The old SPEED channel

[Row Man Gross-Gene]

Sorry for the US-centric rant...If I was in another country I'd probably be ranting about that country's lousy motorsports channel/programming.

Nowadays on SPEED tm, there seems to be virtually nothing but "reality" crap for programming. Help me out if I'm remembering incorrectly, but when I was a kid (in the 90s) I recall being able to turn on the Speed channel and find something of interest. Either there would be some form of racing or you could see old races, interviews with old racing drivers, or just a British dude driving classic ferrari racing cars and raving about how good they are. Maybe I'm looking back through rose-colored glasses (only remembering the good stuff) but now all I find when I switch on the TV is "Truckers" or something like that, "Pinks all out" which I can't trouble myself to give a bathplug about, or some other absolutely useless shite interrupted every couple of weeks by a race!

When the bathplug did they kidnap the old Speed Channel and where do they live?!...I'm getting my pitchfork, torch, and papayas ready for a "friendly visit"!

[Klon]

People want to watch reality shows and documentaries. Rather than blame the executives, kill everyone around you. That would improve the TV schedule for sure.

[DOSBoot]

I'm in the same boat here. Why all the reality t.v. shows all of the sudden, why not just show classic races from various motorsports when you don't have anything new to show? One thing I liked when speedvision was around, during the off season, they would show classic car related movies from time to time. Some of them uncut too. That's how I became aware of films like "Vanishing Point", "Death Race 2000", "The Driver", and "The Wild Angels". If they did more stuff like that, it would be a big improvement in my opinion.

[Aerospeed]

This looks like a job for...

HWNSNBM!!!

Sorry, couldn't resist...

[Row Man Gross-Gene]

This looks like a job for...

HWNSNBM!!!

Sorry, couldn't resist...

Sadly, I think he may be the only one with the power to do anything about this. Now all I need is for him to take pity on us lowly US fans.

[nome66]

Speed channel was bought by FOX back in 2009. their deal took full effect back in May of this year. that opened the flood gates per say. now you have nonsense like "my ride rules" and "the car show" which is by far the worst Top Gear imitation since the first season of Top Gear USA (the second season is a bit better tho).
i'm also disappointed that they dropped that late night show about street bikes because i sort of liked that one.

[tristan1117]

Nowadays on SPEED tm, there seems to be virtually nothing but "reality" crap for programming. Help me out if I'm remembering incorrectly, but when I was a kid (in the 90s) I recall being able to turn on the Speed channel and find something of interest. Either there would be some form of racing or you could see old races, interviews with old racing drivers, or just a British dude driving classic ferrari racing cars and raving about how good they are. Maybe I'm looking back through rose-colored glasses (only remembering the good stuff) but now all I find when I switch on the TV is "Truckers" or something like that, "Pinks all out" which I can't trouble myself to give a bathplug about, or some other absolutely useless shite interrupted every couple of weeks by a race!

When the bathplug did they kidnap the old Speed Channel and where do they live?!...I'm getting my pitchfork, torch, and papayas ready for a "friendly visit"!

I agree wholeheartedly. The best part of Speed used to be watching all the random small-time racing series and the classic races that they aired. I seem to remember that they used to have old footage from the late 30s and such. Also, I miss F1 Decade. They should really bring that back.

[Cynon]

Sorry for the US-centric rant...If I was in another country I'd probably be ranting about that country's lousy motorsports channel/programming.

Nowadays on SPEED tm, there seems to be virtually nothing but "reality" crap for programming. Help me out if I'm remembering incorrectly, but when I was a kid (in the 90s) I recall being able to turn on the Speed channel and find something of interest. Either there would be some form of racing or you could see old races, interviews with old racing drivers, or just a British dude driving classic ferrari racing cars and raving about how good they are. Maybe I'm looking back through rose-colored glasses (only remembering the good stuff) but now all I find when I switch on the TV is "Truckers" or something like that, "Pinks all out" which I can't trouble myself to give a bathplug about, or some other absolutely useless shite interrupted every couple of weeks by a race!

When the bathplug did they kidnap the old Speed Channel and where do they live?!...I'm getting my pitchfork, torch, and papayas ready for a "friendly visit"!

Same thing happened with MTV, incidentally... but it's a lot easier to create a reality show (unless it's Bullrun, which I admittedly enjoyed) than it is to set up cameras at... a local dirt track.

I LOVED when Speed would literally film the activities at random short tracks across America, because you had no idea what kinds of crazy shite was going to happen. Hornet races, school bus races, figure 8 trailer races....

[Row Man Gross-Gene]

I'm sure you're right Cynon and Klon. It's just so hard to believe that they actually make more money by getting 0.0000000001% of the reality TV audience than they would by getting say 25%-50% of the motorsports audience. Of course I remember the time when TLC (the cable channel) was short for The LEARNING Channel! Now it's about anything BUT learning.

