Initial details from the ongoing Survivor Second Chance vote revealed that CBS appeared to be mixing viewer votes with their own input to select who would be a castaway on Survivor Season 31. Now CBS has clarified and revised those terms of the vote.
EW reported that they had previously been assured by host Jeff Probst that viewers would be picking the entire cast on the next season of Survivor only to have the terms and conditions of the vote indicate otherwise. They followed up on the confusion with CBS and found out what happened:
“A source close to the show informs me that the language in the terms and conditions was mistakenly added in by someone on the network’s legal team. The good news? It’s now gone. The text now reads, “The public will decide who from amongst the nominees presented will become the Fall 2015 Survivor cast.”
Well, I doubt the language was “mistakenly added in” as it seems rather deliberate as a way to give them flexibility, but I’m glad the issue has been cleared up. Now whether or not giving CBS some level of input and control would have been a good thing is another question.
Survivor’s production team has been tasked with building a cast that works for thirty plus seasons so it seems like a final tweak or two to make sure we have the right balance of personalities and game styles might have been a good thing. It just gets fuzzy on how much control they’d have before suddenly viewers picked half and CBS worked the rest.
What do you think? Do you feel better about the vote with full control going to the viewers or should production and CBS retain some level of influence?
