Grooch | Friday, December 21, 2001 - 07:33 am   'Survivor's' Sean is now making the rounds in South Florida By Tom Jicha TV/Radio Writer Sun Sentinel Posted December 19 2001, 5:29 PM EST Original Survivor Sean Kenniff came off as a wishy-washy slacker when he shirked decision-making by using alphabetical order to determine his Tribal Council banishment votes. After all, Sean is a neurologist, a doctor called on regularly to make split-second life-or-death decisions. Because of his waffling, ultimate winner Richard Hatch, the contestant everyone loved to hate, got through the one vote for which the others had him set up for the kill. Sean’s thought process in the frivolous game seems enlightened compared to his decision to give up practicing medicine to pursue a career in TV. Who in their right mind would do that? Truth is, probably more people than you think, including a lot without Sean’s upside in the business. Sean self-deprecatingly dismisses himself as “a D-list celebrity, like Rog on What’s Happening.” However, the arbiters of what’s “in” have a more exalted opinion. Sean has already appeared regularly on The CBS Early Show and Extra, and he did a week on Live With Regis (post-Kathie Lee and pre-Kelly). He even got to try his hand at acting, with guest roles on Nash Bridges and The Guiding Light. All of this led to his first full-time gig, as the medical expert on WFOR-Ch. 4 (a broadcast partner of the Sun-Sentinel ). Since the beginning of December, he has been offering Medical Minute health tips and reporting on breaking developments in his field on the CBS-owned station’s 5, 5:30 and 6 p.m. newscasts. Once he gets comfortable in this role, his duties are likely to expand to the late-night news, as well as to long-form specials, according to WFOR news director Shannon High-Bassalik. Initial flaky impressions to the contrary, Kenniff is not a free spirit who makes important decisions haphazardly, whether they involve an entertainment show or his career. Sean’s Survivor tactics were all part of a carefully plotted scheme to win the $1 million grand prize and his move away from practicing medicine and into television is also part of a grand plan for the rest of his life. As soon as he got to Palau Tiga, Sean deduced that Richard was the only person he could beat in a final vote because the others assumed a young doctor had a comfy berth reserved on the gravy train. It did Sean little good to plead poverty, to explain he comes from a blue-collar family and that to pay his way through school, he spread asphalt and flipped burgers. He’ll be “an indentured servant” for years to more than a quarter-million dollars in student loans, he says. “I asked myself, ‘What will make me politically neutral and not make me any enemies?’” That’s when he came up with using the alphabet. Richard came far down in the order, well behind Colleen, Gervace, Greg, Gretchen, Jenna and Kelly. The audience might have been baffled and annoyed by his strategy, but the other players weren’t. “They picked up on what I was doing and they started to stack up their votes with mine, figuring my vote and theirs (against someone else) made it more unlikely they would be voted out. It also made it less likely I would be voted out.” Sean made another decision, which seemed to defy logic. After winning a challenge, whose prize was a night on a lavish yacht, complete with sumptuous dinner, hot shower and comfy bed, Sean had an opportunity to take any of his rivals with him. He chose the widely disliked Richard. At that point, Sean says, there were an equal number of women and men remaining, and he had a strong inclination Richard was about to vote against him. Sean says he needed to convince Richard it was in both their interests that the men maintain a majority. “I found out the women were prepared to vote as a bloc,” Sean says. “As soon as they had one more of them than us, they would have voted the men off one by one.” Sean’s arguments were persuasive. Richard came around, and both he and Sean made it to the final five. This was as close to the big money as Sean got, but he says the night on the yacht was a prize he will treasure longer than it would take to spend a small fortune. As a surprise bonus, Survivor flew Sean’s father, a New York City firefighter, to the South Pacific. Sean did a double take when he recognized the familiar figure dressed in the captain’s uniform. “That was the best time of my father’s life. We got drunk in front of 31 million people. He talks about it all the time. I don’t think he’ll ever forget it.” Sean’s decision to walk away from medicine was even more thoroughly thought out. It wasn’t an easy decision, like closing a struggling storefront office in a suburban strip mall. His strong academic credentials landed him a spot at Park Avenue Medical Associates in Manhattan. “I love medicine,” the native of Massapequa, Long Island, says. “But it’s becoming impossible to practice medicine. I’m not leaving the practice