ENTERTAINMENT
How much does Jeff Probst get paid for hosting ‘Survivor’?
Probst, 62, has become synonymous with the long-running CBS reality show - and now earns a bumper pay packet as its host.
Jeff Probst, who has hosted Survivor for the entirety of its nearly quarter-of-a-century run on US television, is believed to earn a high-seven-figure salary for anchoring CBS’ popular reality show.
What is Probst’s salary per season, per episode?
According to the most recent estimate by a number of outlets, including Celebrity Net Worth and Distractify, Probst’s pay packet is about $8 million per season. Each season of Survivor is typically split into around 13 to 15 instalments, so the 62-year-old appears to bank a six-figure sum for every episode.
What is Probst’s net worth?
Per Celebrity Net Worth, Probst now boasts an overall fortune of around $50 million - a far cry from the financial struggles he endured before securing the Survivor gig.
In an interview with the Television Academy in 2012, he said he had less than $8,000 to his name, and was on the point of failing to make ends meet, when he was hired for the show. “I had been dwindling down, down, down, and now I’m under 10 grand - and I still don’t have a job, and I have rent to pay,” he recalled.
“That was the point where I remember looking at my cheque book [and saying], ‘OK, $7,900, I’m about out.’ And then Survivor came.”
Probst an award-winning host
Based on the Swedish reality series Expedition Robinson, Survivor premiered in the US in 2000, and is now in its 46th season. During the course of its long spell on the American small screen, the series has earned Probst no fewer than four Primetime Emmy awards.
A show in which contestants are placed in an isolated location, and must fend for themselves while completing a series of mental and physical challenges, Survivor offers the prospect of a $1 million prize for the winning participant.
In the series’ current season, whose first episode aired at the end of February, 18 castaways are battling it out for the title of ‘Sole Survivor’ on the islands of Fiji.
Survivor 46 “may go down as the best season of the new era”
Whereas Survivor contestants previously had to make it through 39 days in the wilderness, that time has been shortened to 26 days since season 41 - and Probst says that season 46 may be the programme’s finest since the change of format.
“I think one of the biggest differences about playing Survivor in the new era is it is a sprint,” he told People magazine earlier this year. “The second your feet hit the sand, the game is on, which means follow your instinct and just go play.”
“Survivor 46 may go down as the best season of the new era,” Probst declared, pointing to fresh features and twists that have been added by the show’s creators - and the fact that, in his view, the latest group of castaways have taken “the game to a new level”.
“All these levels and layers just add up to this great gameplay and that’s what you’re going to see this season - gameplay like no other,” he said.