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Television Travel

Mark Burnett To Fight Chinese Communism With Tiki Torches

May 25, 2007 at 9:35 AM | 0 Comments

So maybe it's been a while since you've paid attention to anything that goes on on "Survivor." Sure, that one couple we like to follow met on the show, and the first winner eventually went to prison for (oops!) failing to declare his winnings. But we realized it was high time the stakes were raised when CBS announced they were packing the immunity idols and heading to China for the latest edition of the reality show -- the first time ever that an American television show will be shot in the country, according to Variety.

How did this happen? Apparently China realized it could do some PR in advance of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing and pocket a few sweet television dollars at the same time by opening its borders to what Defamer called "Survivor: Human Rights Violations." (Obviously, not exactly the image they want to broadcast!) Still, it's hard not to see this as a reality-TV model for the classic sitcom "We're jumping the shark, let's go to Hawaii!" episode. Show is lagging? Head for a foreign country! "Top Model" does it every season (most recently hitting Sydney, Australia for the final runway show which decides the winner) and "Ugly Betty" just did a family-trip-to-Mexico episode (even though it was shot Stateside). I'm not tuning in unless there are pandas involved. Please, Mark Burnett, let there be pandas.

[Photo: Reality TV Magazine]