Family Bonding Real Prize on RV Reality Show

Tonight’s the night. The Coote and DiSalvatore families duke it out for the big $100,000 prize on the finale of NBC’s Great American Road Trip (8 p.m. Eastern, 7 p.m. Central). The prime time reality show has brought the fun of RV living into America’s living rooms as we’ve watched seven families traveling by motorhome trek from Chicago to Los Angeles. The cross-country tour has been peppered with weird attractions, comic competitions and an undeniable love for RV traveling.

“Our RV became our home away from home. I would do it again in a second,” competitor Amy DiSalvatore told RVIA. Families travel in Fleetwood’s Bounder Class A motorhomes.

“The competing families all found the experience of RVing to be rewarding and fun, with many families who were sent home saying that the trip itself brought them closer together, and that family bonding was the real prize,” RVIA VP Gary LaBella said in an RVIA press release. RVIA assisted the show’s producers.

The show has been great PR for the RV industry which just got another boost with last week’s premier of Glenn Martin, DDS on Nick at Night (8 p.m. Mondays). A collaboration between Nickelodeon and former Disney honcho Michael Eisner, the stop-motion animated comedy follows a dentist — voiced by Saturday Night Life alumnus Kevin Nealon – and his family on a cross-country RV road trip. Once again, RV living brings together a dysfunctional family that has lost touch with each other. What’s next? An RV super hero?