Every three days, the group will gather for a "tribal council," at which the castaways will vote to kick a member off the island. When there are only two castaways left, the last seven people kicked off the island will return to vote for the champion, who will walk away with one million dollars (a seemingly magic number in TV game shows these days).

The concept behind "Big Brother" parallels "Survivor". Five men and five women will be locked in a house with, you guessed it, no contact with the outside world (save the occasional vocal communication with "Big Brother" himself). Every moment in the house is recorded by 28 cameras (all equipped with night vision) and 60 microphones. Not even the shower is safe.

Every other week, for as many as one hundred days, the roommates will meet to secretly elect two people as candidates for dismissal from the group. Then, the audience will choose which of the two they no longer want to see via a telephone poll. The last person remaining wins $500,000.

Life in the house will not be easy. The inhabitants will live a "Back to Basics" style, with no modern amenities. They must grow their own vegetables in a garden and raise their own chickens for meat.

CBS will air the show not one, but five nights weekly (following ABC's lead with "Millionaire" last summer). If that's not enough, streaming video will broadcast over the Internet 24 hours a day. The inhabitants have yet to be cast, but the application (which can be downloaded from the CBS website) is due soon.

The concept behind these shows is not entirely new. MTV scored success with "The Real World" in the early '90's. This evolved into "Road Rules," another show that struck a chord with the key youth demographic. But "Survivor" and "Big Brother" go much further with their voyeuristic overtones. While "The Real World" taped just about everything that went on with the participants did, the conditions were nowhere near as severe as those of the eye network's new shows. The Real-World-ers interacted with the outside world as normal people would; they just had cameras following them around.

However, the "Survivor" and "Big Brother" casts are cut off from reality. They exist in a world apart from their friends and family. The TV execs are basically locking people up for our enjoyment. Isolation like this cannot be healthy, especially under the conditions of the contest. The "Big Brother" house isn't very roomy, with two bedrooms, one bathroom, an eating area, a kitchen, and a living room for ten people. So, the inhabitants are not only sequestered, they're also a bit cramped. While the tropical island of "Survivor" may seem like paradise at first, the high temperatures and humidity, coupled with frequent rain, mosquitoes, and dangerous animals, probably help it keep away droves of tourists seeking the perfect vacation destination.

What does this say about the people who are willing to go through with this (albeit for a potentially large reward)? One of the "Survivor" castaways is a single mother of three-year-old twins, whom she was willing to abandon for more than a month. Would you really want someone like this on your team if you were trying to survive on an uninhabited island? Could you really put your trust in this person, knowing she has already deserted her own children at a critical time in their childhood for a chance to win a million dollars?