If we're permitted to have this thread, it had better be a purely informative/factual one (without reaction or discussion), giving announcements of exceptional events in GSN's scheduling, that deviate from its daily 9-10pm, 12-1am (ET) airing of the episodes. That way, people can be sure that any time the thread is updated and pops to the top of the forum, there's some information about scheduling that may be of interest.

In that spirit, this initial post will serve to give notice that tonight's (Sunday's) airing is likely to be the third leg of TAR3, the one that we expected to see on Saturday. (See the 3-2 thread for some persuasive reasoning that the Saturday rerun of 3-2 was deliberate and not accidental.)

Edited to specify Eastern Time, which I originally meant to do in any case.

Thanks for the info, Rinaldo.

Please also note that on the West Coast (at least here in SF where I am), the times are 6-7pm and 9-10pm.

Oh, shit! So... I didn't miss ep 3?! Thanks, Rinaldo... you are (wait for it) AMAZING!

[BOMP]

I just discovered that not all airings are 1 hour. The hard way. We were watching S2 and only had the first hour of a 2 hour ep. I peeked ahead to discover the finale aired over 2 hours of which we only have the first hour. I still feel a little sick. I have my TiVo set up to manually record otherwise I get all airings. Anyway, after some guide searching I found this info. Maybe it will help someone else. My guide gets about 2 weeks in advance so I'm going to be seriously anal about checking it to make sure I get every sweet minute of TAR TiVo'd.

Sat 8/13 - 2 hours
Tues 8/16 - 2 hours
Weds 8/17 - 1.5 hours

Set your VCR or TiVo accordingly!

FYI - We get it at 6-7 pm and 9-10 pm in Hawaii too.

This link is for the weekly GSN programming guide. It shows when double episodes are scheduled:
GSN Current Week Programming Guide

I started watching TAR around season 5. I know that in some of the later seasons there were "special episodes" that recapped what had happened so far and added a few new race scenes. (Usually very few of the latter.)

Do we know yet if GSN will be airing those? I wasn't sure if they were actually considered to be episodes for syndication purposes.

I wasn't sure if Season 1 or Season 2 had those when they first ran, and I know nothing like that was aired by GSN for those seasons.

In Los Angeles with Direct TV Satellite, I get 6pm and 9pm showings. So I'm finally on this board as soon as the East Coast, which I really enjoy.

I would venture a guess and say yes. Lots of sitcoms in reruns have those types of episodes all the time as well. Plus there were some decent quotes that came out of it like more of That Guy's rant to the camera in Norway only to hear Victoria say "You smell."

Only TAR6 and 7 had such episodes (one each), if memory serves.

The scheduling of the two hour episodes has probably changed, right? Seeing as how they repeated an episode twice.

Yep, and it appears that it was scheduling those two hour episodes so as not to disrupt their other programming that led GSN to show episode 2 on consecutive nights. The next two hour eppy will be Saturday instead of Friday as originally scheduled.

This is a very handy thread, guys, thanks!

Wow......thanks to you who are doing the research on air schedules! We were on vacation last week and didn't have access to GSN. Doing the mental math we figured we'd be seeing part 2 of the finale when we got home. Instead we saw 3-2. Thanks for leading me in the right direction with the schedule!

One of the admins over at GSN gave a heads up that there may be random repeats just like there was last Saturday.

Here's what she said:

GSN will occasionally air repeat episodes of The Amazing Race to avoid preempting other GSN series when special 90-minute or 2-hour Amazing Race episodes are about to air. We anticipate this happening very rarely, and we won't skip any episodes.

Thanks for watching The Amazing Race on GSN!

(Reference is this thread)

So yup, it may happen again...

There was an article that mentioned GSN moving TAR on Tuesdays once Season 8 starts. I cannot find it at this time, but that's just another heads up. Makes sense though...the show would be up against...itself.

You know, for all the minor complaints, my main comment to GSN is "THANKS!!" I finally get to see 1-4 and I don't spend an entire week wondering what's going to happen in the next episode!

This is pretty much what we (or rather, a TWoPper smarter than me) had already figured out from existing evidence. So sometimes we'll see an episode twice (next, we're thinking, Sunday repeating on Monday), but nothing gets skipped. My only complaint with GSN is that they could publicize this more, and also tag the individual episodes with specific descriptions so people can keep track better. Still, it's a minor demerit in the grand scheme of things.

Another minor demerit for failing to inform the promo monkey department about the repeats so that the teaser schedule got ahead of the episode schedule.

