"The Amazing Race" is taking the slow boat to get to our screens this time around, but it will get here eventually.

Last season, the show's incredible 30th, aired over the first months of winter, but that won't happen for the 31st. We'll have to wait until late spring to see the next group of competitors hit the road. 

CBS announced in late fall that "The Amazing Race" would return on May 22. That's a long wait since the end of the show's last season in February of last year, and in some ways fans have become victims of CBS's success.

The network waited a long time before even giving it a return date. Prior to the announcement, the TV watchers at GoldDerby.com formulated a theory as to why: CBS's freshman shows this season were all doing well, so "The Amazing Race," which CBS had used as a fill-in show for the past few seasons, wasn't likely to have anything to fill in for. Sure enough, the network waited until the end of November, when the fates of all of its new shows had been decided, to announce that "The Amazing Race" would return in May, after all of those shows had completed their runs, and after "Survivor" had aired its new season as well.

Essentially, CBS had the enviable problem of too many popular shows to squeeze onto its schedule.

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