On March 5, 2013, Fox Sports officially announced that it would re-launch Speed as Fox Sports 1. In corporate marketing speak that means the channel is history. I don’t think I turned it on more than twice in the last few years.
After spending almost a decade making automotive television programs for the Charlotte based channel I can’t help feeling a degree of schadenfreude.
For someone obsessed by all things internal combustion the channel was pretty good back in the old Roger Werner, Speedvision days before being purchased by News Corp.
As an independent production company we lived or died by the decisions of Speed executives. Each season we went through hell, left to wonder if our contract would be renewed. On a limited budget we created the best television possible, sometimes even creating something you might see on Britain’s Top Gear if they were having an off day.
We pitched killer ideas for new shows only to be met with blank stares of incomprehension, we would be asked to change it up but when we asked what they wanted they would say, “we don’t know but we will tell you if we see it.” No one at Speed was a car guy or gal.
In an effort to keep them happy we traveled to South Africa, France, Italy and Germany to capture new stories. We filmed inside Ferrari and Maserati (I once owned a 3500 GT project car…or rather basket case but that is a tale for another time) we alternately froze and sweltered on racetracks across North America.
My real complaint is that the people running Speed were not car guys, in fact they had no idea about the topic their channel was dedicated to. In my many meetings and conference calls with Speed not one of the people I met with drove an interesting new car, raced, did their on wrenching or had a project car hidden in the garage. Plain Jane sedans and mini vans were the mainstay of Speeds parking lot.
Believe it or not I judged them even harsher then as I used cars as an emotional tool to block out the constant voices of transition in my head. Any man who did not have grease under his nails, spend all night in the garage working on a ground up restoration was beneath contempt.
Could I have saved Speed if I was in charge of programming? Not sure but I would have made sure they had some real car shows.
True story:
On a spin off show we made for three seasons, the host reviewing an upmarket sport compact called it a real MILF car. We received a call from Speed after they saw the episode asking that we do not use obscure automotive terms that not all viewers might understand.
