It's "frankly ridiculous" that CBS waited until now to implement Survivor sexual harassment rules

Variety

"These new policies are good and useful ones, but they’re also astonishingly overdue," says Caroline Framke of the new guidelines CBS announced this week in response to Dan Spilo's inappropriate touching of Kellee Kim. Framke adds: "Looking back at this list of changes, it’s staggering to realize that Survivor has made forty (40!) seasons of television without policies like these already in place. How on earth have twenty (20!) years gone by without a procedure in place for contestants to express concerns about their peers without having to break down on camera? How does the show justify not training its cast and crew in some ground rules of basic decency before throwing them all together on an island? Most bafflingly, why hasn’t 'unwelcome physical contact' always been grounds for dismissal? I struggle to believe that this situation was, in fact, as 'unprecedented' as (Jeff) Probst and CBS claim. (Talk to any diehard Survivor fan and inevitably, the show’s first winner Richard Hatch and his strategy of walking around naked, and even rubbing against another player to the point where she quit the season, will come up.)"

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• Survivor has always been a show about who can be the sh*ttiest person: "Reality TV producers are notorious for choosing not to intervene in situations where they should," says Garrett Schlichte. "It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: producers think seeing the worst of people makes for the best TV, in part, because it’s provided as the only option. And throughout the 39 seasons of Survivor—a show in which contestants are prone to sacrificing castmates, their own personal wellbeing, and any semblance of truth and reality—there have been plenty of opportunities for intervention. (See: Season 7 contestant Jon Dalton, who lied about the death of his grandmother to move forward in the game. He ended up losing.) But the ethos of Survivor is that contestants should do anything to win, which often involves inappropriate behavior that’s accepted within the confines of the game and away from real-world ramifications. It’s what producers group under the umbrella of 'good TV.'"