How ‘Survivor’ revolutionized television 25 years ago today

On May 31, 2000, a bold and inventive new program would debut on network television looking to completely upend traditional broadcast norms and change television as we know it. But enough about Clerks: The Animated Series. (Seriously, viewers did indeed have enough after a single episode. The ABC cartoon adaption of the Kevin Smith indie film was canceled a mere week later.)

However, another new show premiered that same evening, and that show remade the television landscape more than any other program over the past 50 years. At 8 p.m. ET that night on the Columbia Broadcast System, viewers were treated to something they had never seen before, as average Americans just like them scrambled for supplies on a boat and then plunged into the ocean to begin a previously unfathomable adventure for contestants and viewers alike. That adventure was titled Survivor.

Reality competition television is so ingrained into popular culture now that it is almost impossible for anyone under the age of 30 to truly comprehend just how seismic a shift the Survivor premiere was to an American viewing audience in the year 2000. The pre-Survivor network broadcast schedule for the fall 1999 season was a typical smorgasbord of scripted dramas (The West Wing) and comedies (Just Shoot Me) with a sprinkling of news magazine programs, ABC’s recent smash hit game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and the unfortunate existence of something called Shasta McNasty.

That was the setting in which creator Mark Burnett and CBS decided to do something crazy: stick 16 strangers on an island filled with cameras and not much else, and then watch them build a society from scratch while simultaneously voting each other off the island in the pursuit of $1 million. No scripts. No stars (even host Jeff Probst was mostly an unknown, his biggest credit being handling Rock & Roll Jeopardy! duties on VH1). And pretty much no rules.

It was unlike anything and everything that came before it. Audiences were transfixed. Whether it was Richard Hatch perched in a tree just minutes into the game literally talking down to everyone, truck driver Sue Hawk mincing no words in her reaction, or Rudy Boesch almost instantaneously becoming America’s favorite crotchety old grandpa, viewers immediately latched onto the players they loved, loved to hate, or hated to love. And television would never be the same.

An astonishing 51.7 million watched Richard the snake beat Kelly Wiglesworth the rat in the season finale of Survivor (later retitled Survivor: Borneo). In turn, approximately 51 million other reality competition programs were put into production. Some — like The Bachelor, American Idol, The Amazing Race, The Mole, Dancing with the Stars, Temptation Island, and the soon to be rebooted Fear Factor — are still around in some form or fashion today. Big Brother even somehow survived a disastrous first season to become a 25-year standby as well.

Many more — Boot Camp, The Family, The Will, Love Cruise, not one but two iterations of I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, to name just a few — barely made a ripple and were voted off the broadcast network island.

For a while, it seemed pretty much anything could be made into a reality competition series, even if the purpose of those shows remained vague at best. ABC trotted out something called All American Girl in which women competed to be the… well, All American Girl, whatever that was. The network went so deep down the reality competition rabbit hole they also aired a celebrity impersonator contest called The Next Best Thing. Suffice it to say… it was not.

Burnett alone had his own sizable stable of reality follow-ups to Survivor, including, but certainly not limited to, The Apprentice, Rock Star, The Contender, The Restaurant, Boarding House: North Shore, On the Lot, Shark Tank, and The Voice.

The point is, reality competition series were suddenly everywhere after Survivor… for better or for worse. The vast majority, if not all, of these entries lacked the originality, the spark, and the incredible production values of the original. A big part of Survivor’s legacy as it sets off to Fiji to begin filming its landmark 50^th season is not just its own amazing staying power, but the power it demonstrated in completely changing the face of television. And the television schedule.

In that quaint pre-Survivor landscape, summer TV was a dumping ground for reruns and shows that were being burned off because they were not worthy of being aired during the advertiser-important fall and spring seasons. (Hence, Clerks: The Animated Series.) After Survivor, which aired its first season from May 31 through Aug. 23, original summer programming became essential, with other longtime reality standouts like American Idol and Dancing With the Stars also beginning their dominant runs in the summer.

Summer schedules since have been filled with other shows like Big Brother, Love Island USA, and various iterations of The Bachelor franchise keeping viewers entertained and/or enraged ever since. And new entries (like NBC’s Destination X, which debuted earlier this week) are always on the way. No other program has been as influential in terms of both the types of shows being made and when they were shown.

You could certainly make a case that the first Netflix streaming series could, in theory, compete with Survivor for most impactful, game-changing program of the past 50 years, but do you really want to put all your eggs in the Lilyhammer basket? Since Lilyhammer was a Norwegian series merely licensed by Netflix and House of Cards was the first program produced by the streamer, the latter certainly had a big influence on where TV is seen. But the House of Cards production itself, while very good, was nowhere near as wildly different as Survivor and would have been right at home as another gritty antihero drama on HBO.

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In fact, Survivor kicked off an entire genre that is now all over Netflix. The Circle, Love is Blind, Squid Game: The Challenge, Outlast, and the aforementioned Temptation Island and The Mole all owe a debt to Survivor as Netflix productions. As does the buzziest streaming reality competition show of all, Peacock’s The Traitors… which just happens to star several Survivor alums every season.

Survivor’s influence continues to be felt directly and indirectly 25 years to the day after it first premiered on May 31, 2000. And judging by the enthusiasm over next spring’s Survivor 50, it doesn’t look to fade anytime soon.