Reality TV holds an interesting and unique role in the media. One of its main goals, hinted at by the "reality" part of its name, is to portray real people and events believably; however producers, directors and writers must make intentional choices in who the characters are and how they are portrayed. The illusion of depicting life as it really is makes representation especially important in reality TV. As character’s lives, personalities and relationships are often overdramatized for entertainment purposes, poor or missing representation can easily perpetuate stereotypical tropes. For this reason, diversity has long been a topic of conversation surrounding popular media like these TV shows.

In order to analyze this, we delved into two of the most popular reality TV shows: Survivor and Big Brother. Both shows follow a similar format, with a group of contestants competing in challenges and voting each other out of the competition until only one remains. They differ largely in setting, with Survivor placing contestants on a barren island and Big Brother giving its contestants a mansion to compete in. These shows hold immense cultural significance in the United States, with common colloquial phrases, like “the tribe has spoken”, originating from them. Their impact on popular lecture makes it even more consequential that they fairly represent marginalized groups. Survivor and Big Brother are produced by the same network, CBS. In addition to exploring casting demographic data (race, gender, and age), we will also be exploring how CBS has made changes in its attitude towards diversity to alter representation on these shows.

CBS: Changing Diversity

In 2020, in an attempt to combat concerns over underrepresentation in its unscripted TV shows, CBS announced that at least 50% of these casts would be mandated to be made up of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). In fact, the network recast the 41st and 42nd seasons of Survivor to accommodate this policy change. In addition to changes to casting, CBS also guaranteed that 25% of its budget for unscripted TV shows would go to projects led by BIPOC producers. This increase in representation has succeeded in diversifying the casts of Big Brother and Survivor, but has it had an impact on BIPOC performance on these shows?

Before the implementation of these diversity-focused policies, casts of both Survivor and Big Brother were significantly less diverse, with white contestants making up 73% of Survivor casts and 76% of Big Brother casts. Many minority groups, in particular Latinos and Asians, were starkly underrepresented in casting in these shows. In the first 40 seasons of Survivor, Latino and Asian contestants comprised less than 15% of casts despite comprising between 17.2% and 25.9% of the US population over this period. This disparity was even worse in the earlier seasons of Big Brother, with Asian and Latino contestants comprising merely 10% of the casting in this same period.

Not only did disparities exist in casting on these shows, but also in the placements of contestants. On Survivor, white males were 39% of total contestants in the first 40 seasons but made up 50% of winners. Similarly, on Big Brother, white males made up 41% of contestants and 54% of winners. On the contrary, minority groups were found to receive worse final placements than their white counterparts. For example, black women comprised 7% and 8% of the Survivor and Big Brother casts, respectively, but were 17% and 22% of the contestants who finished in last place. Part of the reasoning behind CBS’s decision to change its casting policies was this concerning rift in placements, and according to more recent data on contestant placement, it appears to have been an effective change.

In addition to casts becoming significantly more diverse, with BIPOC now comprising 59% of Survivor casts, and 50% of Big Brother casts since the policy change was implemented, diversity in placement has also increased. In the last five seasons of Big Brother, many milestones have been reached in representation on reality TV. Since 2020, Big Brother has had its first Black man, its first Black woman, and its first Asian man win their respective seasons.

One important limitation of the Survivor dataset is that it does not classify contestants as multiracial even when they are. For this reason, advancements in the representation of multiracial individuals are not present in our analysis. It is still important to note that the presence of multiracial individuals has grown significantly on the show in the last ten seasons. In fact, the “new” era Survivor has yielded the first two multiracial Survivor winners, Rachel Lamont and Savannah Louise, both of whom are listed as Asian American in the dataset. Furthermore, similar to Big Brother, diversity in placement has also grown significantly. As seen on the graph above, since the policy changes in casting have been implemented, seven out of the eight racial-gender groups included in our analysis have had someone of that background win a season.

Representation on Survivor

The appeal of reality television as opposed to purely fictitious shows partially lies in its materiality. Characters in shows like Breaking Bad are compelling, but ultimately not real. However, when we watch Russell Hantz dig around in the wilderness for idols, the impact is heightened. We are watching a real person’s strategic moves in the game Survivor, not an actor following a script. These elements that make Survivor so lovable also present challenges on the production side. With minimal scripting, how does a reality television show present a cohesive narrative to viewers?

Confessionals serve as the solution. These short segments, where contestants talk directly to the camera, i.e., the viewer, provide insight into the player’s game and their character. Photos of confessionals are also commonly shared on social media. These photos push contestants into the public eye. Through confessionals, producers can frame players as heroic, villainous, or comedic.