of medicine. I’m leaving the business of medicine.” His office had four doctors but required 28 staffers to deal with HMOs, he says. “You wind up spending more time on the business end than treating patients. That isn’t why I got into medicine. I want to help people but more and more of my time was tied up dealing with HMOs. Anyone who is frustrated with their doctor can probably appreciate the frustrations I felt.” The final straw was a knockdown, drag-out with an HMO over ordering an extra night in a hospital for a 38-year-old mother of two, who was dying. “The woman had terminal breast cancer and a brain tumor. It was like two death sentences. While I was performing surgery on her, she was having seizures every 15 minutes. The HMO wanted me to send her home the next day,” Sean says. He defied the bean counters and left orders that the woman remained hospitalized. The next day, he got a threatening letter. “Any more insolence and you’ll be removed from the staff,” he says he was warned. “That was it,” Sean says. He talked the situation over with his parents and partners. “I told them I would sooner work in the Peace Corps. I told my partners I would give them as much notice as they wanted, but I was getting out. There had to be something better out there for me.” That it would be a TV show, let alone the hottest show in years, was unfathomable. Fate intervened when he noticed a small item in Time: “A Star Is Borneo.” It described this new Robinson Crusoe-type program CBS was planning in the China Sea and how it was looking for interesting contestants. Why not, he figured. He always has been a bit of a showoff with a natural ability to communicate. For a med school presentation, “I did a paper on surgical phallo-plasty.” For those without a handy medical reference guide, this is the most crucial step in sex change operations to turn a woman into a man. Sean filled the room. Even before Survivor, a brazen young Sean pitched an idea to MTV for a medical show geared toward young people. “Medical shows are generally targeted at older people,” he says. “But there is a lot of important health information, about things like AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases and drugs that young people should be getting but aren’t.” That trial balloon didn’t float far. MTV said that for such a show to draw an audience, a well-known personality was essential. Someone like a post-Survivor Sean. Eat your heart out, MTV. Sean has devised another way to reach that audience, as well as others. He is producing a series of videotapes, Dr. Sean’s Survival Series, on various ailments and treatments. A substantial portion of the profits, if there are any, will go to medical charities, he says. CBS and Survivor producer Mark Burnett thought a handsome young doctor was as much a natural for the show as Sean did. “Everyone is put into a role on the show. I was the dorky yuppie,” Sean said. Even if he didn’t win the million dollars, the opportunity to travel to an exotic locale halfway around the globe was irresistible. “It was my first time out of the country,” he says. “It might sound unbelievable, but I went 13 years without ever leaving New York state.” His first hint of what Survivor might mean came prior to the premiere, when he was picking up a girlfriend at the airport. “Driving out, I saw this billboard for Survivor and it had my picture on it. The girl was a bikini model. I thought she was a celebrity. She saw the billboard and thought I was the celebrity. I couldn’t imagine myself as a celebrity. When 15 million people watched the first show, I was in shock.” The ease with which he has managed to break into TV also has been surprising. High-Bassalik says he arrived at WFOR practically a finished product, but he takes directions well and is anxious to learn. In addition to his background in medicine, Sean has uncommon TV savvy for someone relatively new, she says. “He’s pitched me about 30 excellent ideas. Some, he’s said, will work better on the 5 [o’clock show] because that skews more heavily to women. He knows what he’s doing.” He also appreciates the day will come when being Sean of Survivor won’t open as many doors, which is why he’s in South Florida. “I need experience. I figure it will take at least three years before I’m polished enough to move on to something else. Usually, you have to go to Wisconsin, then a small market in Texas, then maybe North Carolina. I’m grateful at the chance I’m getting here.” The station accepts the fact that Sean has bigger things in mind for himself than local TV. His timetable allows him three years at WFOR to polish his act enough to go looking for something at the network level. “He’s a very aggressive individual,” High-Bassalik says. “He wants to do bigger things. But maybe he’ll fall in love with the area during the next three years and decide he wants to stay permanently.” Whatever he decides, it will be well thought out, even if it might not seem that way to others. |