In the long and dismal downtrend of motorcycle roadracing television coverage in the United States, one thing has been constant. Every time we bitched and moaned about how bad the coverage was, it got worse the next year.
And now, welcome to 2013, otherwise known as dead rock bottom, where we won’t be criticizing the TV coverage of MotoGP, World Superbike and AMA Superbike any more because it appears there just plain won’t be any coverage to criticize.
Not that many years ago, there were days when I could potentially waste four or five hours on a summer Sunday watching all three series on Speed TV. Sure, the coverage was fairly bare bones in nature. Each race would be packaged in a one-hour slot, which allowed just enough time for a minimum of pre-race introduction, the race itself, and short clips from post-race interviews, all taped and shown several hours after the event. That was actually fine for serious fans like me. I didn’t need to see fluffy features on Max Biaggi hanging out with professional soccer players or which model Randy DePuniet is dating. Now that racing on TV is dead, however, quite a few people are arguing that the lack of those personality profiles, which could have introduced the riders as people and given casual fans a reason to care who won, is the reason we no longer have coverage. Maybe. I’m open to the argument, but unconvinced it’s that simple.
Whatever. At least we had motorcycle roadracing on TV.
The slippage was clear, however. There was the infamous time that Speed (bitterly called the NASCRAP channel by some pissed-off motorcycle racing fans) interrupted a MotoGP race to show NASCAR qualifying. Not a NASCAR race. NASCAR qualifying. A relatively slow race car lumbering around an oval by itself. Fascinating. We bitched and moaned but deep down we knew our place as motorcycle fans in a country where overweight race cars with carbureted, pushrod engines inexplicably ruled.
At least we had motorcycle roadracing on TV.
Then AMA Superbike got shoved to attractive time slots such as 11 p.m. or even 1 a.m. on the East Coast. World Superbike sometimes got short shrift. Some races weren’t shown until the Tuesday after.
We bitched and moaned even louder, but at least we had motorcycle roadracing on TV.
We put up with questionable announcing and endured the tedium of Greg Creamer fighting with jingoistic race fans over whether Jorge Lorenzo’s last name should be pronounced the way a Mallorcan would pronounce it, the way a resident of Madrid speaking proper castellano would pronounce it, or the way a monolingual American would pronounce it. (Creamer might have had stronger claim to the moral high ground if he, or any other English-speaking announcer, had ever pronounced Espargaró or Barberá correctly. Hint: those accent marks are there for a reason, Greg.)
The pronunciation debate was boring, but at least we had motorcycle roadracing on TV.
Now, it seems, we’ve got nothing. Nada, zip, zilch. In Italy, nearly half the television sets in the country are sometimes tuned to a MotoGP race some Sundays. In Spain, they have their hours and hours of coverage. In the number-one economy in the world, we’ve got nothing.
The plugged-in types will tell me to go find a torrent. Fine. But given this country’s bandwidth, I shouldn’t have to resort to black-market measures to see MotoGP or World Superbike races. I shouldn’t have to rely on something that may be shut down tomorrow. I shouldn’t have to get an invite. Just try to get an invite, anyway.
So I guess this year I’ll probably see one MotoGP race and one AMA Superbike race in person and have more time to ride on Sundays. And more time to sit here on the cold and unsatisfying firmament of dead rock bottom and sulk about how we used to have motorcycle roadracing on TV.
Postscript: Fox later signed a deal to air MotoGP. That’s it, though.
