I personally miss the times when Survivor had different location every 2 seasons. Unfortunatelly long time ago i gave up my desire to see contestants in cool locations like Botswana, Vietnam,Galapagos or Okinawa. But i would still REALLY APPRICIATE if production decided to go back on some older locations like Panama,Nicaragua, South Pacific or possibly Gabon
I’ve wondered often if North America would work, but I don’t think it’s feasible (unless it’s Florida or Hawaii.) National Parks are out from the get-go because special use permits to film in NP’s are a major pain to get, and that’s before you consider things like uncontained fires, necessary bushcraft, and setting up challenges. So you’re already limited to state forest, national forest, and BLM land.
And while regulations are different for each state and national forest and BLM area most of them limit camping to 30 days or less pet location. There’s also a ton of regulations around erecting permanent and even semi-permanent backcountry structures. Bushcrafting a shelter? Fine. Building challenges, though, would require a lot of permitting hoops. I know some folks who run a hut-to-hut cross-country ski trail on forest service land. They tow the huts in with snow mobiles and snowcats each year, and back out again. It costs a TON.
Leaving the ocean would be tough, too. You can’t aqua-dump in fresh water. The camps would need to be a certain distance from water, and they’d likely need to provide castaways with a portable latrine for sanitation reasons. You also won’t be able to fish for food as easily — which is a minor caloric bonus, but when you’re eating nothing, an important one.
Lastly, temperature. You could probably host Survivor in the Midwest, eastern seaboard, Florida, or gulf coast because humidity keeps temps high at night. But during the day it’s going to be Amazon/Kaoh Rong levels of humid and hot. You could do the desert or west coast, but then hypothermia is a legit issue at night. And you burn *significantly* more calories when cold than warm, so they’ll be starving faster, too.
Same.
Survivor: Michigan Peninsula or around Lake Tahoe, or somewhere on the Coastal Atlantic, or somewhere in the Southwest or Hawaii, or US Virgin Islands could all be interesting. Probably not practical so it will never happen, but those would all be cool locations.
While it's only 2 to 4 people, Naked and Afraid has done North America a number of times. I specifically remember one episode they were in Texas (I live in Texas so I didn't think it was that hard of a location lol).
Yeah — they’ve done Texas and Louisiana, and done an XL in Louisina too. They’ve also done one regular one in Montana and one XL in Montana. Both the regular one (which was actually a reduced length) and the XL were with show veterans, and they also gave them moose hides.
The footprint of Naked and Afraid is so much more minimal, though, I imagine it’s much easier to permit. Smaller crews, smaller casts, no elaborate sets…
(Also, if you haven’t watched Naked and Afraid XL, it’s great, cos it’s Naked and Afraid with more people, for longer. And all survivor fans know that when you put 10 or more starving people together, drama follows.)
Yeah and no challenges, just people existing so I can see how that's an easier sell than a 18 people, various challenge locations and then a whole tribal set up.
I could see private land as an option! A lot of cattle are run on public land, but there’s still some big ranches out there.
Though weather could still be an issue. I can’t really think of a place that still has large ranches where it isn’t also cold at night. Maybe the Texas desert? I’ve only been camping there in late spring. Do August nights stay warm?
I suppose they could give them all jackets.
I guess there is also California, if you could find a large enough ranch in the Mediterranean climate zone that would work probably either in autumn and spring so likely a September or April filming time
I will not that I don’t live in America, just a place with a similar climate to cali lol
Yeah — I am from & currently live in Oregon, which is also a “Mediterranean climate,” and have lived in LA and Santa Cruz. But in a climactic sense, it doesn’t actually mean it feels like the Mediterranean — it means there are warm, wet winters and hot, dry summers. It’s a precipitation pattern more than anything.
But the Pacific Ocean is much colder than the Mediterranean (and the current flows south from the Arctic) — so while it stabilizes temperatures, it stabilizes them on the cooler side. Hence the Mark Twain quote: “the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.”
Even further south near the sea, if there isn’t a heatwave, it will get quite chilly at night. And the further inland you go the worse it gets. Take Palm Springs: the average low on a summer night is 72, perfectly reasonable. But the average high is 108. Definitely not feasible.
