For most viewers, this year’s Super Bowl Sunday was memorable mainly for Janet Jackson’s infamous wardrobe malfunction. But for fans of Survivor: All-Stars, the top-rated contest among the show’s former champions, the night has become notable for another type of exposure. The series made its debut immediately after the game, and minutes after the first contestant was bounced from paradise, an anonymous gremlin posted a massive "spoiler" on the entertainment Web site Ain’t It Cool News (www.aintitcoolnews.com) - a detailed list of upcoming plot twists. Even some fans who had deliberately sought out the document regretted reading it. What fun was watching if you already knew everything that was going to happen?

It was yet another blow to suspense, that gorgeous sensation that is fading fast from the experience of watching television. For many viewers, TV shows are pleasurable precisely because they arrive in tantalizing episodes, slowly doling out twists and turns. But with ever more behind-the-scenes information floating around in gossip columns, online discussion boards and mainstream publications, it has now become entirely possible to find out what happens to favorite characters months in advance.

Among those who traffic in spoilers, these ruptures of the classic TV dynamic are the greatest compliment fans can pay their favorite shows. The most popular series - action dramas like 24 and Alias; glossy soaps like The O.C.; beloved sitcoms like Friends and Frasier; reality competitions like The Apprentice - have all been the victims of steady leaks. By contrast, notes Amy Amatangelo, who writes the TVGal column at Zap2It.com, "There’s no one begging for Judging Amy spoilers."

For television writers laboring over intricately constructed plots, spoilers can be a special torment.

"They beat me up, they took my lunch money," sighs Joss Whedon, whose productions (including Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the recently canceled Angel) have been longtime sieves for inside information. "I tried to fight them for years, including this year. And I lost.

In the last two years, spoilers have increasingly migrated into newspapers and magazines, sometimes blocked off under special warnings, sometimes simply dished up in gossip columns. But their emergence is tied directly to the lively community of television watchers online, where devoted fans gather to talk about the shows they love - and often directly to the people who make them. On sites like Ain’t It Cool News, Zap2It and E! Online (www.eonline .com), columnists publish spoilers each week, culled from an army of anonymous e-mail tipsters. These items ricochet into the entertainment press, blurring the line between zingy preview and total giveaway.

Many online columnists justify their work with the classic drug-dealer argument: They’re just giving people what they want. But they also say they shouldn’t be scapegoated for the tendency toward revelation, fueled in part by the networks themselves.

"Is there a spoiler site on the Internet as ruinous to fan enjoyment as the Fox network’s promo department?" Hercules, the TV maven at Ain’t It Cool News, argued in an e-mail exchange.

To feed this hunger, such columnists as Hercules depend on a network of secret sources: "Usually office types, I think, at the networks, in the talent agencies, in casting offices, within screaming distance of the writers’ rooms," Hercules said. In an interview, the E! Online columnist Kristin Veitch explained: "I know it sounds funny, because this is just entertainment, but knowledge is power. If you’re a lowly assistant who knows something, you can become a very important source to these big players in the spoiler world."

A few sources are disgruntled employees ("exes are very dangerous," Whedon notes). But the majority of those who distribute spoilers are devoted fans, either working within television production companies or e-mailing with those who do.

TV creators respond in a variety of ways: Some battle the gossip, others harness it as publicity. The producers of Sex and the City cunningly combined the two techniques. First they filmed three separate endings to the series, which went off the air in February, in order to foil leaks, then they publicized the strategy in order to build anticipation for the finale.

Behind the scenes at action shows like Angel, computer files are encrypted with passwords, scripts are doled out with identifying codes and fake tidbits are distributed to flush out in-house moles. On 24, the final scripts are printed on red paper to make them harder to photocopy.

Other television creators have simply given in. The producers of Friends publicly stated that they made no special efforts to prevent spoilers for their season finale. And many creators go the mobster route: They pay protection, letting columnists in on minor intelligence in order to keep them from revealing more shocking twists. ."