A former KSDK reporter currently competing on the CBS reality show Survivor sounded off on a recent episode about the “traumatic work situation” she endured while at an unspecific news station, one she later all but confirmed was the NBC affiliate in St. Louis.
Savannah Louie, who was a reporter and anchor for Channel 5 from 2019 to 2021, is described as one of the “toughest antagonists” of the current season of Survivor, its 49th. In the eighth episode, Louie confided that she was feeling like the pariah of her group, an emotion she said brought back painful memories of her time at an unspecified television news station when her colleagues were so resentful of her that they iced her out of all their social interactions off camera, even as they pretended to joke and banter with her when cameras were rolling. She said she often heard her colleagues talk about her while only feet away.
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“They wouldn’t talk to me unless we were in a group setting and it was, like, for show,” she said. She added: “We would make jokes, and everything would be good. And as soon as it was commercial break, nothing.”
Louie said that she was stuck for two years at the station under contract and the stress put her body “in flux” and “messed up” her hormones to such an extent that she stopped having her period and can no longer have children naturally. “It’s crazy what stress can do.”
While some viewers have expressed skepticism that a stressful period can render a woman infertile years later, the confession was a heartbreaking few minutes of reality TV. It won Louie the sympathy of the contestant she was confiding to as well as many viewers, many of whom naturally wondered what TV station she was referring to.
Louie later posted an Instagram Reel in which she all but confirmed this traumatic two years went down at KSDK.
“So I wanted to come on here and talk about the traumatic work situation that I kind of talked about in last night’s Survivor episode,” she began. She then confirmed it wasn’t the station she worked for in Atlanta until 2024. Nor was it about her time in San Antonio. “That was honestly probably the most fun I’ve ever had working in news,” she said. It wasn’t about her time in Knoxville, either.
“If you really care that much, you’re more than welcome to creep on me. I know that I’m pretty public and I’m pretty out there,” she added.
Indeed. Louie’s LinkedIn makes her employers visible even to those who aren’t a direct connection. It shows that, other than Atlanta, San Antonio, and Knoxville, she’s been a television reporter at just one station: St. Louis’ KSDK.
While Louie‘s story is simply one unvetted account—and one told on Survivor, possibly with the intent of manipulating her fellow competitors to claim the top prize—it does fit into something of a pattern.
In April, popular meteorologist Anthony Slaughter was abruptly fired from the station. He later told SLM that struggling ratings in the morning, a need to create ever more content for the station’s app, and constantly being told to utter the phrase “Weather Impact” to help drive traffic to that app turned the job into a bear.
More recently, longtime KSDK personality Rene Knott was let go after human resources inquired about whether he’d ever made remarks about bringing a gun into work. Knott denies he ever said such a thing. “I’ve never touched a gun,” he told SLM, “so I don’t know where that comes from.”
Louie ended her most recent video on the matter asking that viewers not stir up any trouble for her former colleagues. She ended the Reel by saying, “Like, leave my former coworkers out of this. Like they did not sign up to be on national TV.”
KSDK leadership did not respond to a message seeking comment Friday.
