When it comes to reality shows, the second string has now entered the game.
"America's Got Talent" (i.e., "American Idol" with more variety and less impact) begins its new season on Tuesday. "So You Think You Can Dance" ("Dancing with the Stars," minus celebrities) started last week, right around the time that spring's lineup of heavy hitters -- "Idol," "DWTS," "Survivor," "The Amazing Race," "Celebrity Apprentice" -- wrapped up their seasons and crowned their champions.
And it's that first batch, by and large, that will find themselves competing for Emmy Awards this August -- if, in fact the reality-show field at the Emmys is any kind of competition at all.
So far, it hasn't been. We know that Emmy voters have the habit of rewarding the same shows year after year, but the Reality-Competition Program category has taken habit to a whole new level.
The award has been given out for seven years. The winners were, in order, beginning in 2003: “The Amazing Race,” “The Amazing Race,” “The Amazing Race,” “The Amazing Race,” “The Amazing Race,” “The Amazing Race” and “The Amazing Race.”
Not only has the Elise Doganieri/Bertram Von Munster show, from Jerry Bruckheimer Television, won every year of the category’s existence, but the last three years have seen exactly the same slate of nominees: “Amazing Race,” “American Idol,” ‘Dancing With the Stars,” “Project Runway” and “Top Chef.”
(Photo of Bruckheimer, Doganieri, Von Munster and host Phil Keoghan by Devork Djansezian/Getty Images.)
The 35 nominations over those seven years have been shared by a total of 10 shows. “American Idol” has been nominated every year, “Project Runaway” five times, “Dancing With the Stars” and “Survivor” four times each.
The others: “Top Chef” three times, “The Apprentice” twice, plus single nods for “Last Comic Standing” and, the first year, two shows that hardly seem to qualify: “AFI’s 100 Years … 100 Passions” and “100 Years of Hope and Humor.”
The dominance of “The Amazing Race” has obviously gotten under the skin of some other competitors. In the press room at last year’s Emmys, after he won the award for Reality Show Host for the second straight year, “Survivor” host Jeff Probst suggested, "Maybe 'Amazing Race' should do what Oprah did and pull itself out of competition." (Probst photo by Devork Djansezian/Getty Images)
And when his shows "The Apprentice" and "Celebrity Apprentice" were passed over, a characteristically humble Donald Trump told the Hollywood Reporter, “Instead of shows that deserve to win, they pick ‘Amazing Race.’ It’s a very sad commentary.”
"Amazing Race" has now finished its 16th season since 2001 (two a year), with a season that seemed to be business as usual. If that left an opening for an upset in the category come this August, several competitors recently made their cases with high-profile finales – though if you treat those shows as pleas to the Emmy voters to look somewhere other than “Amazing Race,” results were probably mixed.
