Jeff Probst has defended Survivor executives' decision to drop Survivor's live finale format.
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Survivor wrapped its milestone 50th season live in front of a studio audience in Los Angeles on Wednesday, May 20 -- which marked the first time the show has had a live finale since Survivor: Edge of Extinction in 2019.
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Survivor viewers had voted for the Season 50 finale to be a live event, but according to the show's host and executive producer, finale episodes in the future will most likely return to the recent pre-recorded format.
That means Jeff will announce future Survivor winners right after a jury votes in the jungle, presumably in Fiji, if that remains the CBS reality series' filming location.
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"The thing that players don't like to hear is that when they're in the jungle, right after the show ends, that's the most honest they are," Jeff explained to Variety in a recent interview before Survivor 50's live finale occurred.
"They may not really know that or feel that, but they're honest, and they've not been persecuted by social media."
Jeff said "every single player" gets "annihilated for things they don't deserve" on social media -- "mostly from people who mean well, but they'll never play."
Jeff said those keyboard warriors will "never understand how out of touch comments like that are and how much they hurt."
The longtime host reiterated how Survivor castaways are "pure" and "unaffected by the impact of social media" when they're still in Fiji.
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"When you do a live finale, all you get is defense. The live finale becomes people defending, and for me, from a storytelling standpoint, I never find it as interesting," Jeff admitted.
"So I get the pomp and circumstances, it's super fun, but I think we're going to change the format for the finale -- make it more of a three-hour event, rather than a two-and-a-half-hour finale and a 30-minute reunion show."
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Jeff acknowledged how producers would prefer to "celebrate as we go" rather than "sit down and just rehash" a season in hindsight.
"[The rehash] is never satisfying," Jeff said, although he conceded that Season 50 was "reimagined" and felt "very fresh, big and equally fun."
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"When we sat down initially, the first thing I suggested was, 'What if we don't do a reunion show and instead, we take that time and sprinkle it in throughout the final episode?'"
Jeff said he thought a "reinvention" of the finale format for Season 50, in which they'd take pauses along the way, would be "more fun and exciting" as well as "inclusive."
"Our finales are so packed that we don't really have enough time," Jeff lamented.
"The idea [for 50 was], 'Let's take the entire three hours, do it as one event. And then when it ends, it feels complete.'"
Although there apparently won't be live finales in the future, Jeff admitted that it was "fun" to leave the Final Tribal Council in Fiji with his arm around the tribal urn full of jury votes.
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"It was crazy because that's all we ever did, and we stopped. Then to walk out and say, 'I'll see you back in Los Angeles for the reading of the live votes' was exhilarating," Jeff recalled.
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While Jeff was "excited" and "super pumped" for the live Season 50 finale, he acknowledged it's "a lot of work to put on a live finale in between shooting two seasons and hosting the season that's currently on."
Jeff confessed that a live finale simply "adds a ton of work."