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Storyline 05/11/2023 THE REMAINING SIX CASTAWAYS MUST GET THE BALL ROLLING TO WIN A RELAXING EVENING AT THE SANCTUARY, ON “SURVIVOR,” WEDNESDAY, MAY 17
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“I’m the Bandit” – Castaways must get the ball rolling in the right direction at the reward challenge to win a relaxing evening at the sanctuary. Then, with only six castaways left, it is an emotional struggle to decide which castaway will be going home, on SURVIVOR, Wednesday, May 17 (8:00-9:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network, and available to stream live and on demand on Paramount+*
CBS has announced that two popular, longtime reality competition franchises will be supersized this fall. Survivor and The Amazing Race will air 90-minute episodes on Wednesday nights all season, instead of their customary hour-long installments. Survivor will air from 8-9:30pmET while The Amazing Race will follow from 9:30-11pmET.
The move helps protect the CBS schedule in the event that the current writers' strike continues into and through the summer, when writers' rooms on network shows are normally in full swing. The last writers' strike in 2007-2008 lasted 100 days, and there is belief among some that the current work stoppage could go even longer.
Fans — and many in production — have long clamored for extended Survivor episodes. CBS has experimented in the past by occasionally airing 90-minute installments and two episodes back-to-back in a two-hour block. On Sept. 28 last fall, the network gave a preview of things to come by airing 90-minute episodes of Survivor and The Amazing Race together. The 35th season of The Amazing Race, which will air in the fall, was shot last year, while Survivor 45 is currently filming in Fiji.
While both shows always have plenty of extra material — Survivor shoots 24 hours a day — it will be interesting to see if there are any format changes to either series to account for the extra time now available on screen. For example, will Survivor start staging more reward challenges now that they have approximately 20 more minutes of non-commercial time to play with?
These are not likely to be the last moves made by network reality TV if the writers' strike continues. Disney has already announced that Dancing with the Stars is heading back to ABC, and there is always the possibility of the ultimate schedule-filler coming into play. That would be Big Brother, which in its 23-year history on CBS has aired anywhere from three to six times a week. During the last writers' strike, the network rushed a special spring season onto the schedule to help fill gaps, and there is also the chance of another celebrity edition of the show, which CBS has aired three times.
But even without the writers' strike, the move to longer Survivor and Amazing Race episodes makes scheduling sense. In its currently airing 44th season, Survivor remains Wednesday night's highest-rated program in the advertiser-friendly 18-49 demographic, and The Amazing Race has been a solid, if unspectacular, performer throughout the years, even as CBS has moved it around its schedule into different seasons of the year and different nights of the week. If the shows perform well in the fall at their new extended runtimes, the move to 90 minutes could be permanent.
For Survivor fans, to have that extra footage given and then taken away would be perhaps the most devastating blindside of all.
Jeff, Brittany, and Jay unpack the latest episode including Yam Yam's epic individual immunity win and Carolyn getting mad at everyone at tribal - including Jeff! Then, the crew dives into all of your unanswered questions from: how long can players go without food during the show to the ground rules all players must follow while on the island. They also answer your questions about the live finale, the famous gross food eating challenge, and more!
Jeff Probst gives it his all while hosting Survivor. And the guy has come across some dangerous foes over 44 seasons. He's been knocked into by waves, had to fend off the caustic comebacks of Jonathan Penner, and even survived a multi-season fling with a cowboy hat. But none of those necessarily proved to be super dangerous.
However, the host and showrunner had one frightening moment in the line of duty that was legitimately life-threatening, and he has now revealed the harrowing incident in full detail on the latest episode of his On Fire with Jeff Probst podcast.
It is no secret that this Survivor reporter has long been obsessed with some of the hilarious vote delivery scenes of yesteryear. There was that time Probst took a helicopter and taxi to deliver the final votes from Marquesas all the way to Central Park. Or the time he brought the votes from the Amazon all the way to midtown Manhattan via jet ski and subway, as one does.
Probst even once revealed to me a secret skateboarding scene that never aire. Yes, they actually filmed Probst delivering the final Tribal Council votes on a skateboard. RELEASE THE FOOTAGE, YOU COWARDS!
But it appears none of these epic entries come close to matching the drama that took place while filming the vote delivery scene for 2004's Survivor: Vanuatu. The side-splitting sequence shows Probst leaving Tribal Council in the South Pacific, bushwhacking through the jungle, boarding a plane that looks straight out of an Indiana Jones movie, jumping out of the plane (!!!), skydiving to the ground, and then motorcycling the votes to CBS Television City in Hollywood. If you've never seen it, do yourself a favor and bear witness right now.
But as smooth as Probst looks in that epic montage, it seems the shoot was anything but. At least when it came to the skydiving. In fact, at one point it looked like the host of the planet's greatest reality show was going to plummet to his death. Probst explains on the latest episode of his podcast that since he was doing a solo jump, all of his practice jumps were also solo. All he had to do was follow the instructions.
"When you skydive, they tell you two things," Probst explains. "Check your altimeter, which tells you how high you are, and check your horizon line to make sure your body is oriented right. And you're supposed to pull your chute at 5,500 feet."
The problem was, by his sixth jump, Probst was getting pretty confident. Too confident, it turns out. "I check my altimeter, and then I look at the horizon, and I decide to take in beautiful California. So I'm just looking at the horizon and thinking, this is amazing. And I look down at my altimeter and it says 4,500 feet."
That's when the panic started to set in. "So suddenly I go, 'Oh my God!' And what they teach you to do is wave your arms together like an X. That lets everybody know, I'm pulling my chute. And they tell you very specifically, when you reach back to pull you chute, when you grab it, punch out to make sure none of your clothing gets tangled up. So I reach back and I punch out and my chute goes up. I'm like. "Oh, thank God."
The host thought he was okay at that point, but he thought wrong. "The next thing they teach you is to ask yourself two questions: Is it there, meaning, is your parachute above your head? And is it square? Is it there and is it square? I look up. Is it there? Yes. Is it square? No, meaning it doesn't have four points. It has not opened. This is no lie."
While I personally would have been wetting myself at this point, the host of Survivor is apparently made of much stronger stuff, because he remembered exactly what to do in such a predicament. "In that case they said to scissor kick. So I'm at 4,400 feet. I'm quickly getting close to the ground, and I scissor kick, and the chute opens."
What Probst did not know at the time he landed safe and sound is that not only did he see his own life flash before his eyes at 4,500 feet, but he almost took someone out with him! That's because when Probst failed to open his chute at the proper height, one of the safety instructors above him in the air flew down to open it for him… and got there right as the host reached out and punched it himself — also punching the instructor in the nose at 4,500 feet. "He said he had a brown out," reveals Probst. "He said, 'For a second, I passed out and then I came back.'"
In the end, Probst nailed the jump, and they got one of the greatest shots in Survivor history, even if it still causes the host's hands to start sweating every time he tells the story. "One of the scariest times of my life."
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