THE TV CRITIC: Motorcycles Good. Everything Else Bad. The Show Started At 7:00pm (PST) And The 450 Main Started At 9:58; What’s Wrong With That Picture?

TV CRITIC: WHEN BIKES WERE ON THE TRACK THE SHOW WAS GREAT, BUT THE SHOW STARTED AT 7:00 AND THE 450 MAIN DIDN’T HAPPENED UNTIL 9:58

By F. Stop Fitzgerald

ÿÿÿ There is nothing better for television, whether Days of Our Lives or AMA Supercross, than hatred, anger, rivalry and an evil twin. Both the soap opera and the 2009 AMA Supercross series had all of that. What it didn’t have was very good TV coverage. Of course I’m not talking about the coverage of the actual races (they were awesome), but everything else about Speed’s production values, concepts and ideas of what is entertaining.

ÿÿÿ Forget that you are a hardcore fan and think of yourself as your Aunt Edith (lord knows that your friends think you ride about as fast as someone’s aunt). Would your aunt, uncle, wife, cousin or next door neighbor have sat through Saturday nights jumbled four-hour Speed TV show? Let’s put it this way, you could have tuned it at 7:00pm (Pacific time) to watch the first few minutes of the opening credits and then loaded up the family in the car and went out for dinner and a movie and still had time to get back and watch the main events.
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ÿÿÿ Here are some of the things that this TV critic learned during my four hours of watching:

ÿÿÿ Chad Reed’s ears: Looking at Chad’s ears during his on camera interviews is painful. First, he borrowed the crystal doorknobs off Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion and hung then in his ear lobes. Head on, he looks like a Pontiac coming down a dark highway at night with its high beams on. Then, in a desperate attempt to stay young (Chad, that boat sailed a few years ago), he tucks his ears into his hat like a flatbiller from Sylmar. Chad give those ears a break.
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ÿÿÿ Ricky Carmichael’s hat: It was kind of a mix between Sir Jackie Stewart and a turtle. You gotta hand it to Ricky. It was a fashion statement and definitely point/counterpoint to Chad’s version of haberdashery. Just a suggestion Ricky; have you ever tried sticking your ears inside that 1948 MG-TC hat? Ricky has been good in the announcer’s booth in the past, but there were moments this time when Ricky, Jeffro and Ralph were all talking at the same time. That works at the dinner table at this TV Critics house, but not on TV.

ÿÿ National Anthem: Love it, but don’t want to watch the daughter of some sponsor sing it. Whitney Houston yes. If Speed had to resort to showing the National Anthem being sung, the next thing we can expect is a close-up of a ticket taker tearing the stub or a beer vendor spilling the foam on a $7.50 cup of suds.

ÿÿÿ The Ski Jump: This is an idea that was borrowed from “Insanity Ridge” at the Los Angeles Coliseum race from two decades ago. Basically, it was a single jump that the riders flat-landed from. There were chalk lines marked on the track to give the fans an idea of how far the riders were jumping. In the old days Mike Goodwin used to pay a $1500 to the guy who jumped the farthest. Of course in modern times, money is out of the question…and so was the idea of putting the chalk lines back on the track between heat races. They were gone after the second 250 East/West race. Good ideas are ruin by poor execution.

ÿÿÿ The Chisholm Affair: It is always cool when you get to see all the players (save for the actual Kyle Chisholm) discuss the tempest in a tea pot from last week. The TV guys did a good job of using the Salt Lake City incident to advance the story. You had the pious wronged, the evil media, the “Aw Shucks” victim and lots of good sound bites. That was one of the better produced and funniest parts of the horrible non-racing segments of the show.

ÿÿ Hatred: You gotta love hate. Its cool that these two guys don’t like each other because in the real world there are a lot of people who don’t like them either.

ÿÿÿ Troy Adams’ crash: “Hold On Cowboy, I’m not done,” says the girl in the Progressive Insurance advertisement. She probably meant that Troy Adams should hold onto his pants cause they were ripped off (a la Damon Bradshaw) in a brutal endo. Although not as famous a wardrobe malfunction as Janet Jackson’s, at least Troy didn’t need the help of Justin Timberlake.

ÿÿ The race line-up: The promoter packed the race line-ups worse than a Chicago Alderman on Election Day. In the 450 Last Chance the scroll at the top of screen showed everyone who was racing in the LCQ. It even listed guys who weren’t in the LCQ (and maybe some guys who were at home sitting on the couch). It listed Troy Adams, Broc Hepler, Billy Laninovich and Keith Johnson as racing. The only problem was that none of them were in the race. I’m not a conspiracy theorist (except where it comes to anything involving the AMA, DMG, NPG, NRA, NGK, DNC and KGB), but the voter rolls in Chicago are more honest than the list of riders at a Supercross race. Face it Feld, you don’t have enough 450 riders to hold a complete event. Don’t be ashamed, after all, quite often the New York Yankees play a couple men short (they just make the shortstop player deeper). The fans understand.

ÿÿÿ The TV show: Last year in New York I took the little lady out for a special dinner at a fancy four-star restaurant that the hotel concierge recommended. When they served the food it was three tiny little morsels creatively arranged on a giant plate. That is what Speed’s coverage of the Las Vegas Supercross was like…tiny little morsels of racing on a giant four-hour long plate.

ÿÿÿ Dirty riding: Is Chad Reed a dirty rider? He certainly wanted to be. When Stewart smartly moved over and tried to let Reed by early in the race and Reed refused to pass him you knew that there was evil afoot. But, much like the Kyle Chisholm affair, it’s not really a take-out move unless someone gets taken out. Although “Bad Chad” aimed for Stewart in a high-speed sweeper, he functionally missed (in the way that a bomb might hit the target, but not explode). The only thing damaged was Reed’s reputation and Team Suzuki’s ability to take the moral high ground ever again. But, as a viewer, especially one who knew it was coming, it was great TV.

ÿÿ The evil twin: “Bad Chad” is almost always replaced by a clone Chad on the podium. You never know what Chad you are going to get. Perhaps the one with the the “twinkle in his eye” that Ralph Sheheen likes so much. Or the robot Chad with the glazed-over look in his eyes (made all the more absurb by his habit of sticking the fake RockStar bottle in the side of his mouth and tilting his head just enough to be the dutiful pitchman). Chad tried to clean Stewart’s clock on the track, but smiled it off on the podium. “Bad Chad” versus “Skippy” would be a great reality TV show.

ÿÿÿ 2009 Supercross: This was a very weird year. It started with so much hope and the best TV schedule in years. Yet, a lot of TV isn’t the same as good TV. Perhaps being on Wide World Of Sports once a year was better for the sport than being on Speed every week. That may sound strange, but too much bad coverage is not a plus. And any non-motocross fan who sat through all four hours was surely sound asleep–because when the motorcycles weren’t on the race track, this show was a massive bore. It was the closest, tightest, hardest fought and most bitterly contested Championship in years, yet all anybody in the motorcycle industry wanted was to get it over with. That seems strange, but bad casting ruins many movies and the 2009 Supercross Championship had a great story line, awesome plot and evil doings; it just didn’t tug at the heart strings of the TV viewers.

ÿÿÿ Nothing ruins a great race more than three hours of waiting around for it to start–or in this case end. Good television isn’t built on a foundation of people wishing the show would come to an end. Hopefully, before the 2009 Supercross TV coverage starts again there will be some staff changes in the Speed control booth.

The opinions expressed by “The TV Critic” are not necessarily the same as yours. Live with it.


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