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puddin:
An audience finally catches up to 'The Amazing Race'

Joe Rhodes
New York Times News Service
Nov. 16, 2004 12:00 AM

In the relatively short history of reality television there seems to have been one inescapable pattern: A show is either successful right out of the gate or it sputters and quickly dies. Slow starts are rarely allowed.



That makes CBS' late-blooming "Amazing Race" a notable survivor: It flirted with cancellation for four seasons before ratings suddenly escalated last summer, making it the most-watched reality series on television. After years of bouncing around in low-priority time slots, "The Amazing Race," in which 11 two-person teams race around the world in pursuit of a million-dollar prize, will have its sixth-season premiere with a two-hour special on Tuesday night (Nov. 16), in the high-profile heart of the prime-time November sweeps.



"Sometimes you just get a perfect storm of elements, and that's clearly what happened in Season five," said Kelly Kahl, executive vice president of programming at CBS. His theory? The cumulative effect of a hard-core fan base, years of effusive reviews (a number of which called "The Amazing Race" the best reality show on television in its first season), back-to-back Emmy Awards in 2003 and 2004 for best reality program, and a particularly appealing cast of competitors all came together to bolster the show's ratings, particularly among the younger viewers prized by the networks. advertisement 
 
 




The late-September season finale drew nearly 13 million viewers and the summer episodes averaged 10.7 million, high numbers for that time of year. More important from CBS' perspective, the show nearly doubled its ratings among its 18-to-34 viewers and won its time period every week.



The ratings resurrection has been especially gratifying for Bertram van Munster, the show's Dutch-born co-creator and executive producer. For van Munster, the show is the culmination of his lengthy career as a globe-trotting documentarian, a rough-and-tumble life that included several seasons in harm's way as the chief cameraman on "Cops." The "Amazing Race" had such a shaky start, though, that he was convinced it would not survive.



The series had its premiere on Sept. 5, 2001, six days before the terrorist attacks. The opening sequence, which had seemed so exhilarating when it was first broadcast - a computer-generated close-up of a passenger jet racing through clouds - suddenly seemed ominous.



"Once we saw our billboards covered in dust from the 9/11 tragedy, we knew we had a problem," van Munster said. "The world had changed from one second to another, and we were doing a show about traveling overseas, about airplanes. At that point, I thought the show was over. I didn't think we had a chance."



There were other problems. In the wake of the enormous success of "Survivor," the first big wave of reality programming was flooding the networks and, programming analysts say, "The Amazing Race" got lost in the crowd.



"I think they had a hard time differentiating themselves from some of those other shows," said Stacey Lynn Koerner, a broadcast ratings analyst and executive vice president of Initiative Media Worldwide. "The ratings performances were never bad, but they didn't compare to the blockbuster numbers that 'Survivor' was getting."



The ratings might have been mediocre, but audience reaction to "The Amazing Race" was intense from the start. Reviewers gushed and Internet devotees sang its praises. Andy Dehnart, the creator and editor of realityblurred.com, a Web site devoted to reality television, said viewers were quickly hooked on the show's deceptively simple premise: Teams of people with existing relationships - married couples, best friends, siblings - race from one designated location to another, performing tasks and picking up clues to their next destination, experiencing local customs and frequently getting lost along the way. The last team to arrive at each pit stop is eliminated from the race.



"I think one of the biggest reasons people love this show is that you get to live vicariously through the people on the screen," Dehnart said. "It's not like other shows where people are made to suffer or humiliate themselves. Most of the time, these people are doing things you'd like to do yourself."



"I think the cast is very important, that's half the battle," van Munster said, acknowledging that the quirky assortment of contestants in season five - including a maniacally intense man named Colin, born-again Christian fashion models and an easygoing middle-aged couple who eventually won the race - had a lot to do with the increased audience interest. "We want people between 21 and 70 from all walks of life," he said.



The first season saw competitors travel from New York to Johannesburg, Paris to Tunis, Rome to New Delhi, and then to Bangkok, Beijing, Anchorage, San Francisco and back to New York. Scheming, bickering and exhausted, participants in the first five seasons have found themselves bungee jumping in New Zealand, searching archaeological digs in Egypt, stuffing themselves with cheese in Switzerland and with caviar in Russia. They have raced sampans and ox carts, crawled through temples filled with rats, ridden elephants and camels, climbed mountains, kayaked over waterfalls and hang-glided from cliffs.



Through it all, the ratings remained good but not great. "There were times when it was close to being canceled," Kahl of CBS said. "It's a show that was always on the bubble. But it had a lot of things going for it. It was always one of the youngest-skewing shows on our air, if not the youngest. And the response we got from fans - letters, e-mails, phone calls - was almost unprecedented."



For his part, van Muster said: "They never told us it was in trouble or that it wasn't coming back. But sometimes the phone would be awfully quiet for a couple of months. That always made me nervous."


http://www.azcentral.com/ent/tv/articles/1116amazing16.html

puddin:
Amazing Race promises a lively sixth season

By Hal Boedeker
Orlando Sentinel
Posted November 19 2004

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If ever a show delivered on its title, The Amazing Race is it.

Through skillful editing and daring games, the CBS series provides rare excitement for television and even rarer class for the reality genre.

The global adventure has won the Emmy for best reality series two years in a row. It has triumphed, deservedly, over such higher-rated competitors as American Idol, Survivor and The Apprentice.

The fifth edition of The Amazing Race emerged as the highest-rated reality series this summer. Most shows' numbers decline with age, but this one's keep growing.

So CBS has started the sixth edition of The Amazing Race this week at 9 p.m. Tuesdays against heavier competition. (The premiere encores at 8 p.m. Saturday on WFOR-Ch. 4 and WPEC-Ch. 12.)

