Liberty Creates “Survivor” Spin-Off, Episodes Displayed on YouTube

The television series “Survivor” took over airways in the early 2000s and set a pace for reality television in America, capturing audience’s attention as they watched contestants take part in survivalist challenges on an island. Now, a variation of this show can be found on Liberty’s campus. 

It is called “Survivor LU.”

The idea for the game came from four people, graduate student Grace Kearney, Club Sports Assistant Athletics Director Derek Young, now Liberty alumnus Logan Bragg and current student Lauren Beal. They began to brainstorm and decided to make a Liberty version of the show, hoping to feature students and alumni.

“There are other colleges who do a similar program,” Young said. “We have modeled our games after them.”

Young, who graduated in 2011, took the reins of this idea a year and a half  ago as director and faculty advisor. They decided that Kearney, along with Bragg, would be the first hosts of the show. They started filming the first season of the game in the fall of 2019. They are now finishing the filming of the third season and plan on releasing the first season to the public this coming January on YouTube. 

“Before filming, we would try to get the word out through social media and flyers around campus,” Young said. “After we got the buzz going around campus, we received about 40 applicants. We ended up interviewing about 25 of them, from which we selected 16 participants.” 

The first season took place over 71 days. In the game, the 16 participants are divided up into two teams or tribes to complete challenges. Challenges included things like endurance races or trying to locate hidden objects that would give a person immunity that week.

There is an elimination system just like in the original show. If a tribe loses a challenge that week, they have to eliminate a person from their team until there is only one “Survivor.” They participate in the challenge at the beginning of the week, leaving the rest of the week to vote someone out. 

The production of the game, including editing and writing, is in the hands of students. 

“Besides hosting, I help oversee the production and operations,” Kearney said. “There are about five of us in upper production. We all collectively work on theming, casting, (creating) challenges and other logistics that pertain to running the show. There is also a film crew of about eight every week that helps us.”

The crew has changed and grown over the past 3 seasons.

“A really cool part about this community is that past contestants have stayed on to be a part of our crew. We try to look for different skill sets that could be helpful to us for future seasons.”

Kearney and Young spoke with passion and excitement. Both are eager to release this first season.

“From an entertainment standpoint, we believe that this show could rival the original show,” Young said. “Many of the other colleges that have done this have actually been more exciting than the original show. We are very excited.” 

Each season will offer about nine, hour-long episodes worth of content. The first episode premieres January 29, 2021. 

Check out their Instagram page @survivor_lu and YouTube page “Survivor LU” for extra content and previews.

Daniel Ellis is a Feature Reporter. Follow him on Twitter at @dnaieltyler.