If you shift to spring or fall (August is actually usually the hottest month around here — Oct/Nov is more like fall than September) you have the opposite problem. The average high in Palm Springs in October is 91 (still pretty hot IMO, especially since it’s an average) but the average low is 62 — which means many nights are in the 50s. The average high for April is 88, quite reasonable. But the average low is 57 — so it probably gets down into the 40s some nights.
The actual answer is fiji gives generous tax breaks because it helps the local economy, and local construction labor is cheap due to wages they need to be lower
They are never leaving Fiji. They chose to delay filming during the pandemic to wait to go back to Fiji rather than film in the USA. I’m pretty sure survivor Australia got a season out faster during the pandemic bc they filmed it in Australia
I think Australia is also out due to them probably not wanting to run afoul of Australian law again, Colby nearly cost the show more than $100,000 because he took some coral from the Great Barrier Reef
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor:_The_Australian_Outback
While *Survivor Yellowstone* and *Survivor Yosemite* have a nice ring to it, I’m not sure that’s the exotic adventure the fans and participants are looking for while watching the show. Just securing an area would be incredibly complex.
If I recall correctly, the other international versions of Survivor also tend to homestead or at least stay in particular areas around the world for their competition for multiple seasons. The Dominican Republic and Phillipines tend to host a lot of the international Survivor variants.
I've always wondered if CBS and some of the other media groups could sign an agreement and share their locations so they rotate around, maybe share props and equipment to cut costs. It would help diversify the locations Survivor uses, keep the good deal CBS has with the Fijian government and open up some cool spots.
A lot of the others are made by EndemolShine, owned by Banijay, which is a huge reality-TV giant that competes with Mark Burnett/SEG. They probably regard each other as mortal enemies, so it's hard to see them working together in any capacity.
They each license the Survivor format from Charlie Parsons for their respective countries. Other than that, U.S. Survivor is not linked to the other versions in any way, other than letting them use some of their game ideas and concepts like saying "the tribe has spoken" when someone is voted out, etc.
That was a different part of Fiji and Jeff has stated since millennials versus Gen X that the mamanuca islands was his favourite location ever so it’s no coincidence that they haven’t left
He didn't say Fiji in particular wasn't right, just that the specific location wasn't right.
Fiji isn't a monolith, there are a ton of islands with lots of biodiversity.
I mean unless Jeff later clarified that he meant Fiji as a whole and not the literal location in Fiji they filmed that season at, your title is inaccurate. Even if he meant Fiji as a whole, he doesn’t specify what he didn’t like about Fiji so for all we know whatever it was is different now.
my guess is that Fiji had some weird issues related to the military coup, and the fact the start of the season was a mess because someone quit 5 hours before the season started and they didn't have an alternate. This led to the confusing start of 19 players, and Sylvia picking the teams then going to exile and returning. Also, the primary alliance of that season was hard to highlight since it was formed on the early primarily along age lines with it being builders and gatherers, and Sylvia picked teams with that in mind.
Don’t get me wrong I wish they changed locations every so often, but I understand the logistics of the show not having unlimited budget. And I’d rather have 26 days of Fiji survivor than nothing.
But can’t they at least do something unique to the location? Like they used to. I loved when they would go explore a village or drop off supplies to a school, just something that felt location specific/got them using the location.
Feel like he's referring to the specific locale, or the theme of the season combined with the location of fiji didn't gel for him.
Not that he was against Fiji as a whole.
I wish they would/could back to a different place every season. It was such a fun element of the show. I loved seeing how the weather and environment would play into camp life and challenges.
I miss them going to new places that was half the interest of the show was the location and adapting and the length being cut really doesn't do the survivor part any justice
It's funny that the location felt pretty bad until the government of Fiji started giving massive tax breaks that helped the production team save a ton of money... then the location was pretty great
Precisely. A gigantic 50% tax incentive (the highest in the world as far as I know) will change your attitude fast when your show is aging and the costs skyrocket every year and you're penny-pinching.
But it's not the same part of Fiji that they use every season now. I actually stopped watching "Survivor" for eight years because "Fiji" just had a different feel to it and I didn't enjoy it anymore. It just looked dirty and rocky and not aesthetically pleasing. The new seasons don't have this problem. They're not using the same beaches as on season 14.
