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- guardian.co.uk, Wednesday May 23 2001 07.55 BST
The ITN reporter Mark Austin is being paid £150,000 for six weeks' work as host of the reality show Survivor, after initially rejecting the role for fear it would compromise his journalistic integrity.
Austin's fee beats his annual salary for his work as a foreign correspondent and newscaster - although he said money was not the deciding factor.
The show started on Monday with disappointing ratings: unofficial figures showed that it drew 6.1m viewers, 31% of the available audience. For Survivor to be regarded as a hit, it must score 40%.
ITV, which has invested heavily in publicity, still expects its gamble to pay off: Big Brother began on Channel 4 last year with 17%, falling slightly before peaking at almost 50%.
Despite the poor ratings, the hype surrounding Survivor has ensured its place as a talking point. Some critics said the programme, which cost £10m to make, was too glossy, others described it as the "hit of the year". It has been billed as the ultimate reality show: to collect the £1m prize, the winner must survive 40 days on a desert island in the South China Sea without being voted off by fellow contestants. Austin was chosen to present Survivor because of his background as a reporter in exotic locations: his journalistic authority brings gravitas to an essentially trivial format. He won acclaim last year with his reports from the flooding in Mozambique, and has privately expressed reservations about moving from a journalistic role to fronting an entertainment show.
His concerns are understood to have been allayed by the nature of his role - unlike Davina McCall on Big Brother, he takes a detached perspective and does not get "matey" with the contestants. Another presenter, John Leslie, fronts the postmortem shows when those evicted from the desert island are interviewed.
An ITV executive confirmed that Austin had initially turned down the broadcaster's offer. "We wanted Mark from day one, but when he said no, we looked at a lot of other people. None of them was as good and we went back to Mark. Luckily for us he was having second thoughts about turning it down."
He told the Mirror at the weekend: "I am a firm believer in giving things a go. I don't mind regretting doing something. I do not want to regret not doing it."
