I am late in joining the The Amazing Race fan club now that the show is in its ten millionth season. My whole family watches it and now my roommate has suckered me in, too, with promises of cooking the cuisine of the country they visit that episode. We cooked schnitzel last week when they visited Vienna, Austria—it’s totally worth it.
The thing is that the show is really good, too, but also seems really impossible to pull off. How long does it take? How do they think of so many challenges that are appropriate for the countries they visit? Don’t the competitors get exhausted? Turns out that the old Interwebs again holds all the secrets of the universe, and some about The Amazing Race, too.
For those uninformed about this cultural phenomenon (it must to have dwindled to about ten, under-the-rock dwellers not in the know by now), The Amazing Race is a race around the world. Starting with twelve partnered teams of every stripe and from locations throughout United States, teams are challenged to perform various tasks (from eating huge quantities to maneuvering busy, car-swamped streets). The last team to check in to a pit stop at the end of a leg is eliminated (most of the time—some weeks are non-elimination legs). The winner of the show receives one million dollars. The show, which has been on the air for ten years now, has earned eight Emmy awards.
One of the problems contestants consistently run into is finding space on the planes that take them from their current location to their new destination. Team members must buy tickets for themselves and for their two-person camera crew based on seat availability on the earliest plane trip. To purchase the tickets, teams are assigned credit cards approved only for this purpose provided by the producers. Sometimes, however, the producers will book charter flights with an arbitrarily chosen number of seats made available to contestants.
Speaking of production and producers, Elise Doganieri and Bertram Van Munster, the married masterminds of the show, use approximately 2,000 people around the world to plan the show and to play parts in the show’s production, including performing such duties as transportation managers, communication, translation, stunt rigging, team tracking and catering.
To begin planning for a season, the producers lay out a route for the show. Then, they visit each of the locations with their field producers. They plan the challenges based on the country—the idea is that the challenge is something that couldn’t happen in the United States; it’s very location and country specific, such as planting potatoes in Russia. Next, they return to the United States and hash out the details, sending the field producers back to their assigned locations a few weeks before the teams arrive. They are careful to stay abreast of current world problems, keeping producers and teams out of any potential danger.
All potential cast members must agree to let a camera crew follow them around for 24 hours, seven days a week. They also must have the proper immunizations and must agree to take any medicine necessary in the countries that they visit. Applicants must also be willing to give the producers 30-40 days for the production of the show.
The Amazing Race airs on CBS on Sunday nights at 8/7c.
Sources and further reading:
http://www.cbs.com/casting/amazing_race/Eligibility_Requirements.pdf
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/6863675/ns/today-entertainment/
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