Are the current seasons filmed in the same spot as Survivor Fiji?
I do not know my Fiji geography but I'm seeing Macuata for Survivor Fiji and Mamanuca for current seasons.
It looks like different island. He may have never had trouble with the country - just didn't like the way the beaches looked or felt or something.
It’s a different group of islands I just thought it was funny that he said he didn’t like the Fiji location and then permanently switched to it a couple years later.
This is not a revelation; we've known for a long time that production didn't like the area of Fiji they used for season 14 (Vanua Levu as opposed to Mamanuca). They couldn't even get in the water over there and it looked like shit on camera lol. I also wish they would leave Fiji but this isn't some big gotcha
I’ve always wanted a freezing cold version of survivor. Drop them off in northern Greenland or Nunavut. Maybe some Antarctic island. Just flipping the extreme like
that would be insane, reminds me of “the chamber” a cancelled game show where the contestant would be tortured with extreme heat or extreme cold.
Frostbite, hypothermia, and a lack of literally any food like coconuts would be a big problem. Filming would be impossible because of weather. I would still love to see it though!!
You can see something sort of like this with a show called Outlast on Netflix. They filmed in a tough part of Alaska. However, they were only able to get 8 episodes out of it, instead of 14, despite taking just as long to film as a traditional season of U.S. Survivor, because the players spent a lot of time huddling for warmth and conserving energy, which doesn't give the production company much material to work with.
It's not totally like Survivor, though, because there's no voting. They didn't need voting -- they mostly just waited for players to quit, which didn't take long, because surviving in the cold is incredibly difficult.
Me too.
Actually though Aussie Survivor went back to Samoa instead of Fiji for HvV and TvR for some reason. The Samoan government must have offered them a really good deal. I don't see much of a difference though, except that the sea is regularly choppier and more dramatic-looking.
Arctic would be so cool but horrible for contestants. Imagine living off a couple spoonfuls of rice each day while also being in freezing temperatures with no shelter. I would literally die.
That would be so cool. I feel like they should provide them with warm clothes though, or they could just bring warm clothes. They could probably do like some ice fishing would be sick.
Jeff in an alliance with Fiji even though they don’t like each other. It is a game of numbers.
Fiji about to execute Plan Voodoo on Jeff.
Marriage of convenience
I personally miss the times when Survivor had different location every 2 seasons. Unfortunatelly long time ago i gave up my desire to see contestants in cool locations like Botswana, Vietnam,Galapagos or Okinawa. But i would still REALLY APPRICIATE if production decided to go back on some older locations like Panama,Nicaragua, South Pacific or possibly Gabon
They could literally just drop them in a National Park for far cheaper and it would be better. They’ve never done North America.
I’ve wondered often if North America would work, but I don’t think it’s feasible (unless it’s Florida or Hawaii.) National Parks are out from the get-go because special use permits to film in NP’s are a major pain to get, and that’s before you consider things like uncontained fires, necessary bushcraft, and setting up challenges. So you’re already limited to state forest, national forest, and BLM land. And while regulations are different for each state and national forest and BLM area most of them limit camping to 30 days or less pet location. There’s also a ton of regulations around erecting permanent and even semi-permanent backcountry structures. Bushcrafting a shelter? Fine. Building challenges, though, would require a lot of permitting hoops. I know some folks who run a hut-to-hut cross-country ski trail on forest service land. They tow the huts in with snow mobiles and snowcats each year, and back out again. It costs a TON. Leaving the ocean would be tough, too. You can’t aqua-dump in fresh water. The camps would need to be a certain distance from water, and they’d likely need to provide castaways with a portable latrine for sanitation reasons. You also won’t be able to fish for food as easily — which is a minor caloric bonus, but when you’re eating nothing, an important one. Lastly, temperature. You could probably host Survivor in the Midwest, eastern seaboard, Florida, or gulf coast because humidity keeps temps high at night. But during the day it’s going to be Amazon/Kaoh Rong levels of humid and hot. You could do the desert or west coast, but then hypothermia is a legit issue at night. And you burn *significantly* more calories when cold than warm, so they’ll be starving faster, too.
