Travel Channel today announced the location and the five travelers who will serve as the Travel Journalists (TJs) for Season 2 of 5 Takes, the international travel series that lets viewers craft the itinerary. The travelers for 5 Takes: Pacific Rim are: Tony Martin, 26 of Washington D.C.; Tiffany Burnett, 24, fo Cathedral City, California; Gabriel Schirm, 24, of Ft. Collins, Colorado; Renne o'Connor, 24, of Brooklyn, New York; and Josh Gibson, 26, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The second season of 5 Takes, which capitalizes on the real-time advantages of internet/television convergence, will begin in Australia before setting off on a journey throughout the Pacific Rim. Each traveller will be equipped with a Mini DV camera and laptop editing facilities to produce independent short daily blogs and weekly vlogs of their experiences for the Travel Channel website http://travelchannel.com. As they journal their individual perspectives, a production crew will film their entire journey for the weekly series airing on Travel Channel. In addition to the interaction through the blogs and vlogs, viewers and web visitors will determine two of the twelve cities visited during 5 Takes: Pacific Rim.
"The 5 Takes franchise is a bold step by the Travel Channel into the popular world of user-generated content, and it presents a unique interactive
viewing experience," said Pat Younge, EVP & GM, Travel Channel. "Like no other show on cable, 5 Takes affords viewers the opportunity to interact
directly with the participants to set the itinerary for the weekly series. In addition to the interactive elements, the weekly television show is turned around within seven days of the TJs leaving each city, making 5 Takes a near real-time travel journal, as well as the most convergent primetime series on a major US cable network."
In a first for Discovery Networks US, Season 2 of 5 Takes premieres Thursday, March 2 at http://travelchannel.com, with a seven-part webisode roll out featuring the casting process. The TJs will begin their blogs and vlogs the week of March 13. The television broadcast premiere is Monday, April 3 at 8 PM (ET/PT) and viewers can tune in each Monday at 8 PM to see the TJ's international journey unfold. Over 8,000 initial applicants led to 600 video submissions. Four of the final travellers were selected following face-to-face casting meetings and one was chosen via an online consumer vote.
