Jeff Probst explains why there is no Survivor auction for season 46

The new "Survivor" auction was a raging success, so why is it gone again?

By Dalton Ross
Published on February 14, 2024

While Survivor 45 featured the first player successfully being saved by a Shot in the Dark, one of the most devastating blindsides ever (“What the hell, guys?”), and Jeff Probst straight-up stabbing a bag of rice, one of the highlights was actually a blast from the past.

After eight years in exile, the Survivor auction made its triumphant return, and it was better than ever. First off, instead of players simply being handed money, the contestants had to compete to collect as much cash as possible. Then, when they arrived at the auction, Probst explained that not only were there no advantages to be collected, but he would pull a rock from a bag that told him — and only him — when the auction would end. And then, the most diabolical and delicious twist of all: The player with the most money left at the end of the auction would lose their vote at Tribal Council.

The new Survivor auction 2.0 was a rousing creative success. Even better, the contestants on the following season (Survivor 46), would have no idea and would not be able to prepare for it because season 45 had not aired by the time season 46 began filming. Which is what makes it so absolutely shocking that Survivor 46, which premieres Feb. 28 on CBS, will not feature an auction.

“The auction is not back for 46,” Probst tells EW.

While Probst acknowledges that it would have made sense to bring the auction back immediately because “we could have got a free shot at it in 46” with players who would have to navigate all the strategic elements in real time, the host explains that “it really came down to resources.”

Probst, of course, is not only the host of Survivor, he is also the showrunner — which means he is intimately aware of all the work that goes on behind the scenes to pull off even something as seemingly easy as the auction. “That's a gigantic lift from production," he explains. “It looks simple, but you’ve got a chocolate shake, and you've got a bag, and somebody pays with money. Now there are so many departments involved.”

And those departments are already overtaxed coordinating all the other elements of production. “We only have certain amount of days,” says Probst. “And in those days, a certain amount of daylight hours..” It would seem the easy answer would then be to just hire more crew, but there is a problem with that approach as well when you are filming in a remote region with limited housing. “There are only a certain number of people on our team, and there are only so many little homes that people can live in,” explains the host. “We can't get more crew. We have nowhere. It's just this complicated math problem.”

While Survivor 45 was the first season shot specifically with 90-minutes per episode in mind due to the impending writers and actors strikes (which resulted with it being the best produced season of the new era), the effort took a huge toll on the crew to capture all that extra content, and it is one area in which Probst takes himself to task.

“One of the things that I didn't do well in 45 is I didn't manage from a global perspective. And, as a result, at the end of 45, our crews were exhausted, and all the heads of departments said, ‘Dude, we're loving this, but we are on fumes. We are working harder than we've ever worked before.’ And then we had to turn right around and do 46.”

While the first two weeks of season 46 will be two-hour installments before settling back to 90-minute installments per week, Probst acknowledges that “we weren't [intentionally] shooting for 90 minutes, or we might've considered the auction.” Even so, it would have been a tall order after what the crew went through on 45. “I woke up and realized: Okay, they're telling me we will do anything for this show, but just know we're on fumes. And so for 46, the auction was like, that's just too much. We can't do it again.”

That does not mean the auction is once again going the way of the giant gong and trunk of cash at Tribal Council. Rather, it has to fit into the puzzle of what else is being shot for a particular season. “If we're going to do it again in the future, it has to be part of our overall design that we have time for it,” says Probst. “Will we do it in 47 and 48? Probably one of the two. Maybe not both. But we do love it, fans love it, and I love that.”

Just not for season 46.

Source: https://ew.com/survivor-host-jeff-probst-explains-why-no-season-46-auction-8576398

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Brian