'Survivor' ends segregation game

By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television WriterFri Sep 29, 5:11 PM ET

All the hubbub about the "Survivor" ethnic experiment turned out to be pretty worthless.

Why? Because after only two episodes, producers merged the black, white, Asian and Latino tribes into two mixed-race gangs on the CBS reality show Thursday night. No explanation was given for the quick abandonment of segregation; it seemed to pass by so quickly as to mean nothing.

"We're back to America. We're a melting pot," said Parvati, a boxer on the new Raro tribe. "I love it."

The two new tribes competed in a grueling challenge that seemed better designed to get prisoners of war to talk. Each person strapped on a 15 pound weight, and trudged through knee-deep water around a course, with one tribe trying to catch the other. For any person who dropped out, a teammate had to carry their weight.

The Raro tribe won. For the losing Aitus, it meant more politicking than a brokered convention. No one knew or trusted each other much, so they had to feel their way into alliances.

The result was to send Cecilia packing in a 5-3 vote.

Oh, and remember last week's reject, Billy, talking about how he made a love-at-first-sight connection with another player, Candice?

She thought he was nuts, too.

The race-based angle to this season's show had brought a firestorm of criticism down on the show and CBS Corp. Several major advertisers pulled out.

The Most Popular TV On The Web
Lacey Rose, 09.29.06, 1:20 PM ET

Last spring, Disney-owned ABC made headlines when it announced it would stream four of its programs--including hits Desperate Housewives and Lost--free on its Web site. The move earned the network plenty of attention, and a lot of complaints from the network’s local affiliates, who feared viewers would no longer watch their programs on television.

As the fall seasons take off, the remaining three networks have followed suit, each offering a host of free, advertising-supported shows online. Many shows are also available for sale at Web outlets like Apple Computer's iTunes or Google Video.

But the fretters can rest easy, because the online option doesn’t seem to be cannibalizing television--at least not yet, anyway. Data from online media measurement firm Big Champagne indicate that the most swapped shows on traditional peer-to-peer and BitTorrent networks tend to also be among the highest rated when aired on TV.

CBS's CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy, for instance, were popular on both mediums. CSI ranked second on the Web and third on TV, while Grey’s topped the TV list and landed third on the Web list.

That said, couch potatoes and Web heads don't always have the same taste. Fox's Prison Break hasn't made much impact on the News Corp.-owned TV network yet--it was the 60th most popular show on television last week. But it has consistently been one of the most-swapped shows on the Web.

Show	Network	Most Swapped Shows This Week*	Most Swapped Shows Last Week**	Most Watched Shows This Week***
House	FOX	1	1	21
CSI	CBS	2	2	3
Grey's Anatomy	ABC	3	5	1
Bones	FOX	4	4	60
Prison Break	FOX	5	3	47
Without A Trace	CBS	6	6	6
Desperate Housewives	ABC	7	11	2
CSI: Miami	CBS	8	7	5
The Daily Show	Comedy Central	9	8	Not available
Family Guy	FOX	10	9	46
Source: BigChampagne, Nielsen Media Research. *Ranking for week Ending Sept. 26, 2006 **Ranking for week Ending Sept. 19, 2006

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Unfortunately a show like Men in Trees which is funny and quirky, a bit reminiscent of Northern Exposure, is high up on the list to be cancelled. Let’s hope the odds are wrong and it will be picked up and kept on for at least another season.

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Bush: Criticism dovetails with 'enemy propaganda'

'Updated 9/29/2006 11:17 AM ET

By Douglas Stanglin, USA TODAY

President Bush told a largely military audience Friday that critics who believe that fighting the war in Iraq has made America less safe are "buying into enemy propaganda."

"You do not create terrorism by fighting terrorism," Bush told a meeting of the Reserve Officers Association in Washington. "If that ever becomes the mindset of the policymakers in Washington, it means we will go back to the old days of waiting to be attacked and then respond."

He said the only way to fight terrorism "is to stay on the offense against the terrorists."

Bush said some of his critics "selectively quoted" from recently leaked portions of a classified National Intelligence Estimate on the war against terrorism to suggest that extremists were using the Iraq war to recruit more terrorists.

The president declassified key judgments from the NIE after leaks appeared in The New York Times. Bush said it was noteworthy that the leaks appeared in the run-up to the Nov. 7 midterm elections.

"Some of them selectively quoted from the document to make the case that by fighting terrorists, by fighting them in Iraq, we are making people less secure here at home," Bush said. "This argument buys into the enemy propaganda that the enemies attacked up because we are fighting them."

"I want to remind American citizens," he said to long applause, "that we were not in Iraq on Sept. 11, 2001."

The president's speech focused almost exclusively on fighting in Afghanistan and made only passing reference to the war in Iraq.

At one point, however, he said, "Iraq is not the reason the terrorists are at war against us."

"Their war against us is because they hate the very thing that America stands for," he said. "And we stand for freedom."

The president's remarks were the latest in a series of speeches on the war against terrorism, which Bush calls the "ideological struggle of the 21st century", that began shortly before the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.