I have been watching Survivor since I was in the womb—literally. In the summer of 2000, much like the other 15 million viewers of the premiere, my mother was on vacation in Florida—a fitting viewing location—and tuned in to “The Marooning,” where 16 strangers were left on an island to rely on each other to survive while simultaneously competing against those same “tribemates” to win a million dollars. Each week, after competing in challenges for rewards and immunity, they would vote one of the other castaways off the island until there was one “sole survivor.” Hosted by the charismatically rugged Jeff Probst donning his now iconic fishing shirts, the show’s first season was wildly successful, even with its bare-bones production and now somewhat laughable challenges—Survivor archery anyone?—it was a phenomenon.
Survivor spurred the explosion of reality television in the 2000s, inspiring things like The Amazing Race and Big Brother. Also, upon seeing the success of the show and audiences being enthralled not just by the competition but by the social aspect, it inspired programs like American Idol, The Bachelor, and even Jersey Shore. Now, 23 years later, through massive production changes, filming deals with Fiji, and a handful of controversies, Survivor continues to endure as one of TV’s most-watched shows.
Astonishingly, 45 seasons later, amongst the slow death of broadcast television, Survivor continues to draw heavy viewership. It was one of only three non-football-related shows to receive a 1.0 rating for the 2022-2023 season and had an 83% increase in streaming viewership compared to last year. Also, this season’s ratings have stayed relatively consistent for live viewership, averaging 4.9 million weekly viewers. And in its just-aired Season 45 finale, 4.53 million viewers sat down to watch live, in a 6% increase from last season’s finale, and on Paramount+, viewership was up 27% from Season 44’s final episode. Live TV viewership continues to sink lower year by year, so how has Survivor stayed relevant for over two decades?
Obviously, the biggest draw will continue to be the novelty of stranding strangers on an island and seeing what connections they form—that’s the heart of the show. However, there is also a perceived sense of simplicity when you take away basic necessities that create an arguably more realistic picture of the contestants. Most reality television allows the space for people to become these larger-than-life caricatures, but the desolation of the island makes that impossible. How can you put on a show when you are starving every day? But controlling those performances is the best way to win the game. Revealing truths at the right time, lying when necessary, and trying to trust people—aspects of this game scarily and accurately mirror the nuances of daily life. However, in Survivor, these choices dictate whether you win a million dollars rather than determine whether or not your co-workers like you.
The idea that how you treat people becomes the real currency is an intriguing commentary on the real world. I can’t tell you how many hours I have spent discussing how certain decisions contestants made reflect on them as a person or how that is a larger depiction of society as a whole based on how people reacted. That’s what has become larger than life in Survivor: the existential impact that a reality TV show has on conversations about the state of the world. Survivor has always been branded as a social experiment, but I think an unintentional effect has become the important conversations it spurred outside the game. It’s almost become a time capsule of general society in a way no other media has done. The endless hours of anthropological conversation bring me back every season.
Basic voyeurism aside, the mirror of our society that the Survivor team has created will always remain relevant because people are constantly changing. Society is always changing. So, how people react in particular situations, even if it’s the same immunity challenge or game move, will continuously change. Probst is always saying how the game is evolving—to an exhaustive degree at times—but he’s right. The new school players are students of the game, and production has to keep up with them outsmarting the old version of the game by throwing in twists.
Unlike the flashiness of other reality shows, Survivor didn’t need ridiculous producer-crafted storylines initially because strangers eating rats on an island was enticing enough. The contestants created the drama themselves. Am I going to have enough to eat today? Will the shelter hold up? Who can I trust to tell me the truth? It was all laid out for them by the circumstances these “survivors” were thrown into. Yet that doesn’t absolve the show from succumbing to what it is—a reality TV show. With that comes the inevitable push from networks for more intrigue, so that’s where the numerous advantages, mushy storylines, and ridiculous drone shots come in. While some of these changes—like a general social awareness—have been for the better, some have been flops. But season to season, Survivor is willing to embrace audience feedback in a way that most other reality offerings don’t.
Survivor’s ability to revamp and willingness to listen to its audience about its format has kept the core fanbase devoted to the show and brought in new viewers. There has been such a unique balance in the “new era” of bringing back the original’s charming simplicity to evolve with the many years of being on air. The main focus of the soft reboot is bringing back the survival aspect. The contestants are being given less food, punished by getting their flint taken away, and—to my dismay—getting rid of season themes.
Surprisingly, one of the significant factors in the success of the “new era” was the pandemic pause, which killed a lot of other programming. During the beginning of the shutdown, Survivor’s monumental 40th season, “Winners at War,” was one of the few shows with new content broadcasting on network TV. Bringing back past players for the “pandemic season” was the perfect recipe to get past fans back to the show to see their favorites and introduce the show to people stuck at home during quarantine looking for something new to watch.
