'Survivor: Micronesia': EW's On Location Preview

Image credit: Monty Brinton

Micronesia was supposed to be it: the end of Survivor. Last summer, CBS executives, producers, and even Probst himself were bracing for the finish. A program that had once attracted nearly 52 million people — the number who tuned in to see Richard Hatch win a million dollars back in the summer of 2000 — was now pulling in only around 14. Even worse, the show simply wasn't very good. Spring 2007's Survivor: Fiji was an unmitigated disaster, plagued by a misguided twist (a haves-versus-have-nots setup that gave one tribe all sorts of amenities; who wants to see people on Survivor luxuriating in a real bed drinking cappuccino?) and a lackluster cast that provided few memorable moments. ''You cast people, you build your creative ideas into the show, and sometimes your creative doesn't work, and your casting doesn't work,'' says Probst. ''Sometimes you end up with Fiji. We would have loved to have just erased that season.''

The franchise looked well past its prime, especially when compared with the fresh new (brace) face over on ABC, Ugly Betty, which was winning both critical raves and fans in its initial season and seemed poised to challenge for the Thursday-at-8 p.m. crown. ''A lot of us thought maybe the end was on the horizon,'' says CBS programming chief Kelly Kahl. ''I was mentally prepared to be done,'' says Probst as he sips a local Palauan beer poolside at his hotel. ''I was ready to start doing some new things and I had ideas cooking.''

Then, like in any good season of Survivor, the unexpected happened. This past fall's China edition was something of a renaissance, with several breakout characters and watercooler moments (the attempted playing of a bogus hidden immunity idol being chief among them). Survivor's ratings not only went up to 15.2 million viewers, but the show dominated Ugly Betty and NBC's My Name Is Earl like never before: Betty's second season averaged just 9.6 million viewers against Survivor in the fall, while Earl netted 8.2 million (follow-up comedy 30 Rock rocked only 6.6 million). And this was all before the writers' strike sent these series into forced hiatus. ''We're annihilating the competition,'' says Probst. ''For all the press that a show like Ugly Betty or My Name Is Earl gets, they don't have the numbers. We have a gravedigger on our show, James, and James is helping to dig the graves of both of those shows.''

NEXT PAGE: ''There are a couple of casting choices on the Fans that I wasn't a big fan of. Kathleen — I'm not sure why she's on.... If she's not the first off I will tip my hat to her.''