SPEED Channel... what happened?
 

It seems to have been going downhill, and I think I'm watching the most retarded thing I've ever seen on it as I type this. It's a motocross-style race with cars instead of dirt bikes. Besides the lack of intelligence from the philistine announcers (hey guys, Accord sedan != CRX), guess what they've decided to call this motocross-with-cars?






















AUTOCROSS. n00bs.

LOL! I haven't seen this yet... Will be on the look out for it.

In a word, NASCAR ownership.

No more WRC, but at least you can get ALMS and Transam type racing.

Speed TV sucks. Sucks harder every year. After they started catering to the Nascar crowd it was all downhill. Wrecked, dangerous drives, monster jam, chop cut and on and on and on. It's all cheap to produce dreck.

Monster Jam! Oh wait Im not 8 anymore. Thats all I ever see on, I never see the hilarity you guys post about.

^Agreed... And it makes me wonder why the Hell I watched it when I was a kid. Good-bye years of life. :(

I still like monster jam, but I do agree not alot of good racing, more nascar now, boring, and those auctions, realllllly borring

half that shit is totally unwatchable. I refuse to believe that anyone has ever watched "Pass Time" in its entirety. Fucking unwatchable.

I sent them an email about six months ago, lamenting the loss of WRC, and commenting on the current lack of quality programs. No response.

Wow, personally, I think that shit sounds awesome and I still have all my teeth.

I only have it for F1, it's the only thing they do right. Who else can't wait to see MSC on the timing board again? I'm, like, just-had-sex-for-the-first-time-in-my-life-and-it-was-with-Jessica-Alba-and-Jessica-Biel-at-the-same-time psyched.

The point is, they were trying to be clever (heh, get it Earl? I combined the word "auto" with the "cross" from motocross!) and instead they named it after a pre-existing sport, which is fail.

Speed sometimes still shows decent racing (the kind with some right turns) but it's often at weird times and I no haz DVR. Lately I have managed to catch some episodes of TDI Cup racing and some British Touring Car action on weekends. This time of year ALMS/Rolex/Koni Challenge, F1, etc are on break, but Speed does show that stuff when in season.

Mostly what I hate about Speed is that their prime time lineup is 100% trash. There's got to be some way for them to pay the bills without having to air that bullshit. I'm no TV executive but off the top of my head I can think of about a dozen hours (probably more) worth of original technical programming that would appeal to a wide audience of car guys.

I'll tell you what, I've been watching the hell out of some HD Theater. They've got WRC coverage, a full hour per event. They play it in prime time and rerun each episode quite a bit so you have several chances to see it. One show called GT Racer covers rich old bastards flogging immaculately kept classic cars on awesome tracks like Spa, which is cool. They've got another show where these two Brits buy used cars for cheap and fix them up to resell. They show a good bit of the hands-on maintenance and repairs and mention problems that are common to the particular model car in question. I'm not much into classic cars but I sometimes even watch Wayne Carini's show because he gets some cool stuff on there and you can tell he's a genuinely nice guy who knows his stuff and yet isn't a raging douche, which is refreshing to see on TV these days. HD Theater isn't totally about cars (they have science, engineering and history type shows too) but I still find myself watching that channel more than Speed.

+1
Plus they showed the Isle of Mann, quality tv.

Yeah that's some hardcore racing there, good stuff. Sometimes I can't understand what those riders are saying though, like I'm watching Trainspotting. I need English subtitles for that English.

Haha I know what you mean. I love that race. I have 4 or 5 dvd's. The only thing I watch on Speed is AMA and Moto GP.

yeah, HD theater is piling up quality car guy entertainment and I don't even have cable TV.

the only things good on speed is F1 and w2w racing, especially different forms of touring car

Like everyone else said, only thing I watch speed for is F1.

I also record every supercross and motocross race.

Everything else is garbage

I was talking with Dave Despain the other day and he was saying that the crap shows like pinks, pass time, monster jam, wrecked, etc. get much higher viewer ship that a lot of racing shows. The exception is NASCAR shows and F1. Another problem is that the carriers (Cable TV providers, satellite providers) sort of dictate the content of the channel. They demand a certain amount of viewer ship else threaten to drop the channel from their line up.

Well if that shit funds the "real" events that's fine by me.