I found this ad price information (for a 30 second commercial) for TAR on the tvaholics blog site at
http://tvaholics.blogspot.com/2012/10/tv-ad-rate-history-amazing-race.html. I thought it was interesting, so I decided to share it here. It hadn't occurred to me that ad prices had dropped so much when the economy crashed in 2009, but it makes sense. It probably lowered the production budget and that may have led to some of the changes we've seen in recent years. TAR's ad rates have recovered some, but still hasn't returned to 2006 levels. I suspect overall lower audience numbers has also contributed to the lower rates.
I think it's still too expensive for RFF's advertising budget.
Or my personal budget of $3.74.
TV Ad Rate History: THE AMAZING RACE
THE AMAZING RACE has always played second fiddle, a CBS, to SURVIVOR. It ratings are not usually near what the older competition series gets, but it does collect a decent size portion of revenue for CBS.
After peaking in the middle of the previous decade, THE AMAZING RACE was hit by the bad economy, starting on 2008. It has been a slow process upward to get ad rates back up to '06 levels, but they are still nearly 10% off. But they are up 12% from the low rates of '09.
THE AMAZING RACE (CBS):
Year Night(Time Slot) :30 Ad Cost +/-
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2006 Sun.(8:00) $136,000
2007 Sun.(8:00) N/A
2008 Sun.(8:00) $127,634 -6.2%
2009 Sun.(8:00) $109,736 -14.0%
2010 Sun.(8:00) $114,584 +4.4%
2011 Sun.(8:00) $124,091 +8.3%
2012 Sun.(8:00) $122,961 -1.0%
source: Advertising Age