Pirate Master Details Unveiled Filed under ( Are You Smarter than an Average 5th Grader?, Cameron Daddo, CBS, Mark Burnett, Pirate Masters, Survivor, The Apprentice )

Mark Burnett is adding to his empire, slowly but surely. Poised to become the Aaron Spelling of reality television, the man behind Survivor, The Apprentice and Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? is ready to unleash his newest show on the public. Pirate Master premieres on May 31 (on CBS, of course) and will be hosted by Australian actor/musician Cameron Daddo (Big Momma's House 2). The 13-episode series stars "16 people who all agree that had they been born 250 years ago, they would have liked to be pirates," as Burnett told TV Guide recently, from the set on the Caribbean island of Dominica.

Contestants live on a 179-foot-square rigger for 33 days while searching for buried treasure worth $1 million. Burnett said that the game stems from a mythical pirate story he came up with, "Captain Steel."

"Each man returned to the ship with a set of maps and hid them in a chest with 14 compartments, and it was only a few weeks ago that the chest was recovered," he said. "So the contestants are sailing to a different destination each week around the island looking for the treasure."

"It's a huge — and hard — adventure, with jumping off waterfalls, swimming up canyon lakes and crossing mud-filled jungles," Burnett says. The show's motto? "Watch your back." As Burnett notes, "Pirates have their own rules, and while they need to work as a group on the expeditions, you never know who's going to stab you in the back."

Contestants dress in period costumes, eat gruel and are ruled by an elected captain who can be overthrown if he doesn't treat his crew well. Each week at "Pirate's Court" — which are, according to Burnett, modeled after actual tribunals — a player is cast off the ship and set adrift on a raft. "If you can't run with the crew, if you can't swim or row or navigate, you're a liability."

The pirate crew is made up of eight men and eight women. Among them: "a very tough Nigerian who became an American and a former Navy rescue swimmer, who's currently a smoke jumper. Everybody's a good athlete, but what they've learned is that to be a great pirate, you have to be really smart."

"It's a lot of fun, a great summer yarn. It's fantasy meets reality," says Burnett, who wrote the show back in 2003, adding "It's a big endeavor to pull off."

Photo from TV Guide.

Jeff Foxworthy Has a Hit on His Hands Filed under ( Are You Smarter than an Average 5th Grader?, Jeff Foxworthy, Mark Burnett, Survivor, The Apprentice )

The numbers are pretty staggering. Jeff Foxworthy is the host of the new Mark Burnett show (he of Survivor and The Apprentice fame), Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?. A staggering 26 million people tuned in for the shows' premiere episode, making it the most-watched series debut on any network in eight and a half years. TV Guide recently sat down with the comic/host to chat.

TV Guide: Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader is getting huge ratings. Are you surprised?
Jeff Foxworthy: I feel like Cin­derella. I'm used to having shows that the network tries to keep a secret, so this is really weird for them to actually be plugging me.

TV Guide: Why do you think producer Mark Burnett chose a blue-collar redneck like you to host a game show?
Foxworthy: Last year, someone was trying to bring back Kids Say the Darndest Things, and I ran the show a couple of times. Mark Burnett saw it and said to me [affect­ing a heavy Australian accent], "You are so American." I was like, "I don't know what that means, but thank you." In this crazy business, I've hopefully been able to retain some normalcy. People think they know me.

TV Guide: Did they give you a pop quiz for the audition?
Foxworthy: I think they knew I was an idiot going in, and I don't ever pretend to be Alex Trebek. I find that I'm right about 40 percent of the time. And only then because it's some­thing that I've helped my kids study for.

TV Guide: Would your 12- and 15-year-old daughters whip your butt on this show?
Foxworthy: We were sit­ting together watching it last night, and as soon as I asked a question, they would blurt out the answer, and imme­diately it was like, "Did you know that, Daddy?" And I'm like, "No, but I'm still the leader of this house!"

TV Guide: What kind of a student were you?
Foxworthy: I always made As and Bs, but every comment on my report card said, "Jeff talks too much in class." In fact, the best note I ever got backstage at a stand-up show was from my high-school principal, who said, "I can't believe I'm shelling out money to hear the same kind of junk I used to try to put a stop to." I was in his office two times a week, and he would always say to me, "What do you think you are, a comedian?" Well, apparently I am.

TV Guide: What's been one of the show's dumbest moments?
Foxworthy: One of the questions was a first-grade art question: "If you mix red and blue together, what color do you get?" And the adult said, "Brown." I'm thinking you really need to be on display at a state fair somewhere. You're making me feel better about my family.

TV Guide: Is the show a commentary on the state of our national IQ?
Foxworthy: No. The stuff on this show — we deleted that file [from our brains] 30 years ago. I don't know why, 30 years later, I still know all the words to Gilligan's Island, but I have chosen to delete anything I ever knew about triangles.

TV Guide: What else do you have going on these days?
Foxworthy: I just finished the third volume of The Redneck Dictionary. Nos. 1 and 2 were on the New York Times best-seller list, which I'm pretty sure is a sign of the apocalypse. And I'm down to the last page of a children's book. It's the hardest thing I've ever written because you have to make yourself be 4 years old.

TV Guide: So are you, in fact, smarter than a fifth grader?
Foxworthy: [Sighs] No, I'm not. Well, maybe I am because I'm actually doing the same things I did in the fifth grade, and now I'm getting paid for it. I'm getting paid to make the class laugh.

Photo from TV Guide.