Following the conclusion of “Winners at War,” there was a lengthy period off from filming—the first break in the show’s then 20-year history—which allowed host and executive producer Jeff Probst to sit down and reevaluate the show with former contestant and TV/film producer Mike White. Season 40 felt like a fitting end to the original era of the beloved show by crowning the greatest of all the winners, and the best way to move forward after a grand finale is to refresh and restart. The hiatus follow-up, Season 41, reflected a more aware society, which unintentionally has become a considerable part of the new era, with political and social issues influencing the contestants’ decisions way more heavily. This “woke” Survivor, as certain people like to call it, is something that a public more attuned to social issues needed to stay invested.
Although many people tune in to TV shows to escape what’s happening in the real world, the societal bleed has always been an integral piece to Survivor’s success because, even though it is “just a game,” who people are will always influence how they play the game. The pressure of the outside world will always weigh on people’s decisions. Like in Season 41, the all-Black alliance—unofficially called “The Campout” by fans—made up of Shan Smith, Liana Wallace, Danny McCray, and Deshawn Radden, was a struggle between remaining loyal to a bigger societal issue or self-preservation in an attempt to win the game.
However, this isn’t a recent phenomenon in the show. Some of the most shocking moments in Survivor history came from people’s identities playing a factor in the game. Sometimes, the line between character and human being is blurred to a damaging point. In Season 34, Jeff Varner outed Zeke Smith’s identity as a transgender man to try to use the information as a pawn in the game. It was a devastating moment to watch air on television, resulting in backlash from the contestants in the game and in the real world. Smith’s brutal honesty and bravery in that moment is one of the most progressive beats in the show’s history. This was also the first time the artificial “mirror” of society was shattered, and we were all left with the weighty reality that these are real people.
These candid discussions of race, gender, and sexuality are where another piece of the puzzle of how Survivor has remained popular falls in—the draw of the contestants. Some of the most infamous reality TV personalities have graced the islands of Survivor, like “Boston Rob” Mariano, Sandra Diaz-Twine, Tony Vlachos, Parvati Shallow, Cirie Fields, John Cochran, Jeremy Collins, Benjamin “Coach” Wade, and, of course, Russell Hantz. With just that list alone, you hit so many different tropes: the anti-hero, the villain, the hero, the underdog, and the mother figure. Honestly, some of those titles could apply to more than one person on that list, depending on which season of theirs you are watching.
These contestants—or characters, probably a better word for them—all bring their own narratives to the show for production to craft into a compelling story. In the “new era,” people have come onto the show with incredibly harrowing or inspiring stories that make you root for them outside the gameplay. In the older seasons, we heard bits and pieces about the players weaved into confessionals or through questions Probst asked, but now contestants’ backstories are an integral part of the show. These “sob story” narratives have been met with mixed reactions from fans. It’s almost as if you now have to have some sort of tragic background to be on the show, or they make something more trivial into your “sob story,” which has led to some borderline satirical moments.
However, now that people get to hear more about the contestants in this new format, I have seen an uptick in the audience forming parasocial relationships with these contestants, who, in most cases, are just regular people. The number of Tweets I have seen during Season 45 from fans stanning or crushing on the contestants feels like I’ve been thrown back into my middle school fangirl phase. A particular standout has been the motherification of financial analyst Emily Flippen—which I fully approve of. The voices surrounding Survivor discourse online have started to reflect Gen Z slang, which denotes a renewed longevity for the show—something that should not be taken lightly 23 years into its run.
The Survivor community of contestants and fans is one of the most underrated parts of keeping the show relevant. Although live programming has become few and far between, audiences crave live community interaction online. Even outside of the reality TV sphere, the weekly releases of Euphoria and Succession make for event television and ultimately build a community around the shared experience. With Survivor, though, that community is 23 years in the making, so any new fan can come into the fold immediately with millions of people to discuss the show with. Every week, when my friends and I watch the show, we hop on Twitter between commercial breaks to see who fans are criticizing or what jokes they are making—it’s added another layer to the show.
While a vital component of the show is deception—from the players and the editors—Survivor continues to be more real than ever. That’s what is making people stick around. It’s uplifting to see your favorite contestant succeed, like rooting for your favorite football team. It makes you feel like you are winning too. Maybe that’s what keeps people coming back—that thrill of predicting the winner or watching the underdog rise from the bottom. Or perhaps it’s the intrigue of seeing an everyday person discovering themselves out there that makes us feel alive. Whatever it is, as long as the show stays on the air, I will continue to gush about it to friends (some of whom I’ve converted into die-hard fans), and remain in awe of how compelled I am by watching people I have never met try to win a million dollars—or, more accurately, how in awe I am of Jeff Probst’s endless collection of fishing shirts.
Olivia Abercrombie is an Austin-based music writer for Paste Magazine who occasionally shares her overindulgence of TV and film. To hear more of her takes on femme music, horror films or general media obsession of the week you can follow her @o_abercrombie.
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