In Survivor: Millennials vs. Gen X, contestant Lucy Huang was not given a single confession in episodes 1-3. However, she is one of the most successful East Asian women on the show. The lack of confessionals robs her of a narrative, making other players easier to root for.

To explore potential discrimination between BIPOC and non-BIPOC representation, we have graphed players' confessional counts based on ranking, season, and race. Rankings indicate how far the contestants make it in their respective seasons. If a contestant's rank is 1, they are the winner of their season; if the contestant’s rank is 15, they placed in the top 15 of their season, etc.

An overall trend we see is that contestants with higher ranks are consistently given more confessionals. For one, if a contestant remains on the show for longer, they have more opportunities for confessionals. Additionally, the producers will use confessionals to build up a winner’s storyline. Through confessionals, viewers gain insight into the contestants' strategic thoughts. How exactly has this high-placing contestant played the game? Have they succeeded through their challenge dominance, social play, or huge strategic moves? Thus, if a player makes it far, producers are effectively forced to give them increased screentime.

However, there is a clear disparity between the number of confessionals BIPOC contestants are given in comparison to their non-BIPOC counterparts. This discrepancy could be due to a lack of BIPOC contestants in general, and a lack of BIPOC contestants who proceed to rank highly in the game. From seasons 1-12, BIPOC contestants are barely given any confessionals compared to their white counterparts. Thankfully, around season 39, we observe higher placements amongst BIPOC contestants alongside higher confessional counts.

Seasons 13-14 seem to be outliers in early Survivor, as there are significantly more confessionals for BIPOC contestants compared to non-BIPOC ones. Season 13 was Survivor: Cook Islands. Survivor sometimes employs gimmicks when dividing contestants into tribes. Some themes have been villains and heroes, David and Goliath, and millennials and GenX. Controversially, Cook Islands divided their cast by race. These racial divides naturally led to more diverse casting. As for season 14, Survivor: Fiji, producers made a conscious effort to maintain a diverse cast. Fans speculate that the show planned to divide tribes based on race again. Others think that the producers wanted to avoid further backlash from season 13 and show their commitment to diversity beyond the gimmick featured in Cook Islands.

Representation encompasses more than just race – gender also constitutes a big part of whether or not the diverse set of viewers of Survivor feel represented on screen. Sexism on Survivor has been a recurring topic of discussion since the show’s debut in 2000, with Jeff Probst, Survivor’s host, having publicly commented on it multiple times over the show’s many years of airing. The author of a 2013 NPR article, written during the airing of the 27th season, even went so far as to state that sexism was “silently killing” the show. Are her claims true?

The most basic form of gender representation in this show is pure proportions of contestants by gender. By this metric, casting for Survivor is very even between men and women, with a respective 49.9% and 49.7% of contestants across its 49 complete seasons. Non-binary castaways represent only 4 of 1,180 contestants total – a mere 0.3%. This is approximately in line with the percentage of adults who are non-binary in the U.S., but raises the question of whether or not it is representative of the demographics of Survivor applicants. Data on applicants isn’t available anywhere, but we can use the U.S. population as a baseline.

Let’s take a look at gender representation as far as the number of screen appearances that castaways get. As mentioned above, one form of representation on a reality TV show is the number of times that each castaway appears in a confessional. The number of confessionals that different genders of castaways are featured in is a good metric of how much the viewer sees them one-on-one. Comparing the proportion of confessionals to the corresponding proportion of the cast gives us a more nuanced view of gender under- or over-representation for each season.

Here, bars that go above the dotted line represent seasons where the proportion of confessionals that represented women was higher than the proportion of the cast that was women. Clearly, there are not many of these. Women have a proportionately low number of confessionals in 38 out of the 49 currently complete seasons (78%), with season 14 being the worst offender: here, women comprise 9 out of 19 castaways (47%), but only 23.3% of all confessionals. Season 33 is not far behind. Across all seasons and almost 100,000 confessionals, 54% of them are men, which may not seem far from 50%, but is significantly different from an even split when we take into account the huge amount of data used to calculate this percentage.

Sexism doesn’t exist within a vacuum, though, and strongly interacts with age. ‘Gendered sexism’ is the interplay between sexism and ageism that disproportionately affects older women and is especially notable in workplaces, but does it also extend to Survivor? The data shows that it might.

It’s immediately clear that older participants are not cast as frequently, with only 24% of castaways older than the U.S. median age of 39. As age increases, we also see that women are less cast. Women are dominant in the age group of late teenagers to early 30s, but males are cast more frequently onwards (besides the early 60s category, which contains one more woman than the number of men). This is consistent with the idea of gendered sexism, where women are more “invisible” when they reach middle age. Again, it’s a possibility that this is a result of less interest in Survivor among older women (and thus, fewer applications), but it definitely represents a discrepancy between men and women somewhere within the process.