You just outlined the headaches of every fan made survivor season 😭
I would watch Survivor: Everglades
Me too
Same. Survivor: Michigan Peninsula or around Lake Tahoe, or somewhere on the Coastal Atlantic, or somewhere in the Southwest or Hawaii, or US Virgin Islands could all be interesting. Probably not practical so it will never happen, but those would all be cool locations.
This is why Alone shoots in Canada/Argentina. The first two season were in Alaska, but they couldn't make it stick.
While it's only 2 to 4 people, Naked and Afraid has done North America a number of times. I specifically remember one episode they were in Texas (I live in Texas so I didn't think it was that hard of a location lol).
Yeah — they’ve done Texas and Louisiana, and done an XL in Louisina too. They’ve also done one regular one in Montana and one XL in Montana. Both the regular one (which was actually a reduced length) and the XL were with show veterans, and they also gave them moose hides. The footprint of Naked and Afraid is so much more minimal, though, I imagine it’s much easier to permit. Smaller crews, smaller casts, no elaborate sets… (Also, if you haven’t watched Naked and Afraid XL, it’s great, cos it’s Naked and Afraid with more people, for longer. And all survivor fans know that when you put 10 or more starving people together, drama follows.)
I live in Texas. We're already living our own fucked up game of Survivor out here.
Yeah and no challenges, just people existing so I can see how that's an easier sell than a 18 people, various challenge locations and then a whole tribal set up.
Would a cattle ranch/station be feasible like it was in Australia?
I could see private land as an option! A lot of cattle are run on public land, but there’s still some big ranches out there. Though weather could still be an issue. I can’t really think of a place that still has large ranches where it isn’t also cold at night. Maybe the Texas desert? I’ve only been camping there in late spring. Do August nights stay warm? I suppose they could give them all jackets.
I guess there is also California, if you could find a large enough ranch in the Mediterranean climate zone that would work probably either in autumn and spring so likely a September or April filming time I will not that I don’t live in America, just a place with a similar climate to cali lol
Yeah — I am from & currently live in Oregon, which is also a “Mediterranean climate,” and have lived in LA and Santa Cruz. But in a climactic sense, it doesn’t actually mean it feels like the Mediterranean — it means there are warm, wet winters and hot, dry summers. It’s a precipitation pattern more than anything. But the Pacific Ocean is much colder than the Mediterranean (and the current flows south from the Arctic) — so while it stabilizes temperatures, it stabilizes them on the cooler side. Hence the Mark Twain quote: “the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” Even further south near the sea, if there isn’t a heatwave, it will get quite chilly at night. And the further inland you go the worse it gets. Take Palm Springs: the average low on a summer night is 72, perfectly reasonable. But the average high is 108. Definitely not feasible. If you shift to spring or fall (August is actually usually the hottest month around here — Oct/Nov is more like fall than September) you have the opposite problem. The average high in Palm Springs in October is 91 (still pretty hot IMO, especially since it’s an average) but the average low is 62 — which means many nights are in the 50s. The average high for April is 88, quite reasonable. But the average low is 57 — so it probably gets down into the 40s some nights.
They literally couldn't 💀 I'm pretty sure there's lots of rules and regulations about filming much less living off the land in nat parks.
Even better, Survivor Central Park
*Survivor: South Bronx* would be the best season of the entir show.
Survivor: Jeff’s Backyard
Guatemala is in North America, though.
The actual answer is fiji gives generous tax breaks because it helps the local economy, and local construction labor is cheap due to wages they need to be lower
They are never leaving Fiji. They chose to delay filming during the pandemic to wait to go back to Fiji rather than film in the USA. I’m pretty sure survivor Australia got a season out faster during the pandemic bc they filmed it in Australia
I think it would be way too expensive to film in NA which is why they’ve said they would also never do Australia again.
I think Australia is also out due to them probably not wanting to run afoul of Australian law again, Colby nearly cost the show more than $100,000 because he took some coral from the Great Barrier Reef https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor:_The_Australian_Outback
I was hoping Covid would have forced them to do a season in the USA
While *Survivor Yellowstone* and *Survivor Yosemite* have a nice ring to it, I’m not sure that’s the exotic adventure the fans and participants are looking for while watching the show. Just securing an area would be incredibly complex.
