they passed. Interestingly, the guy in charge he said, A rejecting survivor was the biggest mistake we've ever made, and B, a survivor, as it was called, and B um went on to make lost that a drama series about people stranded in a on a from a plane crash. So, you know, success has many children, as they say. Anyway, that allowed us to pitch to other people, but we couldn't get it away. So I said, All right, well, we can't get it away. I want the rights back, because obviously they'd uh assumed some of the rights, and I got the rights back, which enabled me then to take it elsewhere. Um, so that's that was the development process. But I but at that stage, I I wish I had the documents with you to show you, but they were very detailed, you know, they were so detailed you wouldn't believe it. And so much of the show now is what was in that document. It does you know, it just wouldn't exist without that whole period of development and gestation and so on.

SPEAKER_01 29:26

And so you'd gone through all this development process, and then in 1997, Sweden said yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell me about that, Expedition Robinson.

SPEAKER_00 29:38

Okay, so by the way, just before that, little side thing, while I was doing the development process, I went to a party in Tapanga Canyon in Los Angeles and bumped into this guy who said, Oh, I hi, what are you? You know, what I'm a TV producer too, what are you working on? And I said, Well, I'm working on this program and I think it's really great because I was, as I say, quite arrogant in those days. And he said, When I told him what it was, he said, I really, really want to produce that. And that was a guy called Mark Burnett. More on him later. But I said, Well, you're not going to produce it because I'm going to produce it, but you know, lovely to have met you, sort of thing. We had, you know, we got on really well at this party. I didn't know it was significant until a lot later. Anyway, so then I went back to the UK. I got the rights back. I knew it was even better than it had been before, but I had 100% of the rights now. Um, as I should do, by the way. It was quite right that they gave it back uh because the time had expired. And um so I tried to sell it in the UK. Again, I had a very similar reaction as before, you know, which is we can't quite see it, it's great. You know, the person I went to at BBC Two said, I think it's more Channel 4. Channel 4 when he went there, he said, Don't think it's for us. You know, then they came up with another show called Shipwrecked.

SPEAKER_01 30:55

I remember watching Shipwrecked and Survivor at the same time because they both went to air in Australia at the same time. And I I watched both of them, but I remember going, like, I like Shipwrecked, but I preferred Survivor because I wanted the game.

SPEAKER_00 31:11

Well, he said yes. I mean, basically, obviously, it's a direct ripoff, basically. They knew there was something there. Um, and uh, but they didn't want me. I think, you know, also I you know, to put it in perspective, I was very successful in Britain, and people don't really love that, you know, they don't want to give more success to success. Also, I was arrogant, and you know, I wasn't very good at the clubbing, you know, wasn't I was not good at clubbing with people, you know, in the sense of I couldn't, you know, I I wasn't the person who spent hours chatting away. I just basically wanted to get, and I think they regarded me as a bit mad and a bit brusque. Um anyway, I so I couldn't get it away. I mean, I I I merely did. I mean, the ITV guy, the guy in charge of ITV now, said, Well, I'll do seven episodes. And I mean, is this all so amazing? I'm telling you this because I haven't actually thought about it for ages. But first time he said a special, this time he's saying I'll do seven episodes. And I'm saying, Well, I don't want seven, I want 13. The structure says 13, and I can't really do it with seven. And I mean, you know, this is sort of frustrating for them, frustrating for me too, because it's sort of nearly there, but no, he he wasn't going to do it with 13. He couldn't, he couldn't quite, you know, so there were there were people who were prepared to do it, but they still couldn't quite see it. Anyway, as a result, we went to the TV market in Cannon, which is called Mipcom, every year, and had a brilliant salesman. And basically what happened was at that TV market, um, we this was one of our one of our wares, if you like. You know, that's what happens at the TV market. People have normally have programs which have been made already, and they're normally selling the rights to them. It was very early days in the TV format world, things hadn't really taken off. There were a few formats sold here and there, but you know, it was pre-the-globalisation of formats in the way that it is now. Anyway, this great sales guy managed to sell it to two people. One was a production company called Strix in Sweden, and the other was called Endemol in Holland. And there was a brilliant producer at Strix called Anna Brackenheim, and she basically persuaded the Swedish broadcaster, the equivalent of ABC in in Sweden called SVT, to put it on. And um so so we were on it as Expedition. She wanted to change the title to Expedition Robinson, uh, because it was more Swedish, which obviously I was very happy to do. And so with them, we pooled our knowledge, if you like, them learning on the job, me not speaking Swedish, my production team not speaking Swedish, but you know, we made extensive notes, we went to see the filming, uh, we learned some things from the filming, which obviously we could take away, and it went on to Swedish TV and was instantly very successful. Um, and as a result of being on Swedish TV, it went on to various other Scandinavian countries. I mean, Endemol didn't do anything with it, they just held it and during that time came up with Big Brother, but that's a whole other story. And uh, but um they both licensed it, which I suppose was good.