Seasons 6, 9, 12, and 24 of Survivor are particularly interesting in the sense that, for these seasons, the tribes were designed to be initially split up by gender, creating a unique starting environment for these castaways, and often giving castaways more room to be sexist without worrying about social repercussions. 2012 marked the airing of the most recent “Battle of the Sexes” season, which is a stride in itself as far as avoiding harmful gender stereotyping on Survivor, but has sexism actually improved on Survivor since this era (around the same era that the NPR article critiqued)? To find out, we explore data comparing seasons 1-24 and seasons 25-49. Having already looked at confessionals, we’ll consider another variable that contributes to representation, which is the order in which castaways are booted (in other words, voted off their tribe by their fellow castaways, and thus no longer eligible to win).

Surprisingly, we find that for the latter half of the seasons, more women are voted out first compared to the earlier seasons. The third boot is also more likely to be a woman in the later seasons. The second boot is just slightly more likely to be a woman for the earlier seasons compared to the later ones. This is definitely not expected, given the consistent near-even gender split in casting for each season, both before and after seasons 24-25. Of course, a lot influences who is eliminated early. One such factor is each initial tribe’s ability in its first “challenge”, which are minigames – mental or physical – where tribes compete for immunity from being voted off. Castaways who perform worse, or those who perform frighteningly well, are more likely to be voted off.

With this in mind, first boots being dominantly female in the later seasons could possibly hint towards gender bias in voting behavior, seeing as these patterns emerge with balanced gender casting and still result in imbalanced rates of success moving through the game. We find that a similar dynamic appears within voting patterns on Big Brother when examining demographics and elimination.

Representation on Big Brother

The reality television show Big Brother, referring to the phrase “Big Brother is always watching you” from George Orwell’s famous dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, is a show that packs contestants of all different backgrounds into a house to compete for a grand prize. After a series of challenges, feuds, and friendships, the last remaining houseguest is rewarded a grand prize of $750,000. The players must win power, strategize, form alliances, and deceive their way to victory. Each week, a challenge decides who receives the power to nominate the contestants that will be voted off the show that week by the other house guests.

The show explores the relationships and drama that come when different personalities clash. So naturally, perception can dramatically change a player’s standing in the house. One component of this perception can be a contestant’s race. Historically, the Big Brother cast has been predominantly white, although this has changed over time. This trend has shifted as casting choices have better reflected US demographics. However, race continues to play a role in the show beyond the process of casting.

Over the course of its runtime, Big Brother has had its share of scandals regarding racist remarks and even the use of racial slurs on air. While this typically resulted in evictions of the offending houseguests, subconscious biases still may play a role in the alliances between players and may have decided who was nominated and voted out.

The graph above showcases the distribution of how many times each contestant was nominated for elimination, sorted by racial group, in the first 22 seasons of the show. It reveals that a larger proportion of white and Latinx contestants were not nominated for elimination the entirety of their seasons. On the other hand, Black and Asian contestants have been much more likely to be nominated multiple times for elimination. This implies that even after casting diversity has increased that BIPOC contestants are still more likely to be targeted. This is an interesting contrast to our initial analysis that recent CBS policy changes in casting have increased the number of BIPOC winners on Big Brother. For example, the first Black woman to win Big Brother Taylor Hale (Season 24) was nominated for eviction six times in her season. Even when BIPOC contestants place higher in a season of Big Brother, they are still disproportionately targeted for elimination.

The Future of Diversity on Reality TV

In 2025, the casting director of Survivor, Big Brother, and other CBS reality TV shows implied in an interview with Deadline that the hard 50% BIPOC quota on these TV shows would no longer be in place. Still, he went on to say that he heavily values diversity in these shows and still aims to represent a wide variety of demographic groups on them. It will be interesting to see with this hard rule gone; these shows will not only lose diversity but also regain many of the issues they faced in the past with BIPOC being disproportionately targeted.

These TV shows continue to be a major presence in American society. CBS recently premiered the 50th season of Survivor, and it quickly has become the most popular show in its timeslot. In fact, the premiere gave CBS its most-watched Wednesday in years. Due to this continued immense viewership, they will continue to play a role in shaping how people of color and other marginalized groups are represented in the media. Whether the quality of this representation will be positive or perpetuate potentially negative narratives and stereotypes about marginalized groups will be important to consider as CBS continues to change its policies toward diversity.