Editing changed from Season 9. For me, that’s when the show declined.
But for the overall production, it started declining when they had their hashtag 12shows21days production schedule. Phil has tweeted this a lot. The race is now produced with a tighter budget and controlled to make sure their filming time doesn’t run over. This has resulted in less airport drama as productions pre-book some flights to 1) keep every team not too far apart so they can all move on to the next leg; 2) Lower airfare from last minute reservations.
This has completely changed the show. It went from a more continuous race to 12 separate episodes of an on-location task solving game. Gone is the airport travel from one country to another which made up a lot of airtime before. Right now, it’s more emphasized on the “tasks” even though I don’t think it’s what made TAR successful in the first place. They could really just do these tasks anywhere, heck, even in a studio. What’s the point of these tasks unless they’re climbing the Alps that can’t be replicated. I understand it’s easier to produce the show logistically when they can group everyone in to one country, do two tasks, and then move on to another country to do two more tasks. We don’t get to see much in between these days. They make traveling between countries a lot easier. Even for the tasks themselves, there weren’t a lot of ridiculous costumes involved and dramatic make up on in the early season.
I watched an interview in early 2021 of Phil and some of the past contestants. Rob from Season 1 also notices the change. Phil says it’s harder to book international flights as more people are traveling these days than when they started 20 years ago. I remember there’s an interview of Bertram and Elise. Bertram acknowledged the show changed in terms of editing around the time Season 11 or 12 was aired.
In my mind, it was TV genius that TAR started the show when they made teams say they need to buy two tickets at airport or bus stations just for TV. Now they don’t air that anymore. Whoever came up with that idea really knows how to make a successful TV show. They make the race part more real as if they were traveling alone and the audience doesn’t think much about how the whole thing is produced much. Now you hear all sorts of things in the program. I remember when the Goth team broke a rule in Japan, they said and it was aired “we don’t know what (production) is gonna do.” They never would air anything like that in early seasons. Production was completely out of the final edit. In later seasons, they don’t even bother with editing out cameramens out of shots anymore. Remember in Season 4 and 9, they would blur the appearances of cameramen if they have to use that shot. That really made a difference in quality TV.
Also speaking of editing, there’re no more establishing shots when they transition from one team to another team at a different location. There were great transitions in Season 2-8 with music added in. Also, if anyone paid attention, in early seasons like Season 6, at the finish line they would show teams waiting for the winning team in the order they were eliminated. Those are the great details in editing that are long lost when they got sloppy. They have a bland editing formula for tasks where they’ll play the audio of post-leg interviews of teams recounting how they did the tasks and lay it on the videos of them doing those tasks. In early seasons, it was constructed with yelling / conversations between team/members to tell a story. They also did great work in an overall story arch. Watching earlier seasons, there were so many instances that the editors put soundbites out of texts to better tell a story (when they would show a yellow subtitle). Those take a great effort to comb through the footage and construct an arch for an entire season. You also see they break the fourth wall with teams directly talking into the camera, or to the camera person behind the camera as they were answering their questions. In early seasons, not that they didn’t use shots of teams talking to producers behind camera, but they would edit those in as if the teams were talking amongst themselves. They did a lot more to make the audience forget there’re crews there.
Here’s an excerpt from an interview with Jonathan & Victoria from season 6:
Victoria also blames the network, noting that because a camera was visible in the shoving shot, “It shows this decision had to go way up the line.”
https://www.realityblurred.com/realitytv/2005/01/the-amazing-race-6-jonathan_victoria_interview/This shows CBS used to take this seriously with cameras out of final edit.
Bertram and Elise, if you’re reading this: Please bring back the old quality.