TAR in the Media

[Vyas]

"I can't take all this tension!"

"It's just a show."

She sums up Justin: "What a schmuck!"

 

Indeed, all these viewers would've made for more entertaining racers than most of the actual cast - on the bright side, one should be thankful that nobody from BB16 made the cut, in effect clearing the way for the real crossover of the '15-'16 TAR cycle, S28's John(nyMac) and (Basic) Becky.

[Lingo]

I'd never heard of The People's Couch before seeing that video. I ended up watching at least 9 hours straight of those YouTube excerpts yesterday. THANKS VYAS! (Work, what's work??)

 

Justin may be a "schmuck" but I liked that that one guy appreciated his passion!

[cooksdelight]

We have a forum for The People's Couch, Lingo, come join us!

http://forums.previously.tv/forum/821-the-peoples-couch/

[Chyna]

Is TV Guide not publishing the eliminees' interviews anymore? I can't find any for this season. 

[ML89]

Bill Murray is a fan:

http://www.vulture.com/2015/10/bill-murray-rock-the-kasbah-reddit-ama.html

[Lingo]

We have a forum for The People's Couch, Lingo, come join us!

http://forums.previously.tv/forum/821-the-peoples-couch/

 

Ah, but my cable subscription doesn't include Bravo, actually.  :(

[Lingo]

So CBS posted clips from the episode on their TAR YouTube channel for this week's episode as usual...but no bonus clips. This is weird and disappointing. I wasn't expecting any mat chats with Phil, but it's odd of them not to post any clips of their downtime on a train or in a cab, for instance.  :(

[Bottle]

It's probably because it's keep on racing leg and maybe they'll upload it all next week

[Vyas]

So CBS posted clips from the episode on their TAR YouTube channel for this week's episode as usual...but no bonus clips. This is weird and disappointing. I wasn't expecting any mat chats with Phil, but it's odd of them not to post any clips of their downtime on a train or in a cab, for instance.  :(

 

You're right: the channel just uploaded them a couple hours ago, for God knows what reason. :P

[Bella]

After discussion with the site administrator, we are permanently deleting the links to the re-edits, as well as any posts quoting those links and any other questionable links or videos.

 

If in doubt, contact a mod before inserting a link, video, photo, etc.

 

Any future posts with such links will be deleted and the poster will be found in violation.

 

We need to be firm on this due to legal liability issues.

 

Thanks for understanding.

[Lingo]

After discussion with the site administrator, we are permanently deleting the links to the re-edits, as well as any posts quoting those links and any other questionable links or videos.

 

If in doubt, contact a mod before inserting a link, video, photo, etc.

 

Any future posts with such links will be deleted and the poster will be found in violation.

 

We need to be firm on this due to legal liability issues.

 

Thanks for understanding.

 

I don't know what you're referring to. What's a re-edit?

You're right: the channel just uploaded them a couple hours ago, for God knows what reason. :P

 

Yeah, I noticed that too. Dunno what the reason was, but it was nice that they were separated from the episode clips for once so I could just watch them in sequence!

[Bella]

The re-edits involved taking the show's material and reorganizing it. Without the commercials. I'm not an attorney and I'm not going into an extended discussion here, but that's copyright violation, which is illegal and which PTV does not tolerate.

Further questions should go to the site administration in the Questions forum.

[Lantern7]

Out of curiosity, has CBS announced a launch date for TAR28? I mean the actual start of the race, as opposed to when episodes start airing in 2016.

[Delwyn]

Out of curiosity, has CBS announced a launch date for TAR28? I mean the actual start of the race, as opposed to when episodes start airing in 2016.

 

If I understand your question correctly, they start filming in May 2016 according to the casting website. But as far as I know, there hasn't been a renewal yet? That would seem to indicate no race airing in February 2016.

[SnideAsides]

Or that they've got yet another casting-gimmick season coming up.

[ApprenticeFan]

^^^ TAR28 applications were closed back in June of this year and was already cast. This casting application probably be TAR29.

Edited November 10, 2015 by ApprenticeFan

[Delwyn]

If they have already cast for the February airing, then they should be racing any day now. IIRC it's often a mid Nov start. I guess the renewal counts for two "seasons" in 2015-16. Duh.

[Bella]

TAR 28 begins racing within days. I've set up two spoiler threads. One has location information only, and the other is for complete spoilers.

 

One thing to be aware of is that CBS may be making an early announcement of the teams. There's a reason for that -

they're all Internet celebrities of some sort. (Eww.)

 

After CBS announces the teams, we'll set up the team threads.

[mtlchick]

And teams have been announced.

 

Dear show...WTF IS THIS NONSENSE?! 

