Divide 18 strangers into three "tribes"; drop them on remote islands with little food and no shelter, and have them outwit and outplay one another until the last competitor standing is crowned the winner of a $1 million prize.When the adventure reality game show "Survivor" debuted on CBS in May 2000, nothing like it had been seen on American television before.Asked to describe the series, "Survivor" host and showrunner Jeff Probst said, "It is a social experiment, in that it takes a group of people who don't know each other, and forces them to rely on each other, while playing this game where you vote each other out."Probst invited "Sunday Morning" to watch this experiment for ourselves, in Fiji, as he began taping Season 48, which premieres on CBS and Paramount+ this Wednesday.
Asked if he still gets nervous hosting the series for the 48th time, Probst replied, "I don't get nervous on 'Survivor.' It's weird.I've never gotten nervous.
I lean into it.I love the uncertainty."And it's this uncertainty that's made "Survivor" one of the most popular shows on television for a quarter of a century.
The show averages around 6 million viewers an episode.In the past 24 years, fans have collectively watched ten-and-a-half billion hours."When I knew 'Survivor' was going to be interesting was the first day of the first season," said Probst, "when we abandoned everybody on the beach, and Richard Hatch – who ended up winning the first season – got up in a power position in a tree.
And he was looking down on everyone, and he said, 'I think we should all talk!' And Sue Hawk, a truck driver from Wisconsin, looked up and said, 'Where I'm from, we work while we talk.'"While Probst had no doubt, "Survivor" almost didn't happen.Mark Burnett, the British TV producer behind hits like "The Apprentice" and "Shark Tank" (and now President Trump's newly-appointed special envoy to the United Kingdom), re-imagined a Swedish reality series ("Expedition: Robinson") and took his idea to ...