2009 SPEED TV coverage of AMA Roadracing

[Red01]

Anyone been watching "AMA Pro Prime Time," the new format of SPEED's coverage of AMA Roadracing?
What do you think about it?

I like the new format of the show, however I absolutely HATE the fact that it airs a week after the fact!  Seems to me if they aren't going to give us live coverage anymore, at least give it to us on Tuesday nights and return us to a Two-Wheeled Tuesday format.  I'm more than willing to give up the fancy set and extra interviews for same-day coverage though!

On a slightly different subject, I finally got around to getting HD programming (and a new HD TV) and watching the AMA & MotoGP races in HD is awesome.  Hopefully whoever is bringing us the SBK series will step up to HD soon, too.

[mademiriam]

and watching the AMA & MotoGP races in HD is awesome.

You lucky bugger I have to make do with the grainy look of my motogp.com account! Has speed finally started covering MotoGP live, if not WHO is?
I'm slowly talking my better half in to getting speed at which point I'll watch some of the AMA stuff, but having it a week late  means most of us will know the outcome. I would also like to watch SBK, but must see first if that announcer still drives me as crazy as he used to years ago. The trouble with speed is that most of the time it may as well be called the Nascar channel.
Can't imagine seeing motogp in HD... Capirossi said he'd aim for a podium at motegi and while I like to see the Suzukis do anything at all I'll believe it when I see it.

[smooth operator]

  I havn't seen a WSB or Moto GP race this year yet!I didn't make the plundge for a new TV yet,but I finally got to see AMA.....(used to be formula x treme) . I think so far the coverage and times they show the races SUCK! They AMA shown the 1 Super bike race at prime time,what about all the other races? What ever happened to when they used to show races on Greg's garage? Then they changed his programing till it was canceled. And whats up with this pace car crap! Its bad enough NASCAR has all the broadcasting time,why the hell do they have to stick a pace car in a motorcycle race? And Super Bikes, I don't really care about  watch stuntas, Its great they have good balance and all,and can do some tough stuff. But how many times can you watch that? How about a trials event? Or a TT or flattrack race? How about some more races? I certainly feel they could do better! Dan

[Red01]

The AMA Pro Prime Time airs new episodes on Saturdays at 10PM Eastern (7PM for me on the left coast).  The way they're working it is they'll show a race every saturday and the newest it'll be is a week old.  So they show AMA Superbike race one on one Saturday - then you wait a week to see race two or Daytona Supersport and the thrid week, you'll see the other.

The pace car is only used on the Daytona Supersports.  Superbike still has the traditional standing start.

Since SPEED seems to have leaned closer and closer to the NASCAR Channel, I'd like to see them go to two channels... SPEED1 can be their NASCAR Channel and SPEED2 could be everything else.  Maybe then we could get back some of the other racing events they used to cover and some Trials, TT, Flat Track and lesser covered car/truck/plane/boat racing.

[LowRyter]

I find it really disappointing compared to the same day/live coverage of the last several years.  Part of it was done by DMG for damaging relationship with the fans and manufacturers with rules package and the rest due to the economy. 

Dave Despain did a recap of it on Wind Tunnel. 

This will be the first time in 4 years that I won't go to Barber.  I might make it to Heartland Park.

[gyrogearcrunch]

The AMA Pro Prime Time airs new episodes on Saturdays at 10PM Eastern (7PM for me on the left coast).  The way they're working it is they'll show a race every saturday and the newest it'll be is a week old.  So they show AMA Superbike race one on one Saturday - then you wait a week to see race two or Daytona Supersport and the thrid week, you'll see the other.

The pace car is only used on the Daytona Supersports.  Superbike still has the traditional standing start.

Since SPEED seems to have leaned closer and closer to the NASCAR Channel, I'd like to see them go to two channels... SPEED1 can be their NASCAR Channel and SPEED2 could be everything else.  Maybe then we could get back some of the other racing events they used to cover and some Trials, TT, Flat Track and lesser covered car/truck/plane/boat racing.