[Lantern7]

Oyyyyyyyyyyyy. This might be worse that TAR playing Blind Date last year. I really hope CBS forced Elise and Bertram into this.

[SnideAsides]

This might actually be even stupider than replacing Phil with Jay Leno.

[Vyas]

Quite frankly, it's as though BvM/WRP* were trying to get the cancellation from CBS on purpose.

 

*Bertram van Munster and World Race Productions

[DasFlavorPup]

Maw, get th' gun.  Old Yeller-and-Red-Flags done gone mad.

Edited November 12, 2015 by DasFlavorPup

[Lantern7]

RealityBlurred weighs in on TAR28. Surprisingly, Andy doesn't tee off on the format, mentioning that the people who "follow" the contestants might boost TAR's ratings. Seems better than TAR26 if you squint that way and tilt your head to the side.

[SnideAsides]

The former racers I've seen post about it universally haaaaaate the idea.

[jah1986]

This seems like such a bad idea, but other than them being internet people they really are just regular non-famous couples of two.  If you don't follow them on the internet you have no idea who they are like any other regular season.  One thing I don't remember from previous seasons is so many parent/child teams. I think there are three, is that a first?

[Thog]

Does this mean 11 teams of Justin? (I get that he's not an Internet star, but "radio personality" seems like it requires the same over-the-top personality traits.)

[scrb]

Never heard of any of these people so they might as well be ordinary racers.

 

For all their social networking fame, they can't be rich if they're coming on the race, unless they see it as a way to get even more publicity for their careers and don't really care about the money.

 

Then you might see some of them go through the motions but when the going gets tough, they bail?

[Bella]

The Reality Blurred article says that among these racers, they have ~33 million followers. The article also says that it has not been shown that these social media followers translate into television viewers.

 

However, the math-y side of my brain kicked in. For sake of argument, let's say there's overlap in the 33 million so that there's only 15 million individuals following these racers. If TAR picked up 1% of those people as viewers, that would be another .15 million. The ratings have been in the 1.1-1.2 million range. So adding another .15 million would kick the ratings up more than 10%. And that might be good for the show and its longevity.

 

This is all hypothetical of course, but I'm seeing more potential positives than negatives at this point. 

[ProfCrash]

Oh my is this going to be awful.  A bunch of internet "stars" who are totally image conscious and looking for the great quote or scene. Why couldn't they have gotten Rob C from Rob Has a Podcast if they were going down this path?

 

Uggghhhhh

 

I am thinking I would prefer another family version then this.

[Lingo]

So I guess this is the closest we'll ever get to seeing a Celebrity TAR, or indeed a celebrity version of any competitive reality show in the US that is not the Apprentice or Dancing with the Stars.

 

I get that celebs and wanna-be celebs can be very annoying, but at least they know their partners. Thus, I don't think this is worse than last season.

 

But live-streaming the start of the race? Very cool. I have to remember to watch that! The TAR website says that it will be Sunday Nov. 15 at 10:30/9:30c and you can watch either on the TAR website or Phil's Facebook page.

 

(Which is during the premiere of Into The Badlands, dammit!)

Edited November 12, 2015 by Lingo

[Bryce Lynch]

Oh my is this going to be awful. A bunch of internet "stars" who are totally image conscious and looking for the great quote or scene. Why couldn't they have gotten Rob C from Rob Has a Podcast if they were going down this path?

Uggghhhhh

I am thinking I would prefer another family version then this.

#NotGonnaWatchThisCrap Edited November 12, 2015 by Bryce Lynch

[SnideAsides]

The Reality Blurred article says that among these racers, they have ~33 million followers. The article also says that it has not been shown that these social media followers translate into television viewers.

 

However, the math-y side of my brain kicked in. For sake of argument, let's say there's overlap in the 33 million so that there's only 15 million individuals following these racers. If TAR picked up 1% of those people as viewers, that would be another .15 million. The ratings have been in the 1.1-1.2 million range. So adding another .15 million would kick the ratings up more than 10%. And that might be good for the show and its longevity.

 

This is all hypothetical of course, but I'm seeing more potential positives than negatives at this point. 

1.1/1.2 ratings points, 5-6 million people.

