Survivor is a reality television game show format produced in many countries throughout the world. In the show, contestants are isolated in the wilderness and compete for cash and other prizes. The show uses a system of progressive elimination, allowing the contestants to vote off other tribe members until only one final contestant remains and wins the title of "Sole Survivor". The format for Survivor was created in 1992 by Charlie Parsons. The show is credited for making Reality television a popular T.V. genre.

Concept history

The concept is credited to Charlie Parsons who co-owns Castaway Television Productions with Waheed Alli and Sir Bob Geldof, and appeared first on Swedish Television in 1997 as Expedition: Robinson. Castaway Television Productions is the company that now manages the format for Survivor and Celebrity Survivor. Castaway Television was developed after the sale of Planet 24, a previous venture. The initial US series was a huge ratings success in 2000 and along with ABC's prime time franchise of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire sparked a reality-television revolution in the US. The popularity of these shows prompted networks to push sitcoms and conventional drama series aside and rush more reality shows into development. Even the Fox Network, which had vowed never to air a reality show again just months earlier following media outrage surrounding its Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? program broke its promise and launched several competitors of its own. Survivor's second season in the winter/spring of 2001 drew even larger audiences. Subsequent US versions have attracted smaller but still substantial audiences. There have also been British and Australian versions of the show in 2001 and 2002 respectively. Both were considered ratings failures. Indeed in Britain, Survivor's failure was a national joke (though ratings for the UK series were considerably lower than ITV had hoped for, it still regularly attracted six to eight million viewers, a decent rather than huge audience, but enough for ITV to commission a second series which appeared a year later). TF1 France has produced nine seasons of Koh-Lanta, a French version of Survivor, and a Japanese version was also produced for four seasons (namely Survivor Japan: Palau, Survivor Japan: Hokkaido, Survivor Japan: Philippines, Survivor Japan: Rota) which achieved some success.TBS Japan Broadcast rights for the American version have been sold to various broadcasters and is viewed in many countries around the world. The first ever Celebrity Survivor, made in Australia, attained moderate ratings.