Jeff Probst has called well over 1,000 challenges over his 48 seasons on Survivor. Having personally watched him do it dozens of times while visiting the set, I can say it is pretty remarkable watching the host keep track of so many different moving parts and players — all without the aid of an earpiece with producers feeding him info on the fly. Nothing gets past the Hostmaster General… although something almost did on this week’s episode of Survivor 48.
Episode 11’s immunity challenge culminated with players having to form a word puzzle arch that spelled “Unforgettable” (or “Unfogrettable” if your name is Kyle). Two players, Joe Hunter and Kamilla Karthigesu, finished their puzzles almost simultaneously, with Joe just edging out Kamilla.
Probst saw the word spelled correctly and made his winner’s call: “Joe steps off, thinks he has it! Kamilla steps off! But Joe got their first! Joe wins!”
However, without missing a single beat, the host then immediately amended the call: “No, I’m wrong! Your puzzle’s wrong! Kamilla’s puzzle’s right! Kamilla wins individual immunity! Sorry, Joe, for the false alarm. It’s that last piece, that eye you put in is flipped on the wrong way. It should be on the black side so everything matches. You’ve got it on the white side.”
CBS
Joe Hunter on ‘Survivor 48’
Yes, Joe was ultimately undone by an eye icon block color that did not match up, and Probst talked about his corrected call on the latest episode of his On Fire with Jeff Probst podcast. He began by explaining what it’s like from his perspective to call a Survivor challenge.
“It is a little bit of controlled chaos,” he says. “Because you have different players at different stages of the challenge, and each stage of the challenge has its own set of rules that you’re trying to make sure every player adheres to. And then when you get to something like a word puzzle, you have to be monitoring all the players that are doing that stage of the challenge while keeping an eye on the other players at another stage. You have to make sure they’re right on both sides of the puzzle. You have to be able to tell the story in real time of who is actually close and could win. But you also have to tell the same story for somebody who thinks they’re close, but isn’t, because the audience can see there’s a letter that’s wrong.”
That’s obviously a lot to keep track of. “You are managing a lot of stories and I’m checking in on the players constantly,” Probst adds. “But here’s the thing: I’m checking very quickly. I don’t have the luxury to just sit and focus on only one player. So it’s more of a quick glance: ‘Is that person right? Wait, are they right? Oh man, I can’t tell.’ So I got to circle back and look again and then I miss something with Mary who’s trying to get her wheelbarrow going.”
With so much happening, and puzzles also often very hard to scan in a very short amount of time, it’s actually amazing Probst does not flub more challenge calls. But when he does, the important thing is correcting it as quickly as possible. (A lesson learned back in season 7 of the Pearl Islands, when players who had already left the challenge had to be brought back in and immunity taken away from Burton Roberts after it was discovered he had misspelled the word “liaison.”)
Robert Voets/CBS
Jeff Probst on ‘Survivor 48’
“In a moment like that, when I make the wrong call, the only thing on my mind is immediately correcting the call,” Probst says of what happened this week with Joe and Kamilla. “It’s not the first time I’ve been wrong. I’m sure it will not be the last. And I do think it’s important for the audience to know that these things do happen.”
As for the host refusing to wear an industry standard earpiece (also known as an IFB), which allows producers to talk to talent during filming, it all dates back to Survivor’s very first episode and a conversation the host had with executive producer Mark Burnett.
“This goes back to the very first Tribal Council of season 1 when Mark said, ‘Hey, they told me there’s something you can put in your ear and I can talk to you.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, do you think you could give me one shot without that?… I’m trying to sort through this show right now and I kind of have a point of view and I’d love to have a shot at it.’ Mark was so cool. He said, ‘Okay, everybody tells me I should do this, but okay, Jeff, you’re very demanding.’ And from that point forward, I’ve never worn one.”
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Of course, that approach comes with plusses and minuses. “It gives you a lot of freedom, it comes with a lot of risk, and sometimes you make a mistake. Had [challenge producer] John Kirhoffer been in my ear, he would’ve said, ‘Probst, Joe is not right. Don’t do it! Don’t do it!’”
Still, the corrected call (which did not actually impact the game at all) managed to prove a moment that was both rare and unforgettable… or unfogrettable, as it were.
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