Aaron Bass has watched Survivor since the beginning, but admits last season “got kind of boring” because with only two black contestants, he didn’t see enough people who looked like him.

But when the popular CBS reality show decided to divide four tribes by race, Bass was “turned off.”

“I don’t think it will be a fruitful outcome,” said Bass, 27, of Oakland Park. “I think they said, ‘Because our ratings are down, let’s throw in racial camps.'”

With Survivor: Cook Islands, the show’s controversial 13th installment, creator Mark Burnett has reaped a bonanza of publicity that could boost the show’s sagging ratings. The show, which airs at 8 tonight, initially will split its 20 contestants into African-American, Hispanic, Asian-American and white tribes.

That worries some people of each racial and ethnic group in South Florida, a diverse region where many are still trying to put old differences behind them, accommodate newcomers and teach their children to accept and embrace people of different backgrounds. The show’s premise particularly does not sit well with Baby Boomers who grew up in the civil rights era.

“I can’t imagine what good comes out of this,” said Barbara Cheives, a West Palm Beach diversity consultant. “The fact is that in nearly 2007 we still have race relations training. We don’t need another thing to polarize us.”

The 20 strangers will have to “outwit, outplay, and outlast” each other during the show. In a finale, a jury of the last seven contestants gradually voted off the island decides which of two finalists wins $1 million.

But in the previous 12 installments, most of the contestants — and the winners — were white. Vecepia Towery, who is black, won Survivor Marquesas in 2002 and Sandra Diaz-Twine, who is Hispanic, won Survivor Pearl Islands in 2003.

The show’s host, Jeff Probst, has said the show’s new installment was meant to respond to criticism that its casts have not been sufficiently diverse.

Criticism of the show picked up this week. NAACP President Bruce Gordon, also a CBS Corp. board member, said Tuesday that the show’s premise was “a bad idea.”

Groups that have long fought for an increased minority presence on prime time television view this season’s Survivor as a setback, said Marta Garcia, founder and co-chairwoman of the National Hispanic Media Coalition’s New York chapter.

Since 1999, Garcia said, her group has worked closely with executives from every major network, including CBS, to include more Latinos on prime time television. Fewer than 2 percent of prime time roles were filled by Latinos in 1999, but that figure is between 6 and 8 percent today, Garcia said.

The coalition has expressed its objections to CBS executives. It has received a barrage of e-mails and calls from elected officials and groups such as the National Puerto Rican Coalition that say the new Survivor is playing with racial caricatures.

“The feeling out there is, ‘What were these guys thinking?'” Garcia said. “It’s in very poor taste. They may be using people of color interested in playing those roles. But when we come back to the streets of New York the reaction is, ‘That’s all we need: blacks against Latinos.'”

Many local viewers agreed. Some fear the show could reinforce negative stereotypes.

“People will look at these groups and go, ‘Oh, here are the loud Latinos, or here are the blacks who are strong competitors because they’re descended from slaves,'” said Beatriz Diaz, 19, a Colombian-American who lives in Weston. “For better or worse all of us are from an ethnic group, but first and foremost we’re human,” she said.

However, in churches, schools and social settings, people often stick to their own groups.

Cedrick Feacher, of West Palm Beach, said the idea reminded him of his high school’s lunchroom, where black, white and Hispanic students sat apart.

“People that don’t like other races will have problems,” said Feacher, 19, who is African-American.

Nevertheless, Feacher said he would root for the black tribe if he watches the show.

Bob Balogh, a retired teacher who lives in Boynton Beach, finds the show’s concept “disgusting” because he’s worked his whole life trying to bring people together.

As a member of the Congress On Racial Equality in the early 1960s, Balogh, who is white, participated in sit-ins in Virginia to open public accommodations to black patrons.

“I think it panders to people’s interests that one group is better than the other,” Balogh said.

But Vito Sacco, 41, a white Coral Springs resident, liked the idea of dividing teams by race.

“It’s a part of everyday life,” he said.

Bass, director of a nonprofit program that prepares middle school students for college, lamented that whoever wins, “it makes for a horrible conversation at the water cooler.”

SEGREGATED TV SHOW

SURVIVOR: COOK ISLANDS begins tonight, pitting four teams against one another in a controversial format that divides them by race. Previous shows have divided tribes by gender and age.

Following in the footsteps of a popular Swedish show, Survivor began here in 1999. It strands Americans for weeks on an uninhabited island, where they have to compete with and outwit one another.

Players must work together to survive, but every few days they cast secret ballots to expel a contestant.

Those voted out early will be returned home, while members of the jury, who will cast ballots for one of two finalists, remain. The last survivor wins $1 million.

THE SHOW AIRS AT 8 P.M. ON WFOR-CH. 4 AND WPEC-CH. 12.