SPEAKER_01 34:24

Yeah, I mean, you said that you obviously took some learnings from Expedition Robinson. What was the biggest takeaway for you?

SPEAKER_00 34:31

Well, what was interesting was the format held up and didn't really change. I mean, but there were practical things, like for instance, it sounds so silly, but uh you have to keep the production crew really away from the cast because the cast will manipulate them all the time. That you couldn't leave a sandwich out, you know, the half a sandwich for a little bit, um, because it would go. You couldn't actually starve everybody because um, you know, that would starve. So you had to have them some basic rations. Another one was when you you had to choose the places you filmed very carefully. It wasn't just a question of going to a desert island because some places have sand flies, if they're bit by sand flies, all they talk about is the sandflies, and there's no interesting TV. The water has to be clear so you can see in it. Uh, those kind of things, basically, was what we're doing. But in terms of the structure, almost nothing changed. I mean, if you look at the evolution of that first Expedition Robinson to now, it's got more dramatic and it's got more showbiz, I think you could say, kind of bigger, but nothing has changed in the structure, which is pretty incredible.

SPEAKER_01 35:43

Wow. I mean, it's such a credit that the concept it worked pretty much exactly as you intended. You obviously had all this success with Expedition Robinson, and then the US decided to get involved and make Survivor. You'd already met Mark Bennett years earlier. Can you tell me about how that came about? And I guess how did Survivor come to the US?

SPEAKER_00 36:06

Well, so what happened was I was really enjoying working on TV shows, and then I was slightly against my will. What the Buena Vista people called me again and said, We really need you to do this show for a year with us, set up this show, you know, we think you'd be great, blah, blah, blah. It's an urban show. Um, and I hadn't really chosen the structure or the theme or the show or the person hosting it. But I thought, well, actually, it'd be good for me to spend a year in America, see how it is. You know, I've got to a stage here where I'm doing lots of great things, and really, you know, there were other lot lots of other new shows here by then, by the way. But I thought, well, I, you know, I could it would be good to do a change. And I should say Mark Burnett had been ringing me every six months, as he promised he would, saying, I want to do, I want to do Survivor. Are you ready for me to do it? And I'd say, No, no, sorry, Mark. So he'd been ringing me every six months. But I thought if I went to America, it would probably be good because I'd go to America and then I'd be in a better position because I'd have met people properly to go and sell Survivor. Anyway, so I went to work on this show in America. It was called the Keenan Ivory Away and show, and I had a horrible time. I got a great team. I got some of the team from the UK, and we really, really tried to make this show work, but the politics were horrible, and uh it was just horrible. It was I had a horrible year, basically. I mean, I actually stuck it for about three or four months. But the politics were so horrible, I thought I don't really want to do, I don't really want to work in America, I don't want to do this in America. I've had such a nice time in the UK. Life is too short to be wading through treacle. I mean, I'm a planner, you know, I like everything to be planned because that's where that's how you can create chaos, is you have a very clear structure, and then the chaos is funny. Whereas if you have chaos and it's not planned, and the way this person worked who I was working with, it's no secret, Keenan Ivory Wands was completely the opposite to me. And so, you know, we'd it was a horrible series, a horrible number of weeks we worked together. I'm sure he found me as horrible as I found him. Anyway, so I uh basically decided I didn't want to do that. And when the six-monthly call came in from Mark Banet, I said, well, maybe we should talk now. Yeah, I should also add that just after this, we had an offer to buy Planet 24 and thought, well, we why don't we take some money and and sell it, basically? And it was a very early days for TV companies to be sold. So, but we thought, well, actually, that's quite a good offer. We didn't include Survivor all in the sale um at all. I mean, we did a bit, they got a royalty, but they didn't get the Survivor because they didn't they couldn't value it either, they didn't know what to do with it and they couldn't see it working. I knew I knew it would be working anyway. So I thought, well, this is a good opportunity, you know. Mark uh when Mark Burnett calls, which he did, I said, okay, let's talk about it. And so that's how it came about that Mark Burnett ended up doing it. I licensed it to Mark Burnett because he wasn't very experienced, but I love people who are enthusiastic and smart enough that the you know that they're gonna basically learn and learn he did and learn more than me, you know. But he was he he he may not have come up with it, but he delivered a great job because he was so passionate about it, and it was gonna make him basically. So Mark Burnett became the licensee over a long extended negotiation, which turned out to be a very good decision on my part and very good for the show, because Mark was at an earlier stage, it wasn't quite as jaded as I was getting. And also, Mark is very clubbable. You know, he he'll play golf with Les Moonvers of C CBS, you know, and he'll, you know, and he's he's he's a big, bold person who will make the ideas even bigger and bolder. You know, I know he went to the US Army and got them to sponsor some, for instance, and so on. He none of that I could have done. So it would turn out to be a very, very lucky, lucky relationship.

