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As of now, Survivor's ratings declines continue to be in line with the rest of the CBS schedule or have less erosion from year-to-year than the rest of CBS' lineup. When a show can consistently stay at that level, it would only ever leave our television screens if CBS itself ceased to exist as a network.

Granted, who knows how long Survivor will stay afloat, but I just wouldn't be shocked at all if it existed for another ten years. Plus, it's much cheaper to produce than scripted fare so I could CBS happy with it airing in the summers and earning, say, a 2.0 in the key demographic which wouldn't be too hard to do (look at Big Brother).

This isn't even counting another network picking it up. NBC is currently averaging about a 1.6 in the demographic in primetime for its scripted shows. Last night's Survivor premiere netted a 3.1. You do the math.

However, I see no future for Survivor on cable. It requires you to have seen the most recent episode whereas people can tune in and out of whatever Kardashian show they're watching and not be all that lost. Then there's the cost of making the show whereas most of what's on cable, in terms of reality shows, is basically just the cost of having some cameramen follow a few people around the house.

Survivor already saves CBS a ton of money as it's so much cheaper than scripted fare. Burnett and Probst are the only ones whose shares have probably risen greatly over the years, but I'm sure they'd take a hit if CBS wanted them too (The Simpsons cast recently just took a huge pay cut, for example). CBS also doesn't have the exclusive rights to the Survivor franchise, merely that the rights are paid for and the show is produced for CBS. It could always go somewhere else if need be.

In the case of Scrubs, that show was totally in-house. Disney produced the show and sold it to NBC. If you make a show for 1 million dollars in cost, then you would likely want to sell it to a network, for say, 2 million dollars. But if you own the same network (as Disney also owned ABC), then you could just make the show for whatever it costs and then make a profit off airing it yourself. In the same way, NBC could have run House and simply paid the cost to produce it rather than cost + NBC's profit which FOX does. Either way, none of that will really affect Survivor.