The cash-strapped SABC has added Survivor back to the struggling SABC3 schedule, with the 32nd season, Survivor Kaôh Rōng, that has been penciled in for a starting date of Monday, 13 May at 19:30.
It must be noted that South African viewers should treat it as a "tentative" starting date since SABC3 has abruptly dropped the promised start of the last couple of Survivor seasons.
Season premieres got pushed out with SABC3 that then also botched the season premiere episodes. That remains a possibility with Survivor Kaôh Rōng.
However, for now, SABC3 has Survivor back in its schedule and once again scheduled a season of the American Survivor to start just days before the next season of Survivor South Africa on M-Net (DStv 101) - this time the 7th season entitled Survivor SA: Island of Secrets set in Samoa that will kick off on Thursday 16 May at 19:00 following the conclusion of The Bachelor SA.
This is the second time that SABC3 has done this and did the same with the previous season, Survivor: Cambodia that it originally scheduled to start at the same time as Survivor SA: Philippines in mid-May 2018 but then abruptly postponed because of non-payment and non-delivery of tapes, that only saw it start in mid-August 2018.
Because of the SABC and SABC3 financial problems American TV shows like The Bold and the Beautiful, Survivor and to a lesser extent The Amazing Race have vanished from the programming schedule of the South African public broadcaster's only commercial TV channel.
The SABC's contract of The Bold and the Beautiful with BBL was cancelled with the broadcaster that has been silent when asked several times about the fate of the remaining Survivor and The Amazing Race - legacy series on SABC3 that, together with Bold, continued to pull in strong viewership and ratings for the channel.
In February until its cancellation, Bold was the second most-watched regular programme on SABC3 (587 080 viewers) with once-off sport broadcasts stripped out, while both Survivor and The Amazing Race perennially make the list of top 10 most-watched shows on SABC3 when broadcast.
In February 2018 SABC3 made the hollow promise and said that it will catch up and start to show seasons of Survivor on Mondays and The Amazing Race on Wednesdays sooner with smaller breaks between seasons to stop falling further and further behind America.
Instead, Survivor has been absent from SABC3 for months, with The Amazing Race that was moved back to Mondays and finished its 27th season in February with 401 547 viewers as the 9th highest rated regular programme on the channel (the 31st season is set to start in May in the United States).
Earlier this month, Madoda Mxakwe, SABC CEO, told South Africa's parliament that the situation at the out-of-cash broadcaster "is so bad that several major content providers of key programmes actually refuse to engage with us. Understandably, because we have not been able to pay them in the past couple of months".
Now Survivor has popped back up on the SABC3 schedule with Survivor: Kaôh Rōng that was broadcast in 2016 in the United States, that will see contestants get divided into three tribes according to "brains" (intelligence), "brawn" (physical power) and "beauty" (external attractiveness).
Filmed in Cambodia as well - similar to the previous season - this season will introduce the power to remove a member of the jury for the first time.