SPEAKER_01 40:02

Yeah, I mean, how much involvement did you have in the first US series?

SPEAKER_00 40:07

None, really. I mean, I went to it, I went to it, but nothing. And to be honest, that was also painful. I mean, you know, the weirdest thing was me for me was in the UK, it's such a strange thing. Watching the BBC News uh around about whatever year it came out, and there was a report, quite you know, a five-minute news report about this amazing show in America called Survivor, because we'd had to change the name to Survivor, which had got Survivor parties and everybody was fired up about it. I mean, it was, you know, it was a proper little news item, and it didn't make any reference to the fact that it had a British origin because they didn't know. So, you know, so it was a pain, it was painful in a way, and I didn't have anything to do with it. I mean, I got calls regularly, you know. What about this? What do you think about that? Can you, you know, do you think that's a good idea? And I went there, I went to see it being filmed in Malaysia, but you know, I didn't have anything to do with it, which I probably couldn't have done anyway, because um, you know, he knew the crews, he hired the crews, he did the did the people. But I always wanted to make it. That's the weirdest thing. I thought I was gonna make it, and I never did.

SPEAKER_01 41:11

Yeah, wow. I mean, do you think the reason that happened was because of the state of mind from working on that show? Do you think things would have been different if you had a positive experience working on that television show?

SPEAKER_00 41:25

Uh, yes, I think they would have been. Or if they they picked it up in the UK, you know. I also didn't need to, you know, I'd had a handsome reward for all the time I'd been there working in television, and I didn't need to. And I'd love to have set out the first couple of series, I suppose. But you know, maybe I'm not really a desert island type of person, you know. Now, on the many occasions that I've been out to film, I've been very happy to get back home, you know. So maybe I'm, you know, maybe I'm just not that kind of person, but I did really, really want to do it because I am totally fascinated by the way humanity works. But as I say, at the same time, it was probably better because Mark was involved in it, you know, it for better for the American audience. He probably understood he'd live there, he may be British, but he'd actually lived there for you know 20 years at that time, maybe more. And you know, he knew he understood how the culture worked. He understood, which, you know, you you because we speak the Spaniard language, you think is exactly the same, but absolutely isn't.

SPEAKER_01 42:25

Yeah, you've talked about Mark Burnett and how he was great at the networking, he had big ambitions for the show, which was great. Were there any disagreements along the way?

