Eco-Challenge

For the British television programme with the same working title, see Dumped.

Eco-Challenge
Genre	Reality
Created by	Mark Burnett
Starring	Ian Adamson, Mike Kloser, John Howard, Keith Murray, Andrea Murray, Michael Tobin, Sara Ballentyne, Nathan Faave, Kathy Lynch
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of seasons	9
No. of episodes	36
Production
Executive producers	Mark Burnett, Lisa Hennessy
Producer	Tim Powell
Editor	Brian Catalina
Original release
Network	Discovery Channel
Release	April 1, 1995 (1995-04-01) – April 11, 2002 (2002-04-11)

Eco-Challenge: The Expedition Race is a multi-day expedition length adventure race in which teams of four compete. It aired from April 1995 to April 2002.

Overview

"Eco-Challenge" is generally regarded as the genesis for modern day reality television, launching the success of Mark Burnett and his subsequent television shows Survivor, The Contender, Who's Smarter Than a 5th Grader, The Apprentice and many more.

Eco-Challenge was created in 1992 by Mark Burnett. Inspired by a Los Angeles Times article about Gerald Fusil's Raid Gauloises adventure race in Costa Rica, Burnett formed a team and competed in two Raid Gauloises events. Although his teams did poorly, Burnett decided to create a similar race in North America. When the race went international, Burnett purchased the rights from Fusil and set out to make the Eco-Challenge the world's premier adventure race.

Each team comprised a mandatory mix of both men and women, racing non-stop, 24 hours a day, over a rugged 300-mile (500 km) course, participating in such disciplines as trekking, whitewater canoeing, horseback riding, sea kayaking, scuba diving, mountaineering, camel-back riding, and mountain biking. Teams originally consisted of five members, but the team size was reduced to four members early in the event's history.

The first Eco-Challenge was held on April 25, 1995, in the Utah desert and was held each year in a new locale until 2002. Burnett recently noted that he did not intend to hold another Eco-Challenge, but had considered selling the rights to it. In contrast, other expedition-length races, including Primal Quest and the Patagonian Expedition Race continue to be held.

Television history

Each Eco-Challenge was broadcast on cable television. The 1995 Utah race was shown as a 45-minute feature , produced by and broadcast on MTV. The 1995 Maine/New England event was broadcast in segments as part of the Extreme Games broadcast on ESPN. Starting in 1996, Eco-Challenge was aired on the Discovery Channel and the production enjoyed a significantly expanded budget. The 1996 British Columbia production, broadcast on the Discovery Channel won an Emmy Award. In 2000, the USA Network agreed to a three-year contract to broadcast the Eco-Challenge. Later that year, the show was nominated for a Prime-Time Emmy Award. USA did not renew the show after the 2002 Fiji race.

Although long out of print, the 1996 through 2001 Eco-Challenge races were released on VHS by Discovery soon after the shows aired. The Utah, Maine/New England, and Fiji episodes were never officially released in the United States.

In 2011, Burnett sold Expedition Impossible, a reality show with a similar concept to Eco-Challenge, to ABC as a summer series. The new show debuted on June 30 of that year.

Events

• 1995 Utah
• 1995 Maine/New England (as part of the X-Games X-Venture adventure race)
• 1996 British Columbia
• 1997 Australia
• 1998 Morocco
• 1999 Argentina
• 2000 Sabah, Borneo
• 2001 New Zealand
• 2001 U.S. Armed Forces Challenge (benefiting TAPS)
• 2002 Fiji

See also

• X-Games
• X-Venture
• Primal Quest

Sources

• This article incorporates text from Eco-Challenge.us [1] released under the GFDL license [2]