Intersting article from the New York Times..
An Audience Finally Catches Up to 'The Amazing Race'
By JOE RHODES
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's 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 2-person teams race around the world in pursuit of a million-dollar prize, will have its sixth-season premiere with a two-hour special tonight, 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 5," 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.
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's 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 Mr. 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," Mr. 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," Mr. 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," Mr. van Munster said, acknowledging that the quirky assortment of contestants in Season 5 - 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," Mr. 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, Mr. 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."
Last summer, though, perhaps because word of mouth had finally spread far enough or perhaps because other shows had failed to find an audience, "The Amazing Race" finally took off. "I think it just took a while for the audience to find it," said the show's executive producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, whose heavyweight presence (he also produces the immensely profitable "CSI" franchise for CBS) might have helped the series survive the rough spots.
Now Mr. van Munster must deal with the perils of success. For the first few seasons, he and his crew (including the show's host, Phil Keoghan) could move from place to place in relative anonymity. Not anymore. "Now, wherever we go, in southern India or running through the Jakarta airport," Mr. van Munster said, "people know who we are. They come up and yell, 'You're "The Amazing Race"!' But I don't mind, I think of it as free-flow advertising."
With so many people on the lookout for him and his racers, you would expect Mr. van Munster to be worried about Internet spoilers ruining the fun, tipping off destinations and tasks long before they hit the air. "We use decoy teams," he said, obviously enjoying the prospect of outsmarting the cyber spies. "They never really know where we're going. If I take you to Paris," he said, "I'm not taking you to the Eiffel Tower. I take you to the sewer pipes."
The only downside he sees to success is that his international production crews assume his budget has gone up accordingly. "When you start getting Emmys, then everybody all of a sudden thinks you're rich," he said. "They think CBS is doubling the budget. You can be assured that is not the case."
In the meantime, Mr. van Munster continues to scout locations for the seventh season, more than ever convinced that the world is a far less dangerous place than it sometimes seems. "Everybody everywhere has been helpful to us from the beginning," he said, "because I tell them: 'I'm not here to criticize your country or your culture. I'm here to bring Americans to learn from you and to have a good time.' Right now, the only places I wouldn't consider going are Iraq and Afghanistan. Everything else is on the board."
They have traditonally behaved well towards one another even if they may have been annoying to watch sometimes (like AR1--team guido, or (not annoying) AR 2 or 3--the team that ended up shopping in Hong Kong or wherever and spending all their money b/c they kind of knew they would be last--LOVED that couple!!!).