SPEAKER_00 42:37

No, I I don't because I didn't really, I didn't even watch the rushes or anything like that. At that stage, I just let him get on with it. And I mean, I I'm trying to think back to my frame of mind then. Perhaps I wasn't too concerned about it. I don't know. I mean, I I needed to know about it uh because while he was doing that, I was launching the worldwide sales basically, because he only got the rights to America and Canada. As I say, at that time, the format business was very much in its early stages. So the contract that I did with him, you know, shows naivety on both parts. And, you know, we should have been more precise about some things. But the one thing which was in that contract, which I'm glad I did put in, you know, I must have been pretty smart at the time, was to make sure that all of the ideas that happened in wherever they went came back to the center. So they came back to the the core unit, which was I'd set up a company by this time called Castaway, because that was, you know, it's important that the ideas that happened, because you know, you in in putting on a show year after year, I thought it'd be at least five years. I didn't know it'd be as long. Um you know, you're you're learning a lot all the time and things change and so on. So so it was very important that the it was a license rather than um rather than a full production deal, if you see what I mean. So, you know, he had a license and that had to feed back. So in terms of disagreements, not really, I mean, not least because the first series was great. I mean, you you know, you couldn't fault in the first series, really. I we did have conversations when I think about it. You know, I remember him talking to me about. How he saw it in cinema scope rather than which I had, you know, whereas the Robins Expedition Robinson had been more on a much reduced budget, I might add, had been less cinema scope and more TV. And I I love that, you know, he was making it bigger, which I wouldn't have done. Also, there was a lot more money than it would have been if I'd have done it. I mean, I remember when I went to see the production being filmed on one of the visits, I remember thinking, oh my god. And they were doing one of the games, they were having to stand on planks out in the water. And I remember thinking, oh my god, how many cameras are there here? And being America, there were sort of 20 cameras. And I was thinking, if we did it in the you know, the UK version, I'd be trying to get it down to three or four. And of course, that makes such a difference, you know. And over time, obviously, you know, when these things started to happen, drones and so on, would it you make it even better?

SPEAKER_01 45:05

Was there a moment for you? Obviously, you know, 51 million people tuned in to the finale of Survivor season one in the US alone. What was the moment for you where you realized that you know this show was a global phenomenon?

SPEAKER_00 45:21

Well, I guess uh watching that item on BBC News and seeing that Survivor, which I the thing is, I knew it was going to be. That's the extraordinary thing, is I knew it. This thing of it being the mock-up of the Time magazine or whatever it was, I knew it was going to be this thing. The pain, as I say, was realizing that I wasn't actually always going to get the credit, but the reward was thinking, oh, this has become a global phenomenon. I mean, I obviously hadn't sold it. I'd sold it to a few more places by then, I guess. Not as many as, you know, I I think we might actually even had the early iteration of Australia by then, the first iteration, if you remember. I think we may have sold it to Argentina because it was. I remember we had to, they couldn't afford it after their currency crisis. You know, there were lots of odd little places we'd sold it to, but watching it in America and realizing people or having parties to watch it, I realised this is this is extraordinary. And thinking, how odd it is that it's not on in the UK at all. And I haven't been able to sell it in the UK.

SPEAKER_01 46:23

There have been a couple of seasons of Survivor UK over the years, but it hasn't really taken off. It hasn't had that same success that it has around the world. Why do you think that is?

