Nothing has ever seemed to come easy for Race fans, and despite the dominating ratings performance of this summer's The Amazing Race 5, it turns out that once TAR5 ends next week, Race fans are going to have to wait at least a month to get their TAR fix back.
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CBS has announced that despite its earlier announcements, the next edition of the series, The Amazing Race 6, is no longer scheduled to debut as part of the network's fall programming slate and will now only premiere in "late October or November."
Retaining its status as the Rodney Dangerfield of reality series despite its Emmy award win, the sixth The Amazing Race edition had originally been scheduled to air this fall on Saturdays at 9PM ET/PT. Shortly after, perhaps recognizing that possibly the only thing worse than scheduling The Amazing Race for Saturday evening was scheduling it after the sure-to-be dismal lead-in audience from 8PM's 48 Hours Mystery, CBS announced that the series had been rescheduled for Saturdays at 8PM ET/PT.
Earlier this month, CBS had announced that The Amazing Race 6's premiere had been rescheduled from Saturday, September 25 (only four days after TAR5's upcoming finale) to Saturday, October 2. While the network failed to cite any reasons for the one-week delay, speculation centered on either production delays (according to tips received by Reality TV World, TAR6 only began filming in Chicago in mid-August) or the desire to have a better defined "cooling down" period between races (despite having a stable full of television's longest-running reality shows, CBS has never been in the position to have to promote the new cast of a reality series while the current edition was still airing.)
In its announcement of the second delay, CBS acknowledged the lack of a "cool down" period as the main reason for its decision to delay the series until October/November. "We've seen (evidence) that it really helps to put a little space between one version and the next," CBS Vice President Kelly Kahl told Daily Variety. "We want to let the audience breathe a little before we bring the show back."
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As of now, CBS is still stating that when the series returns, it will still be to the dreaded Saturday evening time period. However, given the breakout ratings performance that the program's current The Amazing Race 5 experienced since that scheduling decision was initially made back in May, it wouldn't be a surprise if the network decides to use The Amazing Race 6 as a replacement for whichever new fall-premiering series is the first to get the cancellation axe. (Clubhouse?, dr. vegas?) Or at least we can hope. In the meantime, Survivor: Vanuatu repeats are expected to fill the now-open Saturday time period.