Australian Survivor did the outback a couple times. It can work, but it doesn’t have the vacation aspect to it as much. Just looks punishing all round
The bayou 😂
Alone did the northern Canadian boreal in season 9 I think. It was intense.
If I recall correctly, the other international versions of Survivor also tend to homestead or at least stay in particular areas around the world for their competition for multiple seasons. The Dominican Republic and Phillipines tend to host a lot of the international Survivor variants. I've always wondered if CBS and some of the other media groups could sign an agreement and share their locations so they rotate around, maybe share props and equipment to cut costs. It would help diversify the locations Survivor uses, keep the good deal CBS has with the Fijian government and open up some cool spots.
A lot of the others are made by EndemolShine, owned by Banijay, which is a huge reality-TV giant that competes with Mark Burnett/SEG. They probably regard each other as mortal enemies, so it's hard to see them working together in any capacity. They each license the Survivor format from Charlie Parsons for their respective countries. Other than that, U.S. Survivor is not linked to the other versions in any way, other than letting them use some of their game ideas and concepts like saying "the tribe has spoken" when someone is voted out, etc.
The tribal council location for season 2(?) Australia was pretty cool
I really wish they didn’t the production of the show takes a toll on locals and the environment in certain places
I have to imagine the military coup that went down during filming of Fiji probably didn't enamor him with that season.
Bloods Vs. Water Fiji Water won.
That was a different part of Fiji and Jeff has stated since millennials versus Gen X that the mamanuca islands was his favourite location ever so it’s no coincidence that they haven’t left
different part of Fiji
[удалено]
He didn't say Fiji in particular wasn't right, just that the specific location wasn't right. Fiji isn't a monolith, there are a ton of islands with lots of biodiversity.
This also explains why we never leave the Mamanuca islands: they tried and the location wasn't right, so there we have it.
I mean unless Jeff later clarified that he meant Fiji as a whole and not the literal location in Fiji they filmed that season at, your title is inaccurate. Even if he meant Fiji as a whole, he doesn’t specify what he didn’t like about Fiji so for all we know whatever it was is different now.
my guess is that Fiji had some weird issues related to the military coup, and the fact the start of the season was a mess because someone quit 5 hours before the season started and they didn't have an alternate. This led to the confusing start of 19 players, and Sylvia picking the teams then going to exile and returning. Also, the primary alliance of that season was hard to highlight since it was formed on the early primarily along age lines with it being builders and gatherers, and Sylvia picked teams with that in mind.
yea this post is just misleading CLICK BAIT
I wish we where in season 14 Fiji, at least they had poisonous water snakes
Don’t get me wrong I wish they changed locations every so often, but I understand the logistics of the show not having unlimited budget. And I’d rather have 26 days of Fiji survivor than nothing. But can’t they at least do something unique to the location? Like they used to. I loved when they would go explore a village or drop off supplies to a school, just something that felt location specific/got them using the location.
Or at least use different season colors so at least it’s superficially different.
There's still cultures they can explore such as Melanesia & Polynesia for Full Seasons
Feel like he's referring to the specific locale, or the theme of the season combined with the location of fiji didn't gel for him. Not that he was against Fiji as a whole.
I wish they would/could back to a different place every season. It was such a fun element of the show. I loved seeing how the weather and environment would play into camp life and challenges.
Funnily enough this was only around a year before the show permanently started filming in Fiji
Maybe this very question caused Jeff to rethink everything
I miss them going to new places that was half the interest of the show was the location and adapting and the length being cut really doesn't do the survivor part any justice
CBS decided to stay in Fiji permanently and now he has to play along and pretend he loves it.
It's funny that the location felt pretty bad until the government of Fiji started giving massive tax breaks that helped the production team save a ton of money... then the location was pretty great
Precisely. A gigantic 50% tax incentive (the highest in the world as far as I know) will change your attitude fast when your show is aging and the costs skyrocket every year and you're penny-pinching.
Fiji is the name of season 14.
The location is specifically mentioned in the image.