 

Even from a ratings perspective, I think this is unbelievably stupid. I don't think that total follower count considers how unevenly those followers are distributed (Burnie has 8.2 million; Jessica and Brittany have 60,000), or whether they're all even in the US. Take out the duplicate followers and take out the non-US followers, and 4,000,000 would probably be a generous estimate of their US fanbase. But there's already likely to be a big crossover audience for people like the parkour guys and the flight attendant lady, and many of the remaining teams are basically the same sort of people they've tried and failed to increase the audience with before (like, Tyler's fanbase is almost identical to Joey and Meghan's, and I can't imagine Erin and Joslyn are going to bring any viewers that this season's paparazzi/journalist-heavy cast hasn't). At best, there's probably only about 1,500,000 actual people to work with, and given less than a tenth of Frankie Grande's followers watched his TV show in a much better timeslot, they really only stand to gain about 100,000 viewers maximum. Not only is that not nearly enough to cover the usual fluctuations in the audience from week to week (there's a 240,000-viewer difference between the Paris and Rotterdam episodes of this season, for example), but from the online reactions that doesn't seem like it's anywhere near enough to cover the number of people who are vowing not to watch because of this gimmick.

 

TL,DR: They're better off bringing back the fucking Globetrotters yet again.

[scrb]

Maybe they feel compelled to try this to boost ratings.

 

May be a choice between trying something or CBS pulling the hook.

[PhD-Purgatory15]

Using the links off of the CBS meet the teams gallery, one can find and watch "We're going on TAR" announcement videos from the two Clevver reporters, the Mom and daughter, the Frisbee guys (who might end up being the bro-iest bro's to ever bro The Amazing Race), Scott and Blair Fowler, and Burnie and Ashley from Rooster Teeth. The African American brothers also posted a quick vine, and the most recent pics from the two Instagram Models have them in their race gear.

 

In talking to a friend who is super into Rooster Teeth and watching the video.....I could see myself rooting for Burnie and Ashley at this point. The Mom of the Mom/Daughter team seems like she could be a Glamazon 3.0...

[RCharter]

Using the links off of the CBS meet the teams gallery, one can find and watch "We're going on TAR" announcement videos from the two Clevver reporters, the Mom and daughter, the Frisbee guys (who might end up being the bro-iest bro's to ever bro The Amazing Race), Scott and Blair Fowler, and Burnie and Ashley from Rooster Teeth. The African American brothers also posted a quick vine, and the most recent pics from the two Instagram Models have them in their race gear.

 

In talking to a friend who is super into Rooster Teeth and watching the video.....I could see myself rooting for Burnie and Ashley at this point. The Mom of the Mom/Daughter team seems like she could be a Glamazon 3.0...

Season 28 smells like a disaster, but it could also be amazing.  I can't imagine it being anywhere in the middle.

 

The only people I really can root for so early on are the father/daughter team.  I like that she chose her father to race with instead of trying to find some other internet celebrity that was young and pretty.  There is also one team that looks a lot like Justin/Diana v 2.0.  Ugh.

[Qoass]

 

I am thinking I would prefer another family version then this.

 

Bite your tongue!

 

 

It's funny how people used to go on reality shows to become famous and now the producers are trying to convince us that these people are famous so they should be on a reality show.

[seacliffsal]

Dancing with the Stars seems to book younger stars with huge social media followings and it never seems to impact the voting. I don't know how this will translate into viewers. However, it could be epic-like people expecting to be recognized as celebrities and nobody caring...

[DasFlavorPup]

It's not going to work for boosting ratings, I don't think.    See also:  the ratings for "The Chair", which cast a YouTube personality who has millions of subscribers as one of the two contestants making a movie (Shane Dawson).  Also, to say the movie didn't make a lot of money would be an understatement.

[possibilities]

We're not privy to all the marketing research CBS has at its fingertips, but I'm taking the use of casting gimmicks to be an attempt to keep a low rated show in production, and I think it's entirely possible that CBS has data that suggests that even if broadcast ratings don't surge due to internet celebrities being cast, that the fans of those personalities do in fact bump up the numbers of people streaming of the show at cbs.com.

 

I'm willing to wait and see how it turns out. My complaints about the race have been in the area of task and course design. I think any crop of racers will be boring if not sufficiently challenged, and regardless of who they are, if you make the course complex enough, any group of racers will provide the viewers with an interesting vicarious experience.

 

Either way, ratings are waaaaay down. If the show is going to survive, they probably think they need to do something to try to boost the numbers. That I think they're doing the less interesting thing is disappointing, but not surprising. It's easier to cast people with followings than to earn your own by making the show itself more compelling.

[DB in CMH]

We're not privy to all the marketing research CBS has at its fingertips, but I'm taking the use of casting gimmicks to be an attempt to keep a low rated show in production, and I think it's entirely possible that CBS has data that suggests that even if broadcast ratings don't surge due to internet celebrities being cast, that the fans of those personalities do in fact bump up the numbers of people streaming of the show at cbs.com.

