Survivor 2017: Ratings Dip But Game Changers Wins The Night

Last night’s premiere of Survivor 2017 with the 2-hour Game Changers debut was a fantastic night of Survivor, but the fans didn’t show up in the numbers its seen in the past.

Comparing things from the last spring to this season’s opener numbers saw a drop from 1.9 to 1.7 this year but still managed to draw 7.61 million viewers (8.2M a year ago) to win the night overall in that category, a record low for the series. So what’s going on?

Survivor does better with its fall season premieres (last year was a 2.3 rating and three years before that drew an average of 11.5 million), so there’s some of the trouble, but where was everyone?

Checking out our poll that I put up preseason, a very non-scientific poll as we don’t reach out to anyone, I asked if our readers preferred all new castaways, mix of new & vets, or all vets for the cast. Guess what was the lowest picked option? All Vets. Guess what this season is. All Vets. (At the time of publishing, All Vets has 21%, Mix of New/Vets has 24%, and the majority went for All New with 55%.)

I definitely tend to groan at the retread of past contestants but it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere (hello, BBCAN5 cast) but CBS brass for sure seems to love it. I get the idea. They have a built in fanbase and expect that to draw the numbers, but what I really enjoy is meeting new game players, seeing how they’ll handle the game, and discovering who I’m going to root for and who will make me cringe. That’s pretty much already decided when they bring in the Vets. There’s no joy of shiny new toys.

However, last night’s Survivor was awesome! It was a great premiere and I’m actually glad it ran for two hours. Those 90-min ones are too short for two rounds of events and too long for one round. And of course Big Brother needs a full two hours for its season finale, but if those are Survivor’s strongest premieres then they aren’t going to change that.

Despite Survivor 2017 having our readers least favorite cast offering I’m hoping fans come around to this season. There’s a lot of promise here and maybe they’ll make a retread-convert out of me yet. Fingers crossed.

What did you think of the Survivor Game Changers premiere? Did you watch & enjoy it or skip it for any particular reason? Share your thoughts below.

Source: TV By The Numbers, NY Times