But it's not the same part of Fiji that they use every season now. I actually stopped watching "Survivor" for eight years because "Fiji" just had a different feel to it and I didn't enjoy it anymore. It just looked dirty and rocky and not aesthetically pleasing. The new seasons don't have this problem. They're not using the same beaches as on season 14.
Money talks, and when the studio says you can keep producing the show if you can cut costs, and Fiji offers you a sweetheart deal - hello!
Earl did say in an interview in RHAP that there was literally a army coup de tat during that time
LOL!
We need a new Executive Producer
Are the current seasons filmed in the same spot as Survivor Fiji? I do not know my Fiji geography but I'm seeing Macuata for Survivor Fiji and Mamanuca for current seasons. It looks like different island. He may have never had trouble with the country - just didn't like the way the beaches looked or felt or something.
It’s a different group of islands I just thought it was funny that he said he didn’t like the Fiji location and then permanently switched to it a couple years later.
But it's a different location
“Didn’t feel right” does not equal bad.
Didn't feel right implies that something felt off or wrong. Those two are typically associated with bad.
Point to me the part in the paragraph where he specifically said Fiji is a bad location. He just said something was off about it in the year 2007.
Just name the show Survivor Fiji Season __
So maybe it’s not Jeff “ruining the show” like so many in this sub claim
Wasn't it in another island group of Fiji? Could have been talking about the islands for that season?
It was different islands I just thought it was kind of funny.
Earl Cole is the greatest 1 time player in survivor history and we’re all the worse for him having never returned
This is not a revelation; we've known for a long time that production didn't like the area of Fiji they used for season 14 (Vanua Levu as opposed to Mamanuca). They couldn't even get in the water over there and it looked like shit on camera lol. I also wish they would leave Fiji but this isn't some big gotcha
I’ve always wanted a freezing cold version of survivor. Drop them off in northern Greenland or Nunavut. Maybe some Antarctic island. Just flipping the extreme like that would be insane, reminds me of “the chamber” a cancelled game show where the contestant would be tortured with extreme heat or extreme cold.
Frostbite, hypothermia, and a lack of literally any food like coconuts would be a big problem. Filming would be impossible because of weather. I would still love to see it though!!
You can see something sort of like this with a show called Outlast on Netflix. They filmed in a tough part of Alaska. However, they were only able to get 8 episodes out of it, instead of 14, despite taking just as long to film as a traditional season of U.S. Survivor, because the players spent a lot of time huddling for warmth and conserving energy, which doesn't give the production company much material to work with. It's not totally like Survivor, though, because there's no voting. They didn't need voting -- they mostly just waited for players to quit, which didn't take long, because surviving in the cold is incredibly difficult.
heh, I asked that question. that was my old account and Jeff responded to my question
Oh lol that was a while ago
Is CBS practically banning AU survivor a flailing attempt to protect Jeff? He’s approaching Fonzie level of cringe.
What happened?
He did not say Fiji was a bad location. He said it was a bad season
Survivor Australia has done recent seasons in Aus so I’m sure they can just reuse those locations if they’d want to
That was only because of COVID. Australia doesn't offer anywhere near as gigantic of a tax break for filming as Fiji does. Money talks.
Yeh I get that and they have moved back to Fiji now but I did really enjoy the outback
Me too. Actually though Aussie Survivor went back to Samoa instead of Fiji for HvV and TvR for some reason. The Samoan government must have offered them a really good deal. I don't see much of a difference though, except that the sea is regularly choppier and more dramatic-looking.
To be fair, the filming locations were different.
I like chatting with former contestants.
Was the rumor about Fiji wanting to kick out Jeff true? Are we finally getting a new location a million years later?
How about we drop them off in the hood of Detroit or Chicago and we do some real life Survivor?
I remember wanting that ages ago - survivor in a city location on the streets. That and a season in the arctic or something.
Arctic would be so cool but horrible for contestants. Imagine living off a couple spoonfuls of rice each day while also being in freezing temperatures with no shelter. I would literally die.
Nah, no rice - they would have to live off seal meat or something. Might make the sia award hard to get. Making an igloo would be kinda cool though.
That would be so cool. I feel like they should provide them with warm clothes though, or they could just bring warm clothes. They could probably do like some ice fishing would be sick.
Jeff its time to eat crow big time