SPEAKER_00 46:34

So obviously, this huge first season in America, and so what happened was a British producer watching it in America said, There's this is incredible. Came back and tried to sell it to ITV, not realizing that it was my show, saying, There's this amazing show in America, I think I can get the rights to it. Um, will you take it? And they didn't even my pitching must have been so terrible because they didn't really make it was a different person, I think, but they didn't make the connection between the pitches that I'd been in on a regular basis about that and the fact it was my show. Anyway, as I said, I'd sold the company um Planet 24 by that time, and so someone else was in charge. And the British rights complicatedly were licensed to Planet 24 as part of that deal. So I I wasn't going to make it in the UK because the British rights were part of that deal. So Planet 24, the new Planet 24, made it. And I think the reason it didn't work, the show was quite good. The truth was that the moment had sort of passed of it being first off the blocks because Big Brother had happened by then. That was number one thing. And number two thing, it was scheduled very poorly. So what happened was with that first American thing, they thought it was going to be such a success. It got amazing reviews in all the tabloids and everything. It got amazing reviews, but they thought it was going to be such a success, they confused the viewers by thinking it could go up against uh something like uh, you know, one of the big soaps like EastEnders, with a program which wasn't Survivor, but they called it Survivor, which was like the discussion the day after. They called it Survivor, but it was actually not Survivor, it was the discussion the day after. And they didn't, and then they had a different time on a Monday and a Thursday when they ran it. So one was at nine o'clock and one was at eight o'clock. So it was very confusing for the viewers. So if they'd have loved it on the Monday, somebody had and said you must watch this show Survivor, they'd have turned in on the Tuesday to a talk show about it. I mean, it was it was so ill-thought, it was, you know, it ran for two seasons, and the shows themselves were quite good and quite well made, but it was a shame that it did that. And unfortunately, the same thing happened more recently, I think, when you know, so it was a great show for the people who saw it, but it happened in just as so Traitor happened, you know, and Traitus UK was amazing. So, you know, it just it's unlucky. I mean, it's a very weird thing, but it's been a success in so many places. I mean, some astonishing places, and yet, you know, in the UK it hasn't.

SPEAKER_01 49:03

Yeah, it's such a shame.

SPEAKER_00 49:04

Well, I you know, I still think it could work because I think it's a great show. You know, maybe they should run the US Survivor for a bit and then see how it works. Because it's you know, it's it's sort of amazing.

SPEAKER_01 49:16

Do they not even play it anywhere in the UK?

SPEAKER_00 49:20

No, no, they don't. They actually you can see Australian Survivor and New Zealand Survivor on Amazon, but it's yeah I I know because you know, I know my long history of the company, as I say, it was very early days when we were doing those original deals. So some of the rights are quite complicated to extract. There would have been a difference if I had made it, and the simple difference is I would have been able to do some of the things I would have loved to have done, like a worldwide survivor, you know, which but you know, it's the rights make it extremely difficult to do that.

SPEAKER_01 49:53

Yeah, that's that's interesting. I mean, Australian Survivor did Australia versus the world. We got some players from different formats around the world.

SPEAKER_00 50:01

Well, that's true, yeah, that's true. That that is true. So it's a sort of same thing, but it's you know, that will but that won't show in America, you know, if it I don't think, you know, which is a shame, you know. Um and maybe these are little things basically, but I mean, you know, the thing is it's you know, for me, it's uh my maybe my baby, but it's 30, it's grown up now, you know, it's 30 years old. I can't be in control of it from the scene to now. It's a long, long time, you know, 35 even. Oh my god. Um I am.

SPEAKER_01 50:31

We're at Survivor 50. What has surprised you most about how the format has evolved over the years?

SPEAKER_00 50:38

I actually think what surprised me most is how little it's evolved. The basic elements are all there. I mean, you I'm sure you know, but in America they've gone for this thing called New Era Survivor, which is a shorter and sharper version of Survivor, which works. And what surprises me is how, given that the world has changed so very, very dramatically, particularly when it comes to tech, in other words, you know, mobile phones, uh, phone voting, television, streaming, all those things, how the basic rudiments of Survivor haven't changed. And I think I put that down to the fact because it's about humans and human beings, and you know, they don't change, you know, and their relations don't. What I love about Survivor US, and actually the ones I've seen in Australia, it's a positive programme. I feels a really, you know, it feels a really positive experience for the people who do it. You you can really sense that people really want to do it. It's a bit like doing a you know, a fitness marathon or you know, tough mudder or something that, or marathon. You know, it's a it's something that people really emotionally engage with as well as physically and um strategically.

SPEAKER_01 51:50

Yeah, the way people keep coming back to play the game, like it's not easy out there. And um, there's people that have played, you know, like five, six times, they just keep putting themselves through it because I think it becomes like an addiction for them. Like they the adrenaline that you get, you can't find it anywhere else.

SPEAKER_00 52:08

Yeah, I think that's exactly it. And I that's fantastic. I mean, what a fantastic thing that I mean I like the way that it's also it's clearly, you know, inspired people, you know. That Mike White, you know, who wrote White Lotus, who's been on Survivor 50, is clearly, you know, interested and inspired to some extent by it. You know, um I'm doing the hunger games on stage, I'm now producing plays, and there's an element to which that has you know that was inspired by Survivor. I love all that, it's it's great.

