The Challenge Season 32 Idea: ROAD RULES

The news that MTV will be announcing the theme for Season 32 of The Challenge tomorrow during the premiere of their new snow-based Real World/Jersey Shore type reality show, titled Winter Break, has been met with a lot of hype. Will it be Cutthroat 2? Rivals 4? Exes 3? Duel 3? Invasion of the Underdogs? Inferno 9? Dirty 32? So You Think You Can Dance?

I’ve decided to throw my hat in the ring with my probably completely wrong prediction. And that is, a season which brings back the Road Rules franchise and pays homage to the show’s first season. The original season was Road Rules: All Stars. It’s perfect because you can introduce new faces, established faces, and even bring back Road Rulers like Mark Long, Abram Boise, and others.

How it would work?

Make it a team Challenge with between 2 to 4 RV’s running at once. You can do a Battle of the Seasons style competition, where you have old school, new school, and middle generation teams. Or you could have former Road Rulers captaining teams and picking them. Players will travel to the locations where they will be participating at colleges or high schools in front of crowds. Imagine CT and Bananas facing off against one another in front of fans of the franchise?

The biggest problem with this idea is that the show would need to be live, or come out relatively soon after filming. This is not an impossible concept as Big Brother and other shows have done the same thing. However, does MTV want to put that much money into this show?

Benefits

• By traveling around and doing events with a live audience, you can build a youthful audience once again. In recent years, the majority of Challenge fans are people who grew up watching the Challenge versus people who are new first time viewers of the show. And that makes sense since it’s season 32.
• Best of both worlds. A live format seems like a young, fresh and rejuvenated idea, while the restoration of Road Rules will get a decent amount of old heads watching again as well. In one my classes last semester, I informed my professor, who watched the show in the Early 00’s, that Veronica was coming back to be on Season 30. After not watching for over a decade, he came back for Veronica.
• Possible social media engagement. Imagine the competitors being able to travel on the road and uploading Snapchat Stories for fans to enjoy, or doing Persicope/Instagram lives of what is going on live? That’s how you bring Road Rules into the present day.
• It’s just different — stagnation and complacency is bad. The Challenge has increasingly become a show that is much of the same. Whether it’s competitors (Bananas, Cara, CT, Jenna, Leroy, etc), or the same winners, or the same type of formats/twists, the show is becoming incredibly repetitive. Don’t try to reinvent, just update the wheel, and give it a hard fucking spin to see where it lands.

This idea is far-fetched, but it’s one that I think would be incredibly interesting. I wasn’t even a fan of Road Rules (I was like 8 during the last real season of the show), however, it would be such a cool homage, and you cannot deny that.