One of the few Day 1 employees still working on Survivor, co-executive producer, and challenges mastermind, John Kirhoffer sees at least five more years of the show.
Despite Survivor more and more resembling a trinket scavenger hunts on the three familiar beaches in Fiji rather than a world-traveling social experiment, the ratings are still holding strong for what remains the best reality competition program on television. A big part of that comes with the challenges, as many of the tribe-oriented challenges remain spectacles.
That’s thanks to John Kirhoffer, the challenge producer who has worked with host and showrunner Jeff Probst since the beginning in making the players fight through marvelous obstacles and difficult tasks for almost 20 years. With Dalton Ross on location in Fiji, he interviewed Kirhoffer and fellow producer Christopher Marchand, reflecting upon challenges of the past.
In addition to strolling down memory lane, Ross asked Kirhoffer about the vibe heading into filming Survivor season 40 (which is currently ongoing), as well as the longevity of the series. In asking if the show makes it to season 50, both Kirhoffer and Marchand agreed in thinking we will see Survivor season 50 on television.
Marchand was a bit more poetic, explaining, “We’re baseball. People love baseball. The same fans that love baseball aren’t the same fans that love Survivor, but they watch it the same. They watch it like it’s a sporting event.”
While I agree that there’s the same kind of reverence and continued support from fans despite its longevity (just like a baseball team’s fans over its 162-game seasons), the treatment of this competition like a sporting event continues what is arguably the downward spiral of the show’s quality, becoming more of a spectacle of big movez and advantages over character development and telling stories.
However, the fact that two of the show’s producers want, and foresee, a Survivor season 50 means that we have five more years of opportunities to turn the ship around ahead of its 25th-year anniversary!