Survivor ratings: Season 35 episode 4 takes back Wednesday night

With fledgling support for Empire, Survivor ratings for season 35 episode 4, “I Don’t Like Having Snakes Around,” stood out very strongly.

For the longest time, Survivor stood as the Wednesday night viewership leader and a top 3 or top 5 player in terms of ratings/share for the 18-49 adult demographic. The fact that kind of success ran through Survivor season 35, showing a testament to versatility, dynamic play and excellent casting to keep the show surprisingly relevant close to two decades after it all started.

What goes around comes around, as the Survivor ratings are in to show that it has returned as the top overall program of Wednesday night in all categories. In viewership, its 8.12 million viewers is a million and ten-thousand viewers better than second place on the night, SEAL Team (the show it leads in for). Besides Modern Family, now other show reached even 6 million viewers.

When it comes to the key demographic, Survivor season 35 episode 4 saw a 1.8/7 ratings/share split. That ties with Empire for the best on the night, with close to two and a half million more viewers watching CBS air a tribal swap, two challenges, a secret advantage play and an awesome Tribal Council. The stars aligned, as it was a truly amazing episode for Survivor to return to ratings excellence with.

Especially being the top program of Wednesday night, CBS has nothing to worry about with Survivor. In fact, with SEAL Team starting to sag in terms of viewership, we could be in for a situation where we get an extended merge episode should the drama program need to take a week off in the near future. We still haven’t seen an extended episode this season, and now it looks like there won’t be one into the second week of November.

Survivor season 35 episode 5, “The Past Will Eat You Alive,” airs on October 25 at 8 p.m. ET.