gerry100

Let's face it, Speed faces the same problem of ma y cable outlets - too many hours and not enough content.

I enjoy many of the shows that forklift watches and really don't mind excessive NASCAR paying the bills, Think of it as a PBS pledge break - painful to watch but necessary on some level.

Although I did catch part of a show involving Jeremy ( the old guys are "bubba", the skinny young left turn Elvises seem to be Jeremy or Jason or something) around the house with Betty Lou with the dog.. Now that there is no excuse for..

Bull

Thr really scary thing is that there are hoards of people right here in this Country who tune-in and watch such shows.........

JBH

I sent them feedback - better to put focus my displeasure with their programming there than venting here.

When you go to their website - it's more NASCAR advertisements! Ugggghhhh...

Geo

OMG, this is from a post on the Speed Channel boards in response to the question: "What NASCAR?"

5:00 am NASCAR Edition Speed News NR
5:30 am Speed News NR
6:00 am NASCAR Victory Lane Fontana NR
7:00 am NASCAR Edition Speed News NR
7:30 am Speed News NR
8:00 am Jeep Auto Showcase TV-PG
8:30 am Paid Programming Paid Programming NR
9:00 am NASCAR Edition Speed News NR
9:30 am NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Fontana NR
12:00 pm Wind Tunnel with Dave Despain Scott Pruett, co-host NR
2:00 pm Monster Jam Montreal NR
3:00 pm NASCAR Victory Lane Fontana NR
4:00 pm NASCAR Nation NR
5:00 pm Inside Nextel Cup NR
6:30 pm NBS 24/7
7:00 pm NASCAR Nation NR
8:00 pm Inside Nextel Cup NR
9:30 pm NBS 24/7
10:00 pm NASCAR Nation NR
11:00 pm Inside Nextel Cup NR
12:30 am NBS 24/7
1:00 am Men Behind The Wrenches Junior Johnson

Yeah, I'm all giddy. Drive me to drink. Where's that Shiner Bock?

dgz924s

"Moonshiner Circle Jerk Racing" is the more appropriate name for GNATSCAR but the MONEY it brings is the ticket here! No way that SpeedTV is going to cut themselves free of millions of dollars that Nascar brings in. Sad to say but we dislikers are just going to have to swallow or just not watch Speed TV.

Everything is about MONEY........period! They would televise Curling in a foreign language if it brought in the cash the Moonshiners race series does!

RJay

No...everything is about money...TODAY! In the short term they may ride the wave and make the bucks, but as the fad portion of Nascar fan base moves on to Arena Football or what ever, they could find themselves in difficulty.

As a hypothetical, if Porsche had had stunning success with the Cayenne, so much so that they were making double the profit and couldn't meet demand, while 911 sales were slow, do you think they would have given up producing 911s? Sure, they'd adjust production, but would they have squeezed it out all together? Or would they have tried to figure a way to get all these newly minted Porsche SUV owners to think about buying other Porsche products?

Continuity, history, branding are all import components for a successful business over the LONG term. Fox is a vampire media corporation, I have no doubt they've over hyped and will just suck this Nascar thing dry before they simply toss it on the heap when they're done. In fact, IMO, the fuse that will blow this puppy is already lit. The attempt to sanitize the sport for middle America and recast it in the image of a kinder, gentler WWF, will ultimately alienate the core Nascar fan base; the ones that stay when everyone else has moved to Soccer, when Freddy Adieux and Fox get together to save the sport.

Hmmm...I wonder if I can get a visual line on a EuroSat and leave all this BS behind.

gerry100

If Monster Truck Jam is on Speed why isn't the WWE on ESPN.

As I said before, if it pays the bills so that the other niches ( like ours) can be served, so be it.

dgz924s

Yes money is the root of all the evil in us! I am deeply saddened by the fact that Grand American/Rolex series is owned by.......................NASCAR/France family.

macnewma

Ultimately it is a market issue. The NASCAR watching market has exploded and Fox wanted to take advantage of this by dedicating a channel to it. It is a business. It is very hard to blame them for doing their job.

If Speedvision wanted to provide a stage for road racing, they wouldn't have sold to Fox. I assume a 70mm dollar payday was hard to pass up.

If the road racing market was big enough, someone would fill the void. This might happen although I doubt it. I really don't think the market is big enough. If Speedvision was financially successful in the late 90s, it would bode well for an additional channel similar to the old Speedvision. I somehow doubt it was very profitable. Even if it was profitable, it certainly wasn't growing.

Fox was smart with Speed and NASCAR. They might suffer a backlash though if NASCAR's fad based fans go elsewhere (see WWF). This is probably why Speed still has ANY road racing. They know that we will come back because we are addicts. They just need to provide the bare minimum to us, just in case the bottom falls out on NASCAR.

I think a TIVO is the best solution. I might snag one just for this purpose although I really try not to watch TV.

On a bit of a tangent, I wonder if anyone would be willing to pony up for a premium, HBO like channel to get road racing. I would fork over 5-10/month if the programming was high quality.

mitch236

Actually the future is very bright for us. In the future, most non-mainstream shows will be PPV and most likely in HD. And the prices should be very low for us road racing junkies since the demand will be so low. Not like the $50 to watch WWF or whatever it is called.

Manny Alban

Well, notch road racing down a little lower. I watched (yes, much like an accident, I couldn't look away) Power Tool Drag Racing on the Discovery Channel last night. Sad thing was, they actually had better coverage than alot of F1 races I watched. At least these announcers weren't at the mercy of some foreign camera crew.

Hmmm, I wonder if they can make these power tools turn left and right....

JCP911S

Funny. Years ago when I was working with Cable TV, I met the guy who started Speedvision. How this worked back then (and probably now) it cost about $50-100M to launch a new cable channel and you have about 24 months to get 5M subscribers before you burn your cash and crash.

Speedvision never made the cut.

There are two factors for success....

First, you need the content with the sufficient audience to draw ratings. NASCAR has the ratings and Fox has the properties with NASCAR.

Second, you need the leverage with the Cable TV operatiors to leverage them to take your channel. Most Cable content is sold as packages... for example, to get ESPN (which every CATV company has to have sell subscriptions) ABC will shove a "package" of 6 channels down thier throat.... ESPN2, Classic Sports channel and a bunch of other ABC affiliated junk.

Fox has the leverage to jam Speed down the CATV companies throats.... as a standalone, Speedvision was a girl without a date to the dance.

As said as nausium... its about the money stupid

Bull

It really makes sense if you have a tie-in through your portfolio!

dgz924s

Same goes in Nascar, you must buy the entire weekend package in order to see the big race.

penguinking

you know the ironic thing is, the majority of people involved with road racing DO have the money. lets be honest, most of the people on this board do drive porsches, and race them too, which isn't exactly cheap. but i guess in the end theres just wayyyyy too many of those nascar fans that outnumber the roadracing fans anyway