After 19 seasons of working on “America’s Got Talent,” Jason Raff is exiting as showrunner due to budget cuts. Moving forward, the unscripted competition series will be helmed by Sam Donnelly, who previously shared showrunning duties with Raff.
“America’s Got Talent” completed its 19th season on NBC in September, after which Raff was notified that he was being cut. He has been with the series since its 2006 debut, while Donnelly joined in 2014 with Season 9.
Along with the flagship series, Raff had developed and served as showrunner on each of its spinoffs, including “America’s Got Talent: The Champions,” which ran for two seasons from 2019 to 2020; “AGT: Extreme,” which ran for one season in 2022; “America’s Got Talent: All-Stars,” which premiered in 2023 and has aired one season; and “America’s Got Talent: Fantasy League,” which premiered earlier this year and has aired one season.
Simon Cowell created “America’s Got Talent” and remains on the panel of celebrity judges alongside Heidi Klum, Howie Mandel and Sofia Vergara, while Terry Crews serves as host. Previous judges include Brandy, Mel B, David Hasselhoff, Julianne Hough, Piers Morgan, Sharon Osbourne, Howard Stern and Gabrielle Union, while previous hosts include Regis Philbin, Jerry Springer, Nick Cannon and Tyra Banks.
Cowell and Donnelly executive produce “America’s Got Talent,” and Fremantle and Syco Entertainment co-produce the series. Season 19 of “America’s Got Talent” premiered in May, with singer Richard Goodall being crowned as the winner in September.
Welcome to Car and Driver’s Testing Hub, where we zoom in on the test numbers. We’ve been pushing vehicles to their limits since 1956 to provide objective data to bolster our subjective impressions (you can see how we test here).
Now that we’ve had a Volkswagen ID.Buzz at our office and put it through our rigorous testing, we figured it’s as good a time as any to compare its test results with the Kia EV9. As things currently stand, the pair are the most affordable family-sized three-row EVs that you can buy.
For the 2025 model year, the entry-level, rear-drive version of the Kia starts at $56,395, while VW’s van carries a $61,545 base price. All-wheel-drive models start at $65,395 and $69,545, respectively, but the ones we tested had most of the best features, making them quite a bit pricier—$72,065 for the ID.Buzz Pro S Plus and over $77K for the EV9 GT-Line.
An EV’s driving range is one of its biggest selling points. Of course, there’s typically a big difference between the EPA’s combined-range figure that’s listed on the window sticker and what you’ll see in real life, especially at sustained highway speeds. Going, say, 75 mph at a steady cruise will suck the juice out of the battery much quicker than schlepping around town at a slower, stop-and-go pace. The former scenario is what our real-world highway test aims to replicate. It’s also where the EV9 GT-Line, which features a 99.8-kWh battery, made it 240 miles on a full charge. That’s 30 miles shy of its 270-mile EPA estimate, but it’s also 50 miles farther than the ID.Buzz Pro S Plus.
The VW only made it 190 miles in our highway test—41 miles short of its 231-mile EPA estimate. It’s worth noting the ID.Buzz has a smaller 86.0-kWh battery capacity, but it still consumed more energy on the highway than the EV9, with the van averaging 2.2 miles per kilowatt-hour versus the SUV’s 2.4 mi/kWh. The electric SUV also has a slight advantage when it comes to DC fast-charging, where its 215-kW peak is higher than the Buzz’s 200 kW—though our test model slightly outperformed its claimed peak. The EV9 GT-Line’s fast-charging time was impressive, going from 10 to 90 percent in 38 minutes, with the electric van taking just 33 minutes thanks to its smaller battery.
