How the Amazing Race turned ‘a bloody nightmare’ into TV history

So I wanna go back for our episode this week to, uh, go behind the scenes, which is where I share details about how reality TV is produced, and do that with The Amazing Race, which is one of the big three iconic reality TV competitions on CBS and on all of television.

And incredibly, it premiered the same night as a show on NBC called Lost, which had a very similar concept, or not really similar, but a kind of global adventure travel show where people were dropped off in the middle of the nowhere and they had to try to find their way back.

And of course, no one remembers that show, and the name Lost is not associated with reality TV, but with, uh, the show Lost on ABC, which itself was actually inspired by Survivor's popularity, something that, uh, I can get into in a future episode.

All that is to say The Amazing Race has endured.

It is just in... starting its thirty-ninth season, which actually was filmed one year ago in twenty twenty-five in late September and early October.

That first season aired in two thousand and one and premiered on September fifth, two thousand and one.

So its second episode was scheduled for September twelfth, two thousand and one.

That did not air that week, as you might imagine.

And it did, however, resume the next week.

And I think in part because of the way the world was reacting, and by world I mean American media, was reacting to what happened on September eleventh.

It was, uh, kind of, you know, forgotten in a way.

Like it was, it was obviously not the most important thing happening in the world, not that a television show ever is, but perhaps its ambition and its incredible storytelling would have gotten a little more focus had there not been, uh, you know, major terrorist attacks in the United States that, uh, got the media's attention.

And then also, like, I think that was the moment when television commentators, critics, other people, politicians were all like, you know, reality TV is over, irony is dead, we're-- the world is different now.

And of course, that didn't end up being the case, but that's, that's w- the way everyone was reacting when The Amazing Race itself premiered.

I wanna look back, though, at the very first season's filming, which took place about six months earlier in March of two thousand and one, and look at how the decisions that were made there actually affected the show today.