Am I Reading This Correctly?

Unless I misread the blog, the season's shows seem to be handled as a block. Filming, then editing, and post production. I dont know in what sequence the various shows were shot. If Iceland was first, in June/July, then the whole filming block would have taken at least a couple months more. And I would remind you that Rick was out of commission for an extended part of last year and the early part of this year due to his health battle.

I always look forward to a new season, especially when they revisit previously filmed cities and add in new places. Cameron's account of their Iceland travels was really interesting.

The info is rather confusing but the Iceland episodes look like a repackaging of the one hour Iceland special they released in 2024. The other places featured in the new season seem very repetitious of what he’s done before as well — although his shows are always good and there’s unlimited potential new material in destinations like Paris, London and Istanbul. But I could swear he’s already thoroughly covered a canal cruise in Burgundy ….

I believe Slate is correct. I knew that I'd watched an episode or special on Iceland, so when I saw that it was a Season 13 episode, I had a "Huh?" moment. I recalled the Icelandic sweater and the shark-on-a-toothpick scenes from an earlier show. A canal cruise was covered in an old episode with Steve Smith.

As much as I love Rick, his tours, and shows, I think there's quite a bit of destination repeat going on, especially when it comes to Paris, London, and Rome.

Here is the one hour Iceland special that aired in 2024, only one year after it was filmed: https://www.ricksteves.com/watch-read-listen/video/tv-show/iceland Producing new shows is an expensive and time consuming endeavor, it makes sense they repackaged parts of that the longer special to fit in the traditional 30 minute time slots offered by local PBS stations.

As for the shows repeated on various popular destinations, it is because they're popular destinations. Updates to those make sense, especially in relation to their guide book sales. You can glance through all his TV shows ever produced and notice the volume for some countries versus others.

Definitely true, he is running out of entirely new places in Europe to cover (although one on the Baltics not just Tallinn would be nice), and Italy, France, UK etc are the big ones with lots to film. They do have an understandable tendency to reuse footage so I’m expecting to feel some deja vu with the new season. I expect we’ll see the tapestry of the senses in the Cluny Museum in Paris and buying a fish sandwich from the boat in Istanbul with friend and fellow tour guide Lale yet again. But I like the shows and will definitely watch them anyway.

He is running out of new places but a lot of what he has is 20 years old. Things have changed and a lot of what he has is still okay but a lot less relevant.

He is running out of new places

Hah! Yeah, sure.

Europe is a big place. RSE has chosen to cover a teensy, tiny sliver of it. If they wanted to, there are a thousand other episodes they could easily do, on places just as touristically interesting as Paris and Rome. Those would reveal lots more “back doors”. Problem is, they then become the next Cinque Terre.

I suspect the results we see on TV are driven by two things:

First, as mentioned above, production costs. RSE (the TV episodes) seems to run an extremely lean operation (the host plus literally a few support staff along), so their costs are pretty low, but it (and post production) all does cost something. The company makes its money from leading tours (the shows are costs), so no matter how spectacular Riga and Cagliari might be (and are), if they did episodes on Latvia and Sardinia, the return on their investment is going to be much smaller than updating coverage on super-popular destinations, and taking another couple of bus loads of people to Tuscany.

Second, I think they are well aware of how the exposure they provide can (and has) contributed to overtourism (see Cinque Terre for a sobering example). I have reason to believe they are consciously limiting how and how much to showcase some places, out of respect for the locals who don’t want their way of life to be obliterated (just a guess, my reading of tea leaves and other clues). I could be wrong. But I’ve been places that seemed like they should be “more famous” and when chatting with local hosts, they expressed satisfaction with the current degree of tourism, and did not want to be instagrammed to death. They were pretty clear on this, and who could blame them. Endlessly promoting everything is not necessarily a good thing, even if it might increase profits.

Also, it’s a mature company. They seem to be doing just fine, and why should they push aggressively to expand their portfolio to a hundred new destinations?

You know, Rick has taught a lot of us how to travel independently. You can use what he’s taught you to go anywhere. Including the vast majority of Europe that’s off the radar of RSE and almost everyone else in the travel industry. There’s wonderful stuff out there, some of it with no crowds or hucksters at all. Do your research and head out to places your friends have never heard of. You can and will find the most incredible things there.

And I would remind you that Rick was out of commission for an extended part of last year and the early part of this year due to his health battle.

@cjean - good point, and thankfully Rick seems to have weathered that storm!

I also always look forward to new seasons and new locations. I do think there remain MANY spots in Europe waiting for further exploration, so hope RS and the team can find more ways to explore those places.

In an age of youtube where I get weekly travel videos for a wide range of locations, activities, and topics, I can get my "fix" of travel info. I do, however, love a product like the high production quality RS Europe videos, and through PBS drives over the years, have all on DVD (including those really old Travels in Europe ones from the 90s).

We still have cable TV (insanity!), but that gives us like 8+ PBS channels, and there is often a RS episode (or more) on every day. One trick we do is to just tune in one or more of the DVR tuners to those PBS channels, and if we turn on the TV, we can cycle through the tuners and often find an episode to re-watch with a quick rewind to the episode start. Sure, they're often a decade old (or at least pre-COVID), but it sure beats watching some of the news these days.

First, as mentioned above, production costs. RSE (the TV episodes) seems to run an extremely lean operation (the host plus literally a few support staff along), so their costs are pretty low, but it (and post production) all does cost something.

@david in seattle - one of my favorite "extra" episodes is where Rick shows the team doing their thing - planning, filming, and revising nightly. It's nice to see his team in action on the road. I think his pace of suggested travel is high, but seeing his pace of filming shows me he can take it up even another notch!

Tom R,
I'm not sure of your location, but here in the LA area we just use over-the-air reception (roof antenna) and have never used cable or any pay tv system to receive regular TV channels. We don't care about ESPN or whatever channels we would get if we were paying some company monthly fees, so we are lucky to get a pretty wide variety of channels just over the air. In our location there are three PBS systems we can access over the air, from areas near Palm Springs, from the LA area, and from the LA school district's own PBS channels. Between the three of them there are 13 PBS options that we use, and can find RS shows several times every day. Lucky us! I don't mind watching the older RS shows, and they still whet my appetite for travel, even if they are fifteen years old. And I can relive happy times seeing a place I have visited....it's like looking at our photos of our trips. New shows are exciting, but the older ones are still good to see. Rock on, Rick and team!