To quote Andy Bernard, I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them. That's how I feel about SPEED, my all-time favorite channel that has now been lost to time.
In an age of streaming services, "plus" this, "max" that, the ability for normal people to just watch high-production content has never been more compromised. I guarantee anyone reading this has had at least one instance where they go to look for a particular show or episode of a show, only to find out that it's not on their preferred service, has moved to another service you own that is worse, or has been removed entirely from any service you own. It's infuriating. Shockingly, it makes you nostalgic in a way for the times when you used to have just one giant cable package with hundreds of channels, because even if you didn't use 90% of them, you more than likely had what you needed. Somewhere. And if you were a motorsport fan from the mid-90s through 2013, there was only one channel you ever needed: SPEED.
Back in the old digs, it was Buckeye CableSystem Channel 195; sandwiched next to ESPNNews and some other channel (CNBC, I think, but nobody actually cares). And it was on every weekend. Imagine; a single channel or outlet that showed, at one point or another, almost every major racing series on the planet. All three national tiers of NASCAR, and lower series like ARCA. The Champ Car series (half of the infamous IRL/CART split), and IndyCar/IRL (the other half). The GrandAm SportsCar Series (what re-became IMSA once it merged with the American Le Mans Series, which was also on SPEED. Pavement not your thing? They had racing series like the Lucas Oil Off Road Racing Series, premier dirt series like World of Outlaws or the Lucas Oil Dirt Late Model Series, and more. That's most of the major four-wheeled American racing series, all in the same place. Not necessarily at the same time, but many were.
You might be thinking, "Oh, that's cool, but what about other series outside of America? You do know there are other series outside of America, right?" Oh, don't you worry. Let's take the big hitters; Formula One? Check. Even GP2 (now Formula 2)? Check. World Rally Championship? Check. World Touring Car Championship? Check. Damn. Surely no national series from other countries, though? Well, in one form or another SPEED broadcast the V8 Supercars Championship from Australia. The British Touring Car Championship from, uh, Britain. The German Touring Car Championship (better known as the DTM) from, you guessed it, Germany. Even if some of these international "national series" were not broadcast live, that's still pretty cool.
But what about two-wheel racing? Well, SPEED also had MotoGP and World Superbike racing as well as America's AMA Supercross racing and plenty of other dirt bike series. It really was so comprehensive. To some today, this sounds too good to be true. But true it was, and it was glorious. And I haven't even talked about the one-off events that they used to broadcast, covering all the major events from other series that maybe weren't covered live or as often. This includes things like the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The Bathurst 1000. The Race of Champions (both the ironically-named US-based IROC series and the formal RoC event). The NASCAR All-Star Race (and its incredible qualifying format, which I'll talk about in another article in the future, probably). So many cool events, beyond what is listed here.
All of the things I've just rattled off are simply the live racing content the channel used to show. There were plenty of other shows that the channel used to run, from call-in podcast-style shows like Wind Tunnel with Dave Despain to reality-style programming like Pimp My Ride to preview shows like NASCAR RaceDay to many more. There were plenty of other shows and specials which were able to fill the programming block with content all themed around one thing: cars. And that's both what I loved about it and also probably why it ultimately was phased out.
Apologies if this takes a bit of a sharp, business-like turn in the middle of this nostalgia-fest, but hang on. You see, when you pretty much put all of your eggs in the same industry's basket, you kind of end up bending to the will of wider market factors influencing that industry. In the mid-2000s, the popularity of things like NASCAR were at an all-time high. In the early 2000s, and before the Netflix lightning-in-a-bottle growth of F1 in the late 2010s and early 2020s, F1 and open-wheel racing in general was quite popular in America. But then there were a few factors that combined in a dangerous mixture to take down what was once the ultimate motorsports outlet.
The curse of Indy 2005
The story is well-known, but as much as it might be beating a dead horse, it needs to be reiterated here. The 2005 United States Grand Prix at Indianapolis Motor Speedway unquestionably set the clock back a good 20