CBS Confirms Premiere Dates for ‘Survivor’ Season 46 and ‘The Amazing Race’ Season 36
Survivor 45 and The Amazing Race Season 35 aren’t over yet, but CBS is already looking ahead to the next installments of the popular competition series. The network recently confirmed spring 2024 premiere dates for new seasons of both shows.
‘Survivor’ Season 46 premieres in February 2024
Survivor Season 46 will kick off on Wednesday, Feb. 28 at 8 p.m. ET on CBS with a special 2-hour season premiere. Another supersized 2-hour episode will air on March 6 before the show shifts to a 90-minute format starting on March 13.
CBS began airing extra-long episodes of Survivor this fall as a way to fill scheduling holes created by the writers’ and actors’ strikes. Those extra-long episodes have been a hit with fans, and CBS has decided to stick with that format for season 46. However, when filming the upcoming season, 90-minute episodes weren’t a sure thing, which presented some exciting challenges for the production team, host and showrunner Jeff Probst told EW in September.
“I was optimistic that 45 would work and that maybe CBS would say, ‘OK, we like it. We wish we had shot 46 for 90 minutes,” he said. “So all of the producers in every department knew to just be thinking of 90 minutes while we’re out there, and if you see an opportunity for a deeper story or you have an idea that we could add into something that’s already in our game design, let’s talk about it, and if we can pull it off from a production standpoint, let’s do it.”
‘The Amazing Race’ Season 36 premieres March 13
In addition to confirming a premiere date for the next Survivor, CBS has also revealed when The Amazing Race will return for season 36. New episodes of the globe-trotting competition show will premiere on Wednesday, March 13 at 9:30 p.m. As with Survivor, the new season will consist of 90-minute episodes.
In a twist, the upcoming season 36 was actually filmed prior to the currently airing season 35. However, with the strikes on the horizon, CBS approached The Amazing Race producers about creating 90-minute episodes for fall 2023. In response, they decided to seize the opportunity to create “mega-sized episodes” from scratch, executive producer Elise Doanieri explained to Variety.
“We wanted to put more locations in, include more creative,” she said of The Amazing Race Season 35, which was filmed in the summer of 2023. We’re going to let the story play out a little more, get to know the relationships between contestants a little better. We always feel that there’s so much that we don’t get to show in the series because we have to cut it down for the one-hour episodes. Now we have a little more breathing room.”
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