And fair enough too. Basically if 2-hour TAR were slated for Mondays or Fridays, then we'd be seeing the episode from the preceding night, with the real episode airing the following night. For some reason, Extreme Dodgeball isn't good enough to avoid pre-emption. I'm not complaining, but if it doesn't air, then Ballbreakers should also be pushed back. Poker Royale? Definitely not. Also, it would've been better had GSN aired Dieselgate two nights in a row, considering the fact that they aired 3-02 twice for scheduling purposes when they could've aired tonights episode yesterday evening as well as tonight.

And it's fine by me if we get an "extended pitstop" (rimshot!) once in a while, so long as we get fair warning and the promo monkeys are in the loop (word, SVNBob). I could even . . . watch one of the eps that I missed. And with the link above to the GSN weekly schedule, we should be golden.

ETA: Oh, that's so awesome -- thanks for the link mtlchickie, I've been neglecting that thread. And I fucked up taping some of the eps from TAR1 (bad VCR -- I swear) so this is perfect. Wonder why they are doing the marathon only for Season 1 -- could it be that was [eyebrow pop] the best season ever? Oops, wrong thread for that.

But boy was I way off in an earlier post (regarding repeat-gate) on when GSN would finish up -- they don't start TAR7 repeats until after TAR8 has begun. A little head-to-head competition . . . should be interesting. But now I have to go without sleep until mid-October. KF here I come.

Thanks to Brennan in the media thread, planning got a whole lot simpler.

Tonight's is the 2-hour episode, right? I'm heading out for the evening (shock! horror!) and want to make sure my TiVo is programmed correctly.

Yes, this is the reason why we have this thread:

REMINDER: The telecast tonight (Saturday) is two hours, beginning at the usual time but extending an hour later than usual!

Set expectations, timers, VCRs, and thread-opening accordingly.

Does anyone know which night will be the finale for TAR 3 on GSN? Is it the 2 hour on Tuesday night? or the 1.5 hour on Wed night?

TAR3 finale on Tuesday, TAR4 premiere on Wednesday.

Will throw up a bit of appreciation for GSN–in the bumper just before the show tonight, they did specifically mention the two hour special.

So if Tuesday is the 2-hour finale, does that mean that Monday will be a repeat of tonight?

For airdates of when seasons 4-7 begin, I found the following info from Buzzer: The Game Show Blog

4th Season- August 17th
5th Season- September 1st
6th Season- September 15th
7th Season- September 29th

Buzzer also reports that once TAR 8 begins, no TAR repeats will air at all on Tuesday nights.

blah. I wish tonight be the rerun and tommorow be a new episode since I can't watch it tonight =( *grr at having only one TV with GSN*

Ok, I do have to applaud GSN for making their own TAR teaser ads, but the one for TAR3's Twins Elimination shown today was just a bit too spoilerish.

They actually show the Twins going up to Phil and being told they can't check in..., along with an earlier thing about the BoB collation falling apart.

Oh, I hope so!! We got hit by an awful thunderstorm and lost power for 9 frickin' hours so I missed it tonight!

On the GSN website schedule, TAR is scheduled for two-hour blocks on both Tuesday and Wednesday -- the start times are the usual hours (so, 9-11 PM ET, 6-8 PM PT, etc.).

Without clues regarding content, it is hard to tell if it is the finale and a two-hour start of TAR4, or two days showing the finale. Not wanting to be spoiled, I am not looking at the index of shows, but someone in the forums will know if TAR4 starts with a two-hour episode.

ETA: Strategery is correct, below -- the TAR episodes on Wednesday are indeed 90 minutes in length, starting at the usual time.

What? Chuck Woolery is back? And here I was thinking this thread was spoiler-free. :)

I don't think that's right, jjj; if you look carefully there's an episode of Lingo scheduled at 10:30 Eastern on Wednesday (and something else at 1:30AM Eastern). So I think that means it is indeed the TAR4 opener (just judging from what I've read on the boards that that one was 1.5 hours -- didn't see it originally). Of course, now that Chuck Woolery's back for sure I wouldn't want to miss that either. (And I thought TAR was bad at creating phony drama -- sheesh!)

REMINDER: Monday's one-hour episode is likely to be a repeat of Sunday's 11th leg, with the 2-hour finale scheduled for Tuesday.

Followed by the GSN premire of the 90-minute TAR4 Leg 1 on Wednesday.

