The Summit season 2: Is it renewed, canceled at CBS?

The Summit season 1
Photo: CBS

In the wake of tonight’s big finale event, of course this is the perfect time to ask: Will The Summit season 2 happen? Or, is this the end for the Manu Bennett hosted reality competition show?

Well, the first important thing that we should really note here is that going into this season, CBS absolutely wanted this show to be a big hit. They’ve been trying for years to get a fresher reality TV concept off the ground. Take, for example, what they’ve tried with everything from The Real Love Boat to Hunted to even their own version of The Challenge. The closest thing that they’ve come to a bigger hit over the past five or ten years with a new concept is Tough as Nails, and even that has been on ice for a while. Even though they still have success with Survivor, Big Brother, and The Amazing Race, these shows are all older concepts. At some point any of them could start to decline.

Unfortunately, we can’t say that The Summit has necessarily set the world on fire this season. At least in terms of live + same-day viewers, it is drawing less than half of the total audience of Survivor 47 every week, which means that viewers are watching the former and then not the latter. This does not account for streaming data, but we’re not sure that there is some golden goose waiting in the wings there. Our feeling is that the odds for a season 2 are at this point totally up in the air.

Could the show be better with some changes? Sure. Visually The Summit is stunning, and we get the idea of trying to capture the same sort of aesthetic appeal as Survivor. However, the actual game portion of the competition is a little too flimsy, and it does not have the clear premise of some other reasonably big reality TV success stories like The Traitors. With refinement it can improve, but is there going to be that commitment?

Do you want to see The Summit season 2 happen over at CBS?

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