Something a little different today — my exclusive report from the live season 50 finale of Survivor last night, which included a first for the show after all these years: host Jeff Probst’s on-air flub, which revealed a key spoiler (and was handled with great aplomb; more on that below).
But, overall, it was a major milestone in entertainment, which was barely more than nodded at by the trade press — because why acknowledge anything that’s not a superhero movie, or a dark, anti-hero-driven adult dramatic series?
Survivor‘s big finale, however, was significant not just because it was a landmark event. It also offered many lessons on how entertainment can endure — even as the world falls to pieces all around it.
Consider: When Survivor debuted in 2000 as the top-rated show of the year, the other shows in the top 10 were ER, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, Friends, Monday Night Football, Everybody Loves Raymond, Law & Order and The Practice. Also near the top: The West Wing, Will & Grace, Becker, Frasier and Just Shoot Me.
Few of those shows made it out of the decade. Almost all — including the many that were very great — suggested a TV diet that was much more formal and institutional: scripted workplace comedies and dramas, genres that largely hadn’t changed much in 30 years.
In came Survivor, an unscripted (and initially very raw) show with a cast that no writer could have dreamed up. The first winner — an openly gay man who decided to play the season naked — made it safe to be a villain on network TV, just as Tony Soprano was lighting up his first cigars on HBO (The Sopranos debuted the year before Survivor). The season one finale was watched in part by an astounding 125 million people, Nielsen estimated — a breakthrough with a freight train that changed television forever. Survivor laid the groundwork for the raw, low-production shows that would appear on YouTube a few years later — and its influence extends all the way down to the influencer world of today. It made clear that ordinary people playing themselves could not just compete with glitzy Hollywood stars — they could blow them out of the water.
It’s a lesson that paved the way for… everything.
And through it all — through the arrival of the digital age, the invention of the iPhone, through Sept. 11, Covid, Jan. 6, four presidents, the surge of cable and then of streaming, Prestige TV, Peak TV, the downfall of the monoculture – Survivor has kept on going, not the very top show in television but winning its time slot decade after decade.
On-site at the finale in Los Angeles, the mood was fairly electrifying — even by the standards and on-air conditioning of intensely hyped-up television events. The 1,400-seat stage was abuzz with murmurs at each of the many, many past Survivor giants who traipsed through. The number of stars this show has created over its 50 seasons, and keeps creating, is staggering — at a time when Hollywood mourns its inability to mint new stars.
While it may not dominate the airwaves like it once did — I mean, who, anywhere, comes close to that anymore? — the Survivor-sphere remains a potent and very active force, to all appearances impervious to any wild swing the world’s culture can throw at it. (It should also be emphasized that Survivor is a global, not a U.S. phenomenon. Although it exploded to prominence here, the original show, picked up by producer Mark Burnett, was Swedish, and today the format is licensed and produced for local versions in 40 countries.)
So how does Survivor do it? When you talk about “Outwit, Outplay, Outlast” — the show’s famous tagline — and look at all the shows, films, stars, even studios that have come and gone while Survivor keeps going, that motto can be applied to the show’s own endurance.
From my on-the-ground fact-finding, I came up with a few rules behind its success — rules that all of Hollywood, frankly, would do well to heed. I also had a chat backstage with the creator himself, Burnett, before the broadcast.
Read on for my exclusive findings from live at the finale. The tribe has spoken, and I was taking notes.
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