"It's a time slot where no one is dominating," says Kelly Kahl, who oversees CBS's schedule. "If you talk to people, they're passionate about the show. It has a viral effect. More people tell other people. It keeps spreading."

The Amazing Race sends 11 two-person teams on an exhausting quest that will bring the winning duo a $1 million prize. The fifth edition covered 72,000 miles and six continents in a month; the new version travels roughly 40,000 miles and hits 24 cities on four continents.

The fifth version also thrived from excellent casting. Charla, a plucky dwarf, emerged as an admired player despite her obnoxious cousin Mirna. That show also offered the bowling moms Linda and Karen and the eventual winners, spouses Chip and Kim.

The sixth edition rolls out colorful contestants, such as married entrepreneurs Jonathan and Victoria.

"He is without a doubt the loudest, most competitive person we have ever had on the race," says host Phil Keoghan. "Right from the beginning, he made it clear that he understood the show and that he's going to win."

Then there are married wrestlers Lori and Bolo. "He tries to be so mean, but he's really a sweetheart and so is she," says executive producer Bertram van Munster.

Van Munster also points to Avi and Joe as promising characters. "They're loud and proud and best friends," he says. :)*

The producer cites careful casting as crucial to the show's success.

"There is this whole army of reality people out there that wants to be on the shows," van Munster says. "We circumvent them. We always get the real things. If you want to be lazy in casting, you can put together a conglomerate of people who are professional reality contestants."

The show has ritzier production values than most reality series. Van Munster says he started thinking bigger when agents paired him with Jerry Bruckheimer, who also produces the CSI series and big-screen blockbusters.

"The reason Jerry and I hooked up was `let's raise the quality of television and have fun.' Otherwise, why do it?"

The show presents breathtaking views of Iceland, and the series will travel later to Africa and Asia. The locales are often so arresting that The Amazing Race seems as much an epic travelogue as a game.

Keoghan marvels at being at the foot of the Great Sphinx in Egypt last season.

"It's a thrill for us," the host says. "People at home are living that vicariously through the teams. We all dream of doing these things

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/features/lifestyle/sfl-amrace-orlnov19,0,615574.story?coll=sfla-features-headlines

Texan:
WOW so many articles!!! Okay the last 2 i just skimmed.

Less promoted is the fact a pair of dating actors includes a woman who participated in last winter's pay-per-view Lingerie Bowl football game

So which one of them was the lingerie bowl participant?

Curiousl why they mention some contestants and not others...do they make it far or are they the frist boots?  H/A never mentioned nor the grandparents or Gus and Hera

Texan:
Maybe he is out christmas shopping with pittgirl for you.  Where is that pittgirl...she should be on school break?

puddin:

--- Quote ---So which one of them was the lingerie bowl participant?
--- End quote ---
I'm thinking its Haydon & Aaron?

--- Quote ---Maybe he is out christmas shopping with pittgirl for you.  Where is that pittgirl...she should be on school break?
--- End quote ---
...Yeah probably it.. :)_| I do miss our Pittgirl too..Maybe I'll email her and see how shes doing  **:)**
_______________________________________________________________________________________
Tue, November 23, 2004

More than one way to win at Amazing Race

By BILL BRIOUX, Sun Media
  
Why do people get hooked on shows like The Amazing Race? It's genetic, explains Phil Keoghan, thrill-seeking host of the around-the-world reality series that continues tonight at 8 p.m. on CTV and CBS. Keoghan (rhymes with Hogan) believes that there is a risk-taking gene in all of us.

"The reason that shows like Survivor and The Amazing Race have captured people's imagination is that they speak to that gene," he says. "They allow us to vicariously escape and do the very things we feel we need to do, but we're not getting in our everyday life."

Too many of us back off our destiny due to fear or other excuses, he says.

"The two big excuses I hear from people are 'I don't have time' and 'I don't have money.' "

His own priorities changed at 19 when the New Zealander was trapped diving in a shipwreck.

"It was the first time in my life I really felt like I could die," he says. "Obviously I managed to get out, and as a result I was really motivated to start living the biggest life I could. I wrote this list of things to do before I die and that list became a career for me. I wound up getting paid to do the things on my list."

For a similar approach, just look at the first two people tossed from last week's Amazing Race premiere. High school buddies Avi and Joe came last out of 11 teams, but were blown away by the experience and thrilled to make that first trek from Chicago to Iceland.

"If these guys were only going to go in the race to win and not for any other reason and they were going to measure it that way, then, yes, they failed. But life isn't like that," says Keoghan. "What's so great about people who get on the show is they do truly embrace the experience and they do see it as a once-in-a-lifetime experience. And it's not just about the money."

That even applies to Jonathan, one of the "married entrepreneurs" who instantly stepped into the villain role last week. Keoghan concedes Jonathan is "without a doubt the loudest person we've ever had compete on the race," but he's also the biggest fan.

"He's analyzed every challenge, he knows what worked and what didn't work. This is a guy who's on a mission to win The Amazing Race."

Keoghan says putting "married pro wrestlers" on your application form, as gung ho grapplers Lori and Bolo did this time, doesn't automatically qualify you for the event.

"Only if they deliver as people," he says. "We get a lot of applicants with pretty good headlines -- wannabe astronauts or whatever."

And don't be fooled by all those contestants who call themselves "dating models" or "actors," either.

"What people call themselves doesn't necessarily mean that's what they are. I live in L.A. where people call themselves actors, models, producers, directors and writers and they work down at the 7 -Eleven."


http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/WinnipegSun/Spotlight/2004/11/23/726705.html

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