Honestly, Road Rules was very entertaining as well and a lot of famous Challengers have come from Road Rules (ex. Kendall, Veronica, Katie, Abram, etc). They were the rejects of the Real World but this show was so entertaining you couldn't help to not watch it. Who doesn't want to see a physical version of the Real World? It was interesting and XTreme was one of my favorite seasons, but I understand that Viewers Revenge was utterly terrible and that it probably sealed the franchise's fate.

Road Rules started going downhill with Semester at Sea and The Maximum Velocity Tour... The Quest was a slight improvement, but it introduced the "vote off" thing and that... was not great.

I think that they could have done the most recent one and received reasonable ratings if they stuck to the formula. The problem was that they re-wrote it.

Travel
Road Rules has always been about the journey. Driving around the burbs outside of LA is not what I consider "hitting the road."

Cast
They went with an "All-Star" cast that was expectedly there for a paycheck. Veronica even sat out during the middle of the show to do other things and only came back for a shot at the final reward. Who wants to sit on the RV for a month when you can come right in at the end and scoop the cash away?

The whole point of Road Rules is to throw dissimilar people together and watch them bond along the way.

Voting
The voting was an absolute fiasco. The only reason MTV took this route was to try an emulate other user interactive shows - but it was wrong for the format (not to mention they changed the rules by the second show.) I don't want to see people voted off, don't you get it MTV? The most entertaining people are always the ones everyone wants to get rid of!

Oh, and was it a surprise that the vets would bond together for the money and shut out the new cast? No.

Timeslot
They just threw it out to die right of the gate without a valid lead-in. Only after devastating ratings did they move it to after The Real World Denver, but by that point the show was doomed.

Also, whose genius idea was it to run "sneak peaks" in the middle of the day and sap away probably 15-20% of the ratings for the primary airing?

They failed on so many levels, it is no wonder this show is not going to return.

Surprise: They were only on the RV for about 3 days a week. The rest of the time, most were relegated to cheap hotel rooms (Unless my memory is faulty, I think Adam Larson was actually at home rather than stuck in a hotel/motel somewhere).

What a wash!

Yes, the cast that was from LA went home and those that were from away stayed in hotels. It was about 3 1/2 days (Wednesday-Saturday) on and then the rest of the week off. The pit crew was flown in when they were needed.

Talk about ripping the soul out of the show...

Yeah - and the members of "The Pit" were flown out once a week and then flown home to sit and wait for a few days and then be flown back out, so add that to the production cost.

Agreed. SAS and MV sucked....and The Quest's new rules was the icing on this shitty shitty cake. (wish i had a better metaphor for this, but its late and im tired)

It totally deserved to fail. Way to suck, BMP lol