Speed Channel used to broadcast a lot more motorcycle programming about 7-8 years ago when their host was a grizzled old fart who was replaced by Greg White. Greg's stuff was good in the beginning, but they killed him with program format changes. Speed also used to show World Rally (WRX) races, generally out of Europe, that were fun to watch. But my faves were the big bike road races from tracks all over the planet. "In the end, there was only ONE", - the "doctor"! 

To my knowledge, the only format that hasn't yet been seriously filmed for TV  entertainment of motorcycle fans is a cross-country endurance race. Back in 1917, Alan Bedell used a 4-cylinder Henderson to set the first x-country record with a time of 7 days, 16 hours, and 16 minutes between L.A. and NYC. Exactly 80 years later in 1997, Dale Walksler set out to better the time established in 1917 on a restored Henderson and did the run in 6 days, 1 hour and 22 minutes. The finish was covered by Al Roker in NYC on the Today Show (also see: "Backroads" magazine, May 2009 issue, page 48, "Racing across Time"). 

What I'd like to see is some iron-butt guy doing this run on a BANDIT 1250! There are all sorts of other possibilities in a race like this. For example, how about doing the race to test fuel efficiency, like they do at LeMans for cars?

Like someone in this group said, it's fun to watch wheelies, stoppies, and fancy bike wrangling, but after a while it gets stale. With a cross-country run, there can be a lot of variations in what's done, like a Chinese guy running a 125cc bike loaded with a huge sack of stuff on the back! How about the oldest American citizen doing the run? Wait, wait! I'm beginning to describe me!

Herb

[solman]

I have pretty much lost interest in AMA, especially superbike.  Mladin is an awesome rider, but needs to do one of two things.  He needs to either retire to move up to a new level.  He is being so unsportsman like playing around with all the other riders.  Spies did excactly that and moved on and is doing quite well.  I have a lot of respect for Spies.  I also don't like the idea of waiting a week or two to see the race.  I also don't care for the rolling start either.  I went to Fontana to watch the races and was a bit disapointed.  Only two real races.  So I basically spent the whole day just to watching two 50 minute races.

[gyrogearcrunch]

I have pretty much lost interest in AMA, especially superbike.  Mladin is an awesome rider, but needs to do one of two things.  He needs to either retire to move up to a new level.  He is being so unsportsman like playing around with all the other riders.  Spies did excactly that and moved on and is doing quite well.  I have a lot of respect for Spies.  I also don't like the idea of waiting a week or two to see the race.  I also don't care for the rolling start either.  I went to Fontana to watch the races and was a bit disapointed.  Only two real races.  So I basically spent the whole day just to watching two 50 minute races.

Watching races live used to interest me a lot back when I was able to see them personally. But back then I was stationed in Europe and got to go to all the famous tracks like LeMans, Nurembergring, and races like the Belgian Grand Prix. They let you walk right into the pit areas back then. 

I used to do WRX when it was called a "Rally" and we used handheld mechanical Curta calculators or just a watch. We seldom slowed down to sane speeds through French Villages just so we'd make the next checkpoint. Many chickens met their maker that way <grin>. The only bike race I attended was at a go-kart track in Heidelberg. They were running hopped-up mopeds (50cc motors) and flapped straight back from the handlebars in order to cut wind resistance. That said a lot for the human spirit, I think.

Fast forward to the recent past and the "Super Motos" (why the h**l are they called that?) and drivers like Ben Spies and the rest. These guys are highly paid super-athletes and have as much relationship to the likes of you and me as Clark Kent has to Superman. I never cheer them on because they don't need my help, but the last guy in the standings does. It pisses me no end when my favorite "tail-gunner" gets blown off the track by one of the super-moto guys. Maybe that's why race fans have no emotional investment in going to see a live race - you pretty much know how the podium will turn out anyway.

