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We've become voyeurs.

It's ironic that since the 1948 publication of George Orwell's classic novel "1984," we've feared the intrusion of "Big Brother" into our lives, and now the top-rated TV shows thrust us, as eavesdroppers, into the lives of others. We have met Big Brother, and he is us.

Since its debut early this summer, CBS's "Survivor" has been hugely successful, setting viewing records for five weeks in a row now. On Aug. 2, it even accomplished the unthinkable, beating out ABC's "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?"

During the wannabe survivors' recent struggles (now in their 11th week), an estimated 27 million viewers a night have watched them sweat, bicker, work together, work against each other, win challenges, lose challenges, and eat disgusting things, including rats. If you haven't seen "Survivor" and this sounds tedious, that's because it is.

And yet the numbers suggest that millions of people are finding reasons to watch shows like "Survivor" and the same network's aptly named "Big Brother." In "Big Brother," a group of people try to outlast each other in the more civilized setting of a house, while viewers watch in real time. Wednesday, fans of "Big Brother" were posting comments on the show's web site at the rate of one per second, most predicting new developments or identifying the contestant most likely to be voted out next.

The attention that CBS and other media organizations have directed toward this phenomenon is also phenomenal. Every Thursday morning, the most recent departee of the "Survivor" island appears on "The Early Show" to answer questions from Bryant Gumbel & Co. and from viewers' e-mail. "Big Brother" episodes include segments in which experts like psychologists predict the houseguests' behavior -- how, for example, the group's dynamics will be affected by the arrival of a dog named Chiquita.

And the free advertising for CBS isn't limited to its own network. Thursday, the latest "Survivor" banishee, Colleen, a likable young woman who would be played by Drew Barrymore if "Survivor" were a movie, made the rounds of talk shows on the major networks.

Media moguls are scrambling to replicate "Survivor's" success. CBS says that "Survivor" II, set in the Australian Outback, will debut with a two-hour special after the January 2001 Super Bowl. Meanwhile, the show's producer, Mark Burnett, is planning to outdo himself. His latest project feature contestants sent to a Russian space training camp, with the finalist actually accompanying cosmonauts on a mission to the Mir space station. This program, Burnett promises, will be missing an element of "Survivor." Rather than the democratic Survivors, who, at the end of each broadcast, meet in a "tribal council" to banish one contestant, Burnett's losers will be identified by the space program trainers. It will be interesting to see whether the program, dubbed "Who gets kicked off the planet?" by the Toronto Star, can hold the mainstream viewing audience's interest without the popularity contest element.

If any network executives eager to tap into Mark Burnett's success are listening, here are some reality TV shows I'd really like to see:

Who's the Artsy-est? A group of people live together is a remote mountain cabin, where they discuss literature, film, theater, visual art, music, television, dance, and other art forms. Participants are selected by a review board, based on the quality and diversity of their arts appreciation and experience. Just to make things interesting, one of the participants should be intellectual/provocateur Camille Paglia. Each week, participants would beginning with a discussion question from the show's host, and the conversation could evolve naturally, as long as it maintained focus on the arts. A good opening question might be "Is Shakespeare still relevant?" Because the viewing public thrives on rivalry, each segment would include a competition. For example, each participant might describe his or her favorite novel, and then the group could vote on whose description was most convincing. The prize might be getting to suggest the topic for the next program or winning a grant from the NEA, no strings attached. But the real reward would be the discussion itself. Remember: Art for art's sake.

How the Other Half Lives Each week, prominent politicians would be forced to spend one day as a person their policies have hurt. George W. Bush would spend a day on death row. Al Gore would be a lab rat for the day. Dick Cheney would temporarily have AIDS. Joseph Lieberman could play a retiree gone broke from blowing his retirement investments. If this one is successful, the second installment could include professionals from other walks of life. Entire episodes could be devoted to a single professional area. In the media installment, reporters could be stalked by average citizens with cameras and microphones, and Bryant Gumbel would endure a long interrogation with a snide, arrogant interviewer. In the medical episode, doctors wearing skimpy hospital gowns would be poked and prodded by ordinary people repeating, "I'm not sure what it is. Let's run some tests." Or "I'm not sure your insurance policy covers this." On this program, of course, viewers would be the winners, but each contestant would leave with a pair of shoes -- someone else's.

Make Mine Violence! Twelve people live together for 12 weeks, discussing which of the following leisure activities is the most worthwhile: boxing, bullfighting, hunting, auto racing, cockfighting, or wrasslin'. Each week, the participant who makes the strongest argument for the value of an activity gets kicked off, but all of them lose, eventually.

Stay Awake! This one's a game for teachers and students. Take a dozen 16-year-olds, and keep them awake for 24 hours. Then put them in a classroom and lecture them on poetry scansion. The last one awake wins. (This one's risky; watching it could put viewers to sleep, too.) This game might spawn a spin-off, Keep Awake!, on which each of twelve teachers is assigned a sleep-deprived 16-year-old, and the teacher whose pupil remains awake longest wins. (The student wins a book of poetry and a nap. The teacher's prize is that the student stays awake.)

A spin-off reversal of Stay Awake! could be called Nighty-night. A parent who has worked all day is faced with the challenge of getting three children, ages 2, 4, and 6, to go to sleep -- the night before the family's trip to Disney World. No storybooks allowed. Parents compete against each other for the best time. The winner gets eight hours of continuous sleep.

Worst Film Festival would offer filmmakers the opportunity to compete for "Rip-off-the-audience" statuettes, which would be given in the same categories as the Academy Awards. Of course, if "The Blair Witch Project" were entered, no one else would stand a chance.

While we're on the subject of creative enterprises, another possibility is 60-Minute Story. Contestants chosen at random would write short stories in timed competition. They would be given a topic (bird dogs), a setting (bus stop in a small town), or a first line ("When Lulu dialed her parents' number Friday night, she was shocked when ___________ answered.'") They would then have one hour to write a story using a word processor, and the televised program would show a montage of them working, edited to one or two between-commercials segments. Then, viewers would hear highlights, the flattering and the embarrassing, from some of the stories and the winning selection in its entirety. The prize would be publication of the story, prearranged with some magazine or literary journal. The same concept would work with poetry (and the winners' work could then be scanned on Keep Awake! and Stay Awake!)

A show with real potential is Strange New Sound, on which people from all walks of life would be pulled in off the street and grouped randomly into singing acts. Each group would pull a song title out of a hat, go off to rehearse it for 15 minutes, and return to perform it. Imagine any three or four people you know grouped together and singing "I Can't Get No Satisfaction," and you get the concept. The best act would have its song digitally recorded live and subsequently distributed worldwide via Napster (or, if Napster has already folded, Gnutella). The worst act would have its song recorded, too, for repeated play in commercials for Ronco products.

And for those viewers whose appetites are only whetted by the most grueling of challenges, how about this: 12 adults are confined to a screening room where, on a big-screen TV with SurroundSound, they have to watch reruns of "Survivor." The first one with the good sense to get up and leave the room wins.