Here's an article from yesterday's Chicago Trib - the buzz is growing!http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/chi-0411160074nov16,1,7159218.story
With help from fans, hit CBS show rolls on
By Maureen Ryan
Tribune staff reporter
Published November 16, 2004
Fans of "The Amazing Race" are a ferociously committed lot. They're certainly not above pestering friends, family and acquaintances to watch the supremely suspenseful CBS program, on which 11 teams compete to win a $1 million prize in a round-the-world race.
Even Leslie Moonves, the head of CBS, can't avoid the show's fanatics. A year or two ago, when the return of the show was in doubt, Moonves got a call from a devotee who urged him to bring back the program for another season.
How'd the superfan get past Moonves' assis-tants? She's Sarah Jessica Parker, that's how.
"She lobbied to bring the show back because she loves it so much," according to Kelly Kahl, CBS' senior executive vice president of programming.
Parker was definitely onto something with "Race," which debuts its sixth season at 8 p.m. Tuesday on WBBM-Ch. 2. As it turned out, in its fifth edition, which aired over the summer, the cult reality program became a genuine television phenomenon, ending up in the Nielsen top 10 for most of its run and getting a long-overdue wave of media attention as well.
Phil Keoghan, the "Race" host whose cool-as-a-cucumber charisma launched a thousand message boards, has a theory as to why the show broke through during summer 2004.
"We've never had an opportunity until this summer to become water-cooler talk, because there's always been something else that's been marketed ahead of us," Keoghan said Aug. 13, as 10 new teams prepared to kick off the sixth race next to Chicago's Buckingham Fountain.
Certainly timing was not kind to the first edition of "Race," which debuted a year after "Survivor" and a few days before Sept. 11, 2001.
"It's always kind of been the stepbrother in terms of media attention, maybe even in terms of what we expected out of it," said Kahl.4-star fifth race
But fans kept up an unrelenting word-of-mouth campaign about the show; a growing chorus of critical raves and a 2003 Emmy win (it won another in 2004) helped, too. When most broadcast networks filled their summer schedules with repeats and uninspired reality shows, the stage was set for the fifth edition of "Race" to hit the big time.
"And when people turned up," Keoghan said, "they got to see us at our best."
Did they ever. The fifth race was a nail-biter, with the amiable married couple Chip and Kim narrowly beating out the hyperefficient but argumentative Colin and Christie. Perhaps the most memorable team, though, was made up of the wily cousins Charla and Mirna; in particular, the 4-foot-tall Charla became a breakout star in her own right as the season progressed.
Few fans predicted that the mellow Chip and Kim would make it halfway through the race, let alone win, but unpredictability is one of the hallmarks of the show, which challenges teams to perform physical stunts, negotiate multiple airports and try to find cabdrivers from Dubai to Dallas who speak English, all in an effort to avoid arriving last at the checkpoints that crop up at the end of each episode.
"The great part about this show, and where I feel that we are doing a true reality show, is we never can predict the outcome ourselves," said executive producer Bertram Van Munster. "In this race, shifts back and forth so many times that we all look at each other and say, `How is this possible?'""Let's say you're watching the Tour de France, which is very exciting, but you go in knowing chances are Lance Armstrong's going to win," Keoghan noted. "On this show, every single time, something unpredictable happens."
"The intensity, from the viewer's perspective, is always really high," said Andy Dehnart, creator of comprehensive unscripted-TV Web site realityblurred.com and a television columnist for MSNBC.com. "You're sitting on the edge of your seat, your heart is racing, and the tension never lets up from the beginning to the end of an episode."
Teams are key
The key to the show's success, Dehnart said, is not just a brilliant formula that mixes compelling challenges with such related tasks as reading maps and managing money. He also credits the show's producers with casting teams of people who have some kind of relationship to each other (racing duos have been made up of dating couples, married couples, family members and friends).
"Somehow, the drama has more consequences when people know each other already," Dehnart noted. "I definitely think that's the way we always learn the most about people -- when we're in stressful situations, we learn who's there for us and whether someone can function."
Another thing that sets "Race" apart from most reality fare is the show's cinematic look. Rather than dwelling in a badly decorated "mansion" or muddling along on an unchanging stretch of beach, contestants have completed challenges at the foot of the Egyptian pyramids and done death-defying stunts in exotic world capitals and tiny fishing villages.
"I think too many shows are being produced in houses now," Van Munster said. "My location is the world. That's my studio."
"The money has to be spent, especially if you want to compete with these big shows on networks," said Keoghan. And the producers aren't pinching pennies; each team is followed by a two-person sound and camera team, and several dozen production folks were camped out near Buckingham Fountain when the sixth race kicked off in Chicago last August.
"There is that connotation that all they do is show up with the cameras," said "Survivor" host Jeff Probst. "The truth is that the good shows like `The Apprentice,' `American Idol' and `The Amazing Race' are in the hands of great storytellers, gifted editors and producers. The reason people watch is because of good storytelling."But the storytelling on "Race" has an important difference: When teams are eliminated (or Philiminated, to use the fan lingo that pays tribute to the unflappable Keoghan), it's usually because they messed up somewhere along the way. Teams can and do mess with each other ("When's the next flight to Kuala Lumpur? We have no idea," one team might fib to another), but the show is not dominated by factionalism, voting or the whims of some Trump-ian mogul.
"The thing I hear from a lot of people is that unlike a lot of other shows, there's an innate sense of fairness," Kahl said. "You're not voted off. You're not conspired against. It's as simple as that."Youth factor saves show
Ironically enough, however, CBS came close a few times to voting the show off its schedule, but "Race's" youthful demographic persuaded execs to stick with it.
"How are we going to get rid of this show?" Kahl said CBS executives asked themselves. "This is the youngest show on the schedule." Despite the show's sometimes marginal ratings, that youth factor was always the show's saving grace, given Moonves' desire to lower the average age of the network's viewers.
Now, Kahl said, CBS is using the former cult show as "a weapon" on its schedule, giving it a prime spot Tuesdays. CBS had toyed with the idea of using the program as an anchor Saturday nights earlier in the season, but the network changed its mind and saved the sixth edition for the November sweeps period, given how well "Race" did over the summer.
"The confidence factor in this show has risen quite a bit," Kahl said.
"They've been really intelligent with the show," Dehnart said of CBS. "We don't see that very often, and we especially don't see that with reality -- networks are so often willing to pull the plug quickly."
And if the sixth season gets ratings comparable to what "Race" drew over the summer?
That, Kahl said, "will be a home run."
2002 IceCat Originals, Inc. All rights reserved.
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