SPEAKER_01 52:39

Yeah, it's amazing. Survivor really was the beginning of it all. So it has spawned so many creative decisions. And I guess when you watch different programs or watch different reality formats, that obviously there is an element that has been born out of that original Survivor idea. I guess do you is it do you feel flattered? Are you uh do you get annoyed that you know you're you know, part of your idea has been taken in a way?

SPEAKER_00 53:06

Well, at the beginning, when I saw those things, because they nobody had done it, I thought this is they've copied me, it's outrageous. But I certainly now think completely differently. I think that ideas, you know, inspire other ideas. But I you know, I did think because I I recognize that I'd sort of invented something. I've uh you know, I thought I own it, but in fact, what I now realize is you know, I I inspired rather than I invented it totally. It doesn't all belong to me. Um so I you know, so I so I enjoy it really.

SPEAKER_01 53:38

What are you most humbled by when you see that Survivor has inspired?

SPEAKER_00 53:42

Well, you know, something like White Lotus, which is you know cerebral as well as anything else. I love that. Actually, Hunger Games is a good example, you know, what an incredible, incredible thing, you know. I think when you work, you you know, you may maybe you felt this, maybe you didn't, but when you work in TV, for some reason you you always have this slight imposter syndrome, which makes you think that TV is less cultural than other arts. And of course, it's you know, it's not just that's not true, and also it's probably I think that's because it it's you know it can be very, very financially rewarding for some people, and so I think it's not true, you know, television is as much an art as anything else. But I'd look up look up to those other arts and think, oh wow, they're amazing. Maybe that's what it is.

SPEAKER_01 54:33

That's so interesting. I mean, for me, I always wanted to work in reality TV. It was a job that obviously didn't exist before you created Survivor, but from the beginning of reality TV, like I was in and I loved reality TV, and that's always where I wanted to be. But there's some people that you know the aspiration is like film and they're working in reality TV because there's lots of work. But for me, I don't think there's anything better. I love working with real people and real stories and seeing people react in um, I guess, you know, being put in crazy situations and seeing how they will react and how they adapt in those situations. And there's nothing better than Survivor because that is the most crazy sort of experience that anyone can go through. And it has, like you said, like such an incredible impact on people's lives. It actually changes people when they walk away from the game.

SPEAKER_00 55:26

Absolutely. That's what's amazing is you know, the stories you hear about people who've who've come out of it and you know, it's really really transformatory. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 55:34

What do you think is the single most important decision you made when you created Survivor?

SPEAKER_00 55:40

Well, I think the single most important decision when I came to selling Survivor was not selling it short, i.e., not selling it as 30 as seven episodes rather than 13. It's hard to say what the single most important thing is, but I think making it about heroes, not villains, I think. You could easily see how it could be about bad people, but it's about good people.

SPEAKER_01 56:02

Which is interesting because I guess the first winner being Richard Hatch was he was a villainous character.

SPEAKER_00 56:08

He was, he was, but he didn't he also didn't come out of it too well either because of that.

SPEAKER_01 56:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:13

Yeah, he was a bit villainous, I suppose.

SPEAKER_01 56:15

Thinking of that, I mean, definitely there were heroes and that fell short, I guess, in that first season. But the fact that Richard Hatch won perhaps was one of the like enduring factors of survivor going on to be what it was.

SPEAKER_00 56:33

Oh, I think it probably was. It shows that humans are quite complex, and that's what's quite rewarding is when you know I always think with reality TV shows, when humans are presented as very simple, when the dynamics or the motivations are too simple, they're less interesting than when you present them as quite as quite complex, which actually being on Survivor, you're forced to do.

SPEAKER_01 56:54

Yeah, absolutely. I guess for you, you are considered the godfather of reality TV. How does that legacy sit with you?