Thanks, Rinaldo. Now I won't [flo]whine[/flo] and throw things at my TV tonight.

Well, I might whine anyway, just to keep in practice.

Hee! Yeah that was definitely lame. Come on GSN; you're better at this.

"Richard. Alex. Chuck. And Phil! The men of GSN."


Thanks for the heads up once again Rinaldo and SVNBob. I guess Extreme Dodgeball isn't important enough not to get pre-empted. Not that I'm complaining, but since it will, Ballbreakers should also. Extreme Dodgeball is as original as Ballbreakers (maybe it's because ED is a returning original and Ballbreakers isn't, and GSN thinks that we can't ever get too much crap-ass promos). "Let's break some balls, baby!" Oh, dear.

Would it possibly make sense for the rest of the first run-throughs (with multitudes of >1hr episodes) to consider posting a likely calender of episodes, as best as we can tell at this point? I know we have the first leg days, and probably can infer the rest based on the fact that we'll never have a >1hr episode on M and F? Of course, noting where there may be duplicates or other scheduling issues?

(I'm Tivo'd, it's not a big thing for me , but I'm thinking of others that have to set the recording more manually).

Well, unless they move TAR to the daytime block, we won't be seeing that tagline anytime soon (and they should really add Scrabble to their lineup as a companion to Lingo. And get rid of Greed which is the worst of Chuck's shows.)

It cracks me up whenever I hear about the prizes for the Lingo sweepstakes... dinner with Chuck or a gift certificate for Big Lots. Wow, I'd rather win a Kodak Easy Share camera.

Well, if I knew what episodes were the 90 minute or 2 hour ones, I could probably try to figure it out. Also, doesn't TAR8 start in September? Once TAR8 starts, there won't be a Tuesday episode on GSN so that will have to be factored in.



*lol*

Somehow I think it's more likely the ladies by the pool would be dreaming of Phil than any of the 'Men of GSN.' Or maybe that's just me. ;)

Which is kinda funny that GSN picked Richard, Alex and Chuck for that promo cuz honestly...as long as I've posted over there, they're usually not mentioned in the 'This host is so cute!' posts. Heh.

People can do whatever they like, of course, but I would be inclined against doing this sort of thing too far in advance, as it would be (as quoted) "likely" or "sensible" rather than the actual official schedule, and people might take that as official, not check back again, and then get messed up if GSN chooses to do it differently.

To me, it makes the most sense to post a schedule here intermittently, just a week or so in advance, as we get the info for which days have long episodes, with an additional reminder on the day. Essentially what we've been doing for the last week already.

IIRC, TAR4 didn't have any 2 hour episodes, and TAR5's only 2 hour episode was the finale, so we shouldn't have to worry about reruns for the next few weeks.

I did not get my usual dose of TAR forums today, as I was home with Munchkin2, who sick with the dreaded pinkeye and I eagerly awaited my date with the finale. 9:00 finally comes and I see it is a repeat. I have missed out on a perfect opportunity to take my frustrations out on Flo and her screeching.

Fuck you, GSN.

On a more positive note, thanks to Rinaldo and others for the great info regarding the schedule for the week.

Edited to not sound so bitter.

However, both had 1.5hr lead in shows (as I recall) so the same rules would apply, though I think the previously posted bit on when we can expect the premieres helps there.

Shit. I feel stupid for not knowing/forgetting, but does anyone remember why the final two episodes weren't on the same night? Right now, I'm thinking it might've been a little pointless, even though TPTB might have been trying to drag out the season to as close to the end of August as possible.

That was the less bitter version? :)

I rearranged my entire night last night so I could watch the 8-10 showing and not have to stay up for the 11-1 showing. Seriously GSN, stop fucking with the schedule. If you want to show a night of repeats, pick a night and stick to it! I’m clearly obsessed with TAR, and it’s ill-advised to mess with a crazy person like this.

I had thought that on Sunday night would be a repeat again, but no. Then Monday night we get the repeat just when I was all relaxed and ready for Flo (I had taken my required dose of valium with a jug of Jack Daniels). So now I have to repeat the dosage tonite and stay away from the razor blades. I do so love Zach, though and feel for him deeply and applaud his restraint. Moi would have upper cutted that bitch 6 episodes ago. A million dollar punch.

Hey gang. My first outting here. Love your forums.

By simply checking this thread occasionally, there won't be any surprises about when reruns and longer episodes crop up. Why not use TWoP as the important tool it is, and thank GSN for it's nightly TAR airings? Thanks, GSN!