’Survivor’ wouldn’t have happened had I not gone out there and helped CBS to sell sponsors to finance the first one. Part of my thinking on ’Survivor’ was that it should have rewards that are corporate brands. A Big Mac, one thimble-full of Coca-Cola.

Burnett frames the creation of Survivor not only as a creative breakthrough but as a business negotiation in which advertising and storytelling were intertwined from the start. He presents himself as an active broker between the network and sponsors, suggesting the show’s viability depended on securing corporate financing. The mention of branded rewards (e.g., Big Mac, Coca-Cola) highlights an early, deliberate strategy to integrate product placement into the game’s incentive structure—turning scarcity and desire into a marketing vehicle. The quote underscores how reality TV’s “authentic” survival premise was, in practice, engineered within commercial television’s sponsorship economy.