SPEAKER_00 57:04

Well, uh quite likely a title, actually. I might use it. Uh yes, I mean, obviously, you know, it's got it's got bads, bad children and good children, you know, when you have lots of lots of grandchildren, you know, they're they're not all gonna behave. Uh so I suppose that's what I think. I mean, you know, there's so much reality TV. Maybe we actually need to be starting to look for something else now. But it's quite incredible to think that, you know, over the last 25 years, that you know, it has become such a strong part of television, probably the savior of terrestrial television to some extent.

SPEAKER_01 57:39

Yeah, definitely. I mean, well, you said that we probably need something else. You created reality TV. What's the next big thing?

SPEAKER_00 57:45

Well, if I knew that, I'd I wouldn't be telling you. I don't know. The world, but even the way we receive things is changed. So it's it's you know, it's amazing that survivor still you know out uh out wits at last and outdoes all of those other things.

SPEAKER_01 58:02

The television industry is going through a really tough time at the moment. Commissions are down and budgets are shrinking. Where do we go from here? Like, how does terrestrial TV survive?

SPEAKER_00 58:15

Well, I think terrestrial TV is best when it does event television, which brings people together when there's lots of people who talk about it at a particular time. That's it's that's what it does best. You know, it does best when there's something like uh a live show, sport, uh, an entertainment show, you know, on a Eurovision song contest, traitors, which are kind of water cooler moments, TV. And you can't do everything like that, but I think that's what it should be you know, focusing on. That's why I I think, you know, for instance, when they lost the Big Breakfast on Channel 4, that was a mistake because that was a brilliant show for Channel 4. It basically galvanized people together and got there. I was long gone by then. But that's what I think. I think you know that it needs to be events, basically.

SPEAKER_01 59:07

Looking back on your career, you've achieved so much. What are you most proud of?

SPEAKER_00 59:12

Well, I I always knew and I'm most proud of the fact the three groundbreaking programs that I worked on and created the word the big breakfast and Survivor. And the fact that Survivor is now in its 50th season in America is truly astonishing. Um, so that has to be the the three biggest and most exciting things that I've I've done.

SPEAKER_01 59:33

Amazing. It's such an incredible legacy. I know you have to go, so let's get to some quick fire questions. Go for it. What is your favorite reality TV show to watch?

SPEAKER_00 59:42

At the moment, apart from Survivor, uh traitors, without a doubt.

SPEAKER_01 59:46

What was the last TV show you watched?

SPEAKER_00 59:49

The last TV show I watched is something called Legends, which is on Netflix, which is a drama about um it's set in the 1990s about a busting, a busting of a heroin operation in the UK, and it has a great cast, and it's it's it's it's a thriller, really.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:08

Who is the most famous person you've met through working in TV?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:13

Who's the most famous person? I mean, I I said earlier I've met David Bowie, um, but I met a lot of great people. But I'll answer a different question, which is who didn't I meet who I would really have liked to have met, is George Michael. He was always a bit of a hero, really.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:30

That's wild that you didn't meet him.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:31

I know. You know, there's windows when people do things, and he didn't really do the show during the period that I did.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:36

Best location you've been to for Survivor?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:40

Actually, I think the best location is probably Fiji, but because it's also the most comfortable uh for the crew.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:49

Have you ever been on TV? And if so, what were you on?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:52

I have been on TV. I was on for a brief while as a presenter in this program Network 7, which I did not like. I was uh hosted a game show on this as an as an insert into this show. I didn't like that. And I've obviously been interviewed on TV for a few things, not normally defending programs which were indefensible.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:13

If you could be on any reality TV show, what would you be on?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:17

Uh if I had to be on it, I would rather not be on a reality TV show. Um maybe on the mask singer.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:26

Oh, can you sing?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:27

No, but I mean I have a mask.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:30

And finally, if you could cast any celebrity on Survivor, who would it be and why?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:35

I'd love to see David Beckham actually on it. I think he's he's a you know, he's a pretty amazing guy, and it would be interesting to see how he fared.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:43

Yeah, I would love that. My dad's a big man you fan, so he would get behind that, definitely. Thank you so much, Charlie. I really appreciate your time. It's so interesting to hear all the stories about Survivor. Survivor has had such a huge impact on my life, so um, yeah, this has been so great.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:06

You need to get another life, actually. You need to get another life.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:10

This is beyond reality.