So here we are, piloting our Bandits through hill and dale, scaring little old ladies in Buicks and getting scared in turn by hard little 110-lb. blondes driving 3-ton SUV's. How many of us realize that our Bandits are way beyond what were considered "Super-bikes" just 20 years ago? But let's not crow just yet - whoops! - just got dusted by a string of 'Busas going over a hundred-twenty on a county road. *Sigh*

Herb

[Red01]

Fast forward to the recent past and the "Super Motos" (why the h**l are they called that?) and drivers like Ben Spies and the rest. These guys are highly paid super-athletes and have as much relationship to the likes of you and me as Clark Kent has to Superman. I never cheer them on because they don't need my help, but the last guy in the standings does. It pisses me no end when my favorite "tail-gunner" gets blown off the track by one of the super-moto guys. Maybe that's why race fans have no emotional investment in going to see a live race - you pretty much know how the podium will turn out anyway.

To answer the question in the first line:
Gavin Trippe came up with the idea of gathering the best riders from all the different formats of motorcycle racing and have them compete against each other on a track that was part paved/part dirt.  He sold the idea to ABC Wide World of Sports in the late 1970's and ABC aired it until 1985.  In the US is pretty much died after that, but the Europeans than had raced it, took it home with them and it took off, especially in France, where they called it Supermotard, which translates into Superbiker (literally, Supermotorcyclist).  From there it has been shortened to Supermoto.

I don't understand your association of "super-moto guys" in relation to your favorite tail gunners though since today's Supermoto riders are generally specialists - or riders retired from other forms of racing.  Although some top riders do occasionally compete in a SM event here and there, but more for fun than to try to rack up points toward a #1 plate.

Oh, and Clark Kent has a pretty darn close relationship to Superman... a lot closer than I have to the likes of Ben Spies or Valentino Rossi. 

[gyrogearcrunch]

Fast forward to the recent past and the "Super Motos" (why the h**l are they called that?) and drivers like Ben Spies and the rest. These guys are highly paid super-athletes and have as much relationship to the likes of you and me as Clark Kent has to Superman. I never cheer them on because they don't need my help, but the last guy in the standings does. It pisses me no end when my favorite "tail-gunner" gets blown off the track by one of the super-moto guys. Maybe that's why race fans have no emotional investment in going to see a live race - you pretty much know how the podium will turn out anyway.

To answer the question in the first line:
Gavin Trippe came up with the idea of gathering the best riders from all the different formats of motorcycle racing and have them compete against each other on a track that was part paved/part dirt.  He sold the idea to ABC Wide World of Sports in the late 1970's and ABC aired it until 1985.  In the US is pretty much died after that, but the Europeans than had raced it, took it home with them and it took off, especially in France, where they called it Supermotard, which translates into Superbiker (literally, Supermotorcyclist).  From there it has been shortened to Supermoto.

I don't understand your association of "super-moto guys" in relation to your favorite tail gunners though since today's Supermoto riders are generally specialists - or riders retired from other forms of racing.  Although some top riders do occasionally compete in a SM event here and there, but more for fun than to try to rack up points toward a #1 plate.

Oh, and Clark Kent has a pretty darn close relationship to Superman... a lot closer than I have to the likes of Ben Spies or Valentino Rossi. 

Thanks for the answer to my 1st question.

I didn't make it clear that I like to cheer for the underdog in any race, so I have no favorite tail-gunner. In the past, I've been sucked into wicked turns by expert riders that gave me some bad moments, which might explain my feelings about "superman" riders. Things like this can happen in club or group rides to less experienced riders until they wise up, hopefully before they end up wrecking it. Other than that, I enjoy watching expert riders doing their thing on TV, since I can pick up useful techniques from their style, but not from riding directly behind them!! 

By the way, a better bike DOES make for a better rider. I do things on my 1250 that were considerably harder on the 1200. I verified this just today on a Poker run in which I rode the 1200. And may I say, "Holy Moly" The 1200 is a lot noisier than the 1250!