[nome66]

Sorry for the US-centric rant...If I was in another country I'd probably be ranting about that country's lousy motorsports channel/programming.

Nowadays on SPEED tm, there seems to be virtually nothing but "reality" crap for programming. Help me out if I'm remembering incorrectly, but when I was a kid (in the 90s) I recall being able to turn on the Speed channel and find something of interest. Either there would be some form of racing or you could see old races, interviews with old racing drivers, or just a British dude driving classic ferrari racing cars and raving about how good they are. Maybe I'm looking back through rose-colored glasses (only remembering the good stuff) but now all I find when I switch on the TV is "Truckers" or something like that, "Pinks all out" which I can't trouble myself to give a bathplug about, or some other absolutely useless shite interrupted every couple of weeks by a race!

When the bathplug did they kidnap the old Speed Channel and where do they live?!...I'm getting my pitchfork, torch, and papayas ready for a "friendly visit"!

Same thing happened with MTV, incidentally... but it's a lot easier to create a reality show (unless it's Bullrun, which I admittedly enjoyed) than it is to set up cameras at... a local dirt track.

I LOVED when Speed would literally film the activities at random short tracks across America, because you had no idea what kinds of crazy shite was going to happen. Hornet races, school bus races, figure 8 trailer races....

that was all on one show actually. it was "Lucas Oil on the edge". i miss the first season and second season. now literally all of that show is just mud racing, which all looks the same to me.

[f1-gast]

I understand what you mean we had back in the days also Speed TV on it.
But since i discovered Motors TV is changed to that channel, it got great live races, specials, docu's and really all kind of auto and motorsports for me it's the new old speed TV.

[Row Man Gross-Gene]

If your purpose was simply to make me jealous F1 gast...it worked!

[f1-gast]

haha no i wasn't ment to do that.
Where do you live ? in Holland it's in the standard digital TV thing geval.

[The Mountain Man]

The reasons "reality" shows are taking over everything are really very, very simple.
They are the cheapest programs you can put on air. You can save money everywhere, from the buffoons prancing in front of the cameras to production values.
Are people really salivating to see reality shows? Not really, but they'll take everything coming out of their TV sets. Executives have taken notice and so are taking the occasion to kill two birds with one stone since TV rights for pretty much everything have been skyrocketing for years. Even the people holding TV rights to edgy '70s films and cheesy '80s sitcoms ask outrageous amounts of money for their products. In fact I can hear the transactions right now.
"Hello, we are the XYZ network. We are interested in airing reruns BJ and the Bear on our network next year. How much would it cost us?"
"Well, basic fee is two million dollars for working days morning and late night programming. But if you want to show it on Saturday morning or in the late afternoon I am afraid I'll have to ask..."
"Two millions for BJ and the Bear? No thanks, we'll just have a reality show with transsexuals and midgets. A whole season budget would cost us less than keeping the Bear on bananas for a week. Best of luck to you."

[Row Man Gross-Gene]

Just reading "BJ and the Bear" made me laugh out loud. It helps take the edge off the bitterness I feel toward the cable channels for happily taking my money and giving me stuff-all in return. I'd cancel it, but I'd get an earful from my wife because she wouldn't be able to watch "Say Yes to the Dress". And I wouldn't get to turn on SPEED every couple of weeks and watch an actual F1 race.

[Row Man Gross-Gene]

I'm in the US F1 Gast, and to be fair, SPEED (our motorsports channel) is part of the basic digital TV/internet cable package I get which is around $120 per month. It's hard to say how much of that fee SPEED actually receives. Maybe they get very little and I'm lucky to even be getting the little bit of actual racing that I now get. I was complaining mainly of the drop in quality of the other programming on the channel, which Klon, Cynon, and Mountain Man have explained.

I am jealous of you because it sounds like in Holland you might get better programming than we get here.

[f1-gast]

120 dollar for a basicpackage ? (your kidding me right)
We received for 60 euro 200 channels, 10 HD channels, 60/70mbit internet and free home telephone !

Doesn't ESPN broadcast auto and motorsports ? We got here the ESPN Classics channel sometimes they show some old races ?
Next to MotorTV we got Eurosport 1 and 2 (live: WTCC, AUTO GP, Formula Renault 3,5, Superbikes, Lemans, lemans series, formula 3, formula 2, GP3, GP2)
A dutch channel called autochannel (or something like it) with DTM, some GT3, GT4 on it and some others but the quality isn't that good.
We got RTL7 Formula1, DTM, WTCC, GP2, Dakar, Dutchpowerpack (Suzuki swift cup, Renault Clio cup, Formula ford, Dutch GT4 and some others) and in the winters lots of great formula 1 history like old races, lots of background info documentaries etc.
And we have SBS6 that sends some races driven in the Arabics etc.

[nome66]

you see cable companies are much more greedy here in the states because of inflation.