‘Amazing Race’ host Phil Keoghan questions show’s move to Friday in Canada

By Bill Brioux, The Canadian Press

Phil Keoghan looked as if he had just run into a road block.

Interviewed in Los Angeles at CBS’s annual summer press tour party, the host of “The Amazing Race” knew his series was being moved to a new night as it enters a 25th season (starting Friday at 8 p.m. ET). He also knew, having seen the ratings and having been mobbed at Canadian airports, that the series was even more popular on CTV in Canada than it is on CBS in the U.S.

So why, he wondered, didn’t CTV just leave it where it is already the hit of the night, on Sundays?

“In a way,” he says, “it’s kind of sad that they’re dictated by the American schedule.”

Having grown up in New Zealand — far from the crushing wave of U.S. TV signals — Keoghan had no idea that he had just raced over a Canadian TV cliff. The practice of substituting and simulcasting U.S. shows in Canada was part of the dialogue at the just-concluded hearings before the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission.

The Canadian network with rights to “The Amazing Race,” Bell-owned CTV, suggested they’d be happy to throw a road block up against the U.S. network signals that have spilled in for decades from Buffalo, Seattle and all across the Canada-U.S. border. Instead of worrying about following the whims of a U.S. scheduler, they could just show the programs they import whenever they want without worrying viewers here might get their fix on a U.S. channel.

It’s a particularly pertinent point this fall for CTV. They headed into this first official week of the season with three of their top imports — “The Big Bang Theory,” “The Amazing Race” and “Grey’s Anatomy” — all switched to new nights.

Usually, whenever a TV network moves a show, it loses 20 per cent of its audience. The good news for CTV is that “The Big Bang Theory” stormed back Monday close to its usual average audience levels, drawing 3.2 million and 3.5 million overnight viewers according to rating estimates.

CTV had great success this summer with “The Amazing Race Canada,” which concluded to 2.7 million overnight viewers and remained, for the second consecutive year, Canada’s most-watched show of the summer. That the audience followed the series to Monday nights gave CTV plenty to cheer about. Scoring that kind of a number on a Friday — TV’s lowest viewing night — will be more of a challenge.

Sunday is such a competitive night. Having to compete without its “Amazing Race” tent pole at 8 has left CTV suddenly vulnerable. They’ll be heading into a new night of hockey on City stations as well as Global’s female-skewing drama lineup. During the long season, there’s also “The Walking Dead” on AMC, “Downton Abbey” on PBS and many other cable and speciality distractions.

Keoghan is well aware of the Canadian version of “The Amazing Race,” which is hosted by Jon Montgomery.

“I heard it did extremely well,” he says.

He tells fans here to expect a few surprises as the U.S. “Race” returns for a 25th edition. Besides handing out “a crazy valuable prize” beyond the $1 million to the winning team, “we did something we’ve never done before,” he says. “We had a live start.”

Fans were invited to New York’s Times Square at 3 a.m. to witness the new teams scattering for the first checkpoint. Fans at home could actually dial in the start of the race live online and stream the teams taking off.

“How cool is that?” he asks.

The 47-year-old is active on Twitter and other social media platforms, posting photos and videos. “I live tweet during the show,” says the host, who can be followed at @PhilKeoghan. He loves the immediacy of getting instant feedback from fans. “It’s like a live litmus test,” he says.

Keoghan notes how technology has changed in the 14 years since the series began. “When we run through an airport now, iPhones come out and we’re all over Instagram,” he says. “People now know when we’re running through Hong Kong. That didn’t happen when we were first starting out.”

Cameras certainly come out when Keoghan is at a Canadian airport. He recalls coming north to Toronto to shoot a few promos for the series for CTV.

“I remember I was under a deadline and had to get something done as I was going through the Toronto airport,” he says.

Keoghan found himself mobbed by fans. He finally had to hide out in an airport lounge with his jacket collar pulled up while he typed away on his laptop.

“I must have seemed extremely anti-social,” he says, “but I don’t think there are bigger fans of ‘The Amazing Race’ than there are in Canada. Every time I go to Toronto, it’s mega.”

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Bill Brioux is a freelance TV columnist based in Brampton, Ont.

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. An earlier version incorrectly stated that the show’s prize was $500,000.

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