How long are ‘Survivor 45’ episodes?

Fall is here! That means Survivor’s 45th season is descending onto CBS — and with it comes supersized episodes.

Survivor 45 is set to premiere on Wednesday, Sept. 27 at 8 p.m. ET on CBS and Paramount Plus. Eighteen contestants will battle for 26 days while marooned on an island in Fiji living with bare necessities. The “Sole Survivor” will emerge from the crop of hopefuls and claim the $1 million grand prize.

And fans will watch it unfold weekly with 90-minute episodes.

Although it’s common for a 90-minute or two-hour episode to pop up once in a Survivor season (and the finale typically clocks in at three hours), this will be the first time every episode is longer than the 60-minute mark. Another of CBS’s staple reality competition shows, The Amazing Race, will premiere its 35th season after Survivor on Wednesday, and it’ll feature 90-minute episodes all season long as well.

Jeff Probst and his team took full advantage of the extra-long episodes

Longtime host Jeff Probst spoke with Entertainment Weekly in an interview published on September 25. He’s been charged with snuffing torches since the franchise’s inception in 2000, and as a producer heavily involved in guiding the show and its day-to-day operations, Probst said he long advocated for the 90-minute episodes.

“I actually had been pitching CBS for probably five years, ‘Let us try 90 minutes!'” Probst said. “And they were always reluctant because that’s a long episode and you’re never sure when it’s too much. But back in October, CBS came to us and said, ‘Okay, you got your wish. We’ll do one season of 90-minute episodes and we’ll see how it goes.’

“They didn’t want to fully commit to two at that point because they wanted to first see how it went. But that gave us six months to lay out a game design for 90 minutes to ensure that the 90 minutes would be entertaining.”

Because Probst and his team had months in advance to prepare Survivor 45 for the lengthened timeslot, they focused on making the episodes “really exciting.” Specifically, Probst mentioned a new “elaborate hidden immunity design.” Probst said that the idea wasn’t feasible with 60-minute showings. But with the added 30 minutes, the timing was right to implement it.

Castaways will usually find hidden immunity idols in trees or under a rock, but it’ll take a lot more “ingenuity” to locate them in Season 45, according to Probst. “Because we have the time, we can take you into the dirt with them,” Probst said. “And it’s really fun to watch. I don’t think fans are even going to know the episodes are longer. It’s that kind of entertainment.”

Probst mentioned that a layer of difficulty was injected into producing the season with 90-minute episodes because the gameplay was shorter than it used to be. Survivor 41 in 2021 was the first time the length of play was reduced from 39 days to 26, and it’s been that way since — meaning Probst had less content to work with.

Still, it sounds like they found a sweet spot, and fans are in for a treat with Survivor 45.