 

I'm willing to wait and see how it turns out. My complaints about the race have been in the area of task and course design. I think any crop of racers will be boring if not sufficiently challenged, and regardless of who they are, if you make the course complex enough, any group of racers will provide the viewers with an interesting vicarious experience.

 

Either way, ratings are waaaaay down. If the show is going to survive, they probably think they need to do something to try to boost the numbers. That I think they're doing the less interesting thing is disappointing, but not surprising. It's easier to cast people with followings than to earn your own by making the show itself more compelling.

 

Ratings aren't that bad. They've been pulling between a 1.0 and a 1.2 since moving to Fridays, which is amazingly consistent. They're also steady from last season, which is great considering how hard everything on CBS has fallen. Right now, they're either virtually tied or out-rating: Elementary, Hawaii Five 0, Blue Bloods, Madam Secretary, The Good Wife and CSI Cyber. They are within 0.3 - 0.5 ratings points of: NCIS LA, Criminal Minds, Limitless, Code Black, Mom, 2 Broke Girls and 60 Minutes.They only series that significantly and consistently outrate TAR on CBS are The Big Bang Theory, Supergirl, Life in Pieces, Survivor, Scorpion and NCIS/NCIS NO. CBS has so many problems in so many timeslots that a consistent reality show like TAR is safe, especially when they bring in sponsors like FitBit and Travelocity to offset costs and don't pay the huge salaries that some of those shows bring in. I wouldn't be surprised if TAR costs sub 1 million an episode, or even less, which is very cheap for an hour-long.

Edited November 14, 2015 by DB in CMH

[LizBug]

FYI ... Phil will be doing a live stream this evening (Sunday, November 15th) of the start of the first leg of Season 28.  It will begin at 10:30 pm EST/ 9:30 pm CST on his Facebook page.

 

http://www.cbs.com/shows/amazing_race/news/1004891/don-t-miss-the-amazing-race-28-starting-line-live-stream-event-/ 

[scrb]

Maybe CBS will let them get to 30 seasons and let the producers call it quits.

[PhD-Purgatory15]

Just finished watching the Live Stream event on Phil's FB page. It was chaotic (as expected). All the teams but one were within two minutes of each other as they reached a Detour checkpoint.

 

I thought the mini-interview w/ a "local" Mexico City TAR fan, the mini Q n A w/ Phil, and the finishing note about the situation in Paris all were really tastefully done in the chaotic live situation. Also noted that Blair (of the father/daughter team) has the patented Bindi Irwin, high pitched excited voice that is going to grate pretty much from the get go....

Edited November 16, 2015 by PhD-Purgatory15

[TheRabbi]

Yeah I thought it was nicely done as well. And Phil's little monologue about Paris is exactly what he's stood for his whole life. You have to keep traveling and living your life. I remember when his hometown got hit by that earthquake a few years ago, in an interview where he was asked how people could help, he said (paraphrasing) "Travel to New Zealand. Tourism is the best way to help by continuing to travel there." I'm sure he feels the same way about Paris.

Edited November 16, 2015 by TheRabbi

[Vyas]

Just finished watching the Live Stream event on Phil's FB page. It was chaotic (as expected). All the teams but one were within two minutes of each other as they reached a Detour checkpoint.

 

I thought the mini-interview w/ a "local" Mexico City TAR fan, the mini Q n A w/ Phil, and the finishing note about the situation in Paris all were really tastefully done in the chaotic live situation. Also noted that Blair (of the father/daughter team) has the patented Bindi Irwin, high pitched excited voice that is going to grate pretty much from the get go....

 

[Lantern7]

TAR got Jeered by TV Guide again. They bring up how they're using "the saddest trend ever," and they singled out Tyler Oakley. That seems harsh, especially with the commercial where he's trying to get people to open up. Granted, the ad is from YouTube. I feel that it was a hit-and-run paragraph, even as I dread TAR28 being as skippable as TAR26.

[Lantern7]

Not really a media mention so much as a "I could have sworn I posted about this" thing. Last year, before the fall of TWoP, I found the article I wrote on John Vito & Jill I wrote for a local newsweekly in 2002. I posted it on my blog, and I put it a supplemental post for non-fans.

 

ETA: Anybody else been reading John Seavey's recaps? Here's his latest , , , I had a good laugh from "It’s a lot easier to win a foot race when you break someone else’s legs."

[Lantern7]

TAR28 starts up on February 12. Interesting that it'll precede the latest offering of Survivor. There's a location spoiler in the link, which I got from RealityBlurred.

[Supay]

Ah, that famed Principality of Macau (sic):

 

 

(Just like when YouTubers Meghan and Joey were on Unfinished Business!)