‘Pirate Master’ Walks the Plank

After airing eight episodes, CBS has cancelled Pirate Master, effective immediately. The five remaining episodes will be streamed on the CBS website every Tuesday at 3:00 AM ET.

The show as never a ratings dynamo. Moving the show from Thursday nights to Tuesday nights at 10:00 Eastern didn’t help matters, either. The show averaged just six million viewers a week and consistently lost its time slot. This news marks a bad summer for producer Mark Burnett – his other new show, On The Lot, was cut back to one episode a week due to poor ratings.

I can honestly say, I’m not surprised at this news. Pirate Master didn’t have a lot going for it. Sure, Pirates of the Caribbean did well in theaters, but that doesn’t mean viewers were clamoring for a pirate-themed reality show. In fact, Pirate Master turned out to be little more than a poor man’s Survivor set on a ship. Contestants competed in challenges, formed alliances, and voted someone out every week. It was nothing we hadn’t seen before.

Worse, the contestants weren’t especially engaging. Casting is key to a successful reality show, and Pirate Master failed to produce anyone who was especially worth rooting for – or against. Many of the players who seemed interesting, such as former NFL football player Christian, district attorney Cheryl, and exotic dancer/scientist John were “cut adrift” early on, leaving us bland contestants such as Christa, Kendra, and Laurel. We’ve learned almost nothing about players like those I mentioned, so who cares if they win or lose? Indeed, it appears that in casting people for this show, the focus was less on finding people who were interesting or good strategists, but rather those who were happy to pretend to be pirates and who would be willing to wear silly outfits.

A competitive reality show needs to show viewers either people with impressive levels of skill – like the singers on American Idol or the designers on Project Runway - or who can show smart strategy - Survior or Big Brother. There definitely weren’t any particular skills on display in Pirate Master. Little attention or importance was given to sailing the ship, and all of the challenges were row-run-dig obstacle courses.

The show definitely had the potential to be strategically interesting. Players won gold coins in the challenges that, in theory, they could use to bribe or influence others. That rarely happened, and to little effect on the outcome of each episode. There was also a Royal Pardon, essentially a “get out of jail free” card that pirates could use to save themselves in Pirates’ Court. Not once did the person who won the Pardon actually need to use it, so it had no effect on the game. The only player who showed any strategic sense at all was Jay. Alas, he was just one man and certainly not enough to make the show interesting.

So long, Pirate Master. Let your untimely demise be a lesson to future producers of reality TV shows. Cast interesting people and give them something interesting to do.

Betsy Wasser is the Associate Editor of Reality News Online. Betsy thinks pirates are most interesting when Johnny Depp is somehow involved. She can be reached with any feedback at Betsywasser@Gmail.com.

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