For those that are Top Chef fans here, even though I don't watch, I applaud that they got the win. It had to have been deserved. There's been a year or two where I thought Race should have lost to Dancing, Survivor or whomever and I was surprised they still won. My only logic in this process is that it wouldn't surprise me if someone in the brass thought along those lines of "If it's not winning the Emmy anymore, it must not be good anymore."
And it does get tough to watch when you have those "celebrity" teams racing where the spot could've gone to more regular joe people. Pro poker players, Harlem Globetrotters, beauty paegant people, CBS reality stars buying another 15-minute watch... I enjoy still watching them all race, no question. But it was never about that in the beginning, and that wasn't automatically who they needed to cast to attract attention to the show.