With a heartfelt farewell from commentator Mike Joy, and then a simple fade out at 6:00 AM EST last Saturday, SPEED was no more. Replaced by yet another general sports channel – Fox Sports One – what was once an automotive oasis in the sea of TV crap became but a memory. For a lot of folks SPEED stopped being relevant a number of years ago, but it was still the only channel where you could find racing pretty much any time of the day or night. Now, Fox has red flagged the whole darn thing.
Of course what the World needs today isn’t a niche channel devoted to all things cars and racing. No, instead what we need is another all-sports channel that doesn’t just cover NASCAR and Indy, but women’s gymnastics and Canadian league football too. That’s right, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3, ESPNU, Fox Sports West, Fox Sports East, Fox Sports Even More East aren’t enough to cover the burgeoning sporting worlds of amateur fly fishing, the curling semi finals, NCAA 4th round drafts, and 24-hour sports analysis. Oh no, there’s currently not enough room on the dial for the analysis.
So love it or lump it, our channel is gone, at least here in the U.S.. From what I hear SPEED is still on the air in Canada, but who knows what kind of snowmobile moose hurdling they cover up there. And now that it is gone from the airwaves, something is going to have to fill the void when it comes to racing coverage. What station do you think will – or more importantly do you want to see – step up? Who do you want to see covering Daytona, and F1, and Barrett Jackson, and . . . well anything with a redline or that drips oil? What TV channel do you think will best serve the car community?
Image sources: Jalopnik, Run Luau Run
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