Survivor Thoughts

We're watching Survivor again this season and it looks surprisingly good. The show almost snuck up on us. Here's a few thoughts:

• CBS is becoming more generous with what is offered on the website. You can watch entire episodes, which is cool if you missed it the first time. And now they're offering deleted scenes and extended versions of interviews with the players. Cool.
• There are currently nine different versions of the Survivor game in different countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Columbia, France, Israel, Russia, South Africa, Spain, and the United States. The U.S. version is the only one with Jeff Probst though.
• This is the second season to film on Palau with the exact same shooting locations as in 2005. None of the returning cast were from the Palau season, though Palau-winner Tom Westman was invited but declined.
• While CBS has not announced where Survivor will be held next fall (filming this summer), I've always been an advocate for Survivor: Alaska. A location like Ketchikan during the summer would be warm enough for the game and strikingly beautiful. It's a remote location that already has a tourism industry and an airport and Ketchikan has the largest number of standing totem poles in the world. If Ketchikan is just not warm enough, other Pacific Northwest locations (British Columbia, Washington, or maybe Oregon) would provide great scenery, remote locations, and the whole totem pole motif that ought to be right up Survivor's alley.
• Speaking of future seasons, CBS is committed to at least two more seasons after this one (seasons 17 and 18) and Jeff Probst is under contract for a year beyond that. Though it's unlikely they would continue indefinitely and ratings have slipped the last few years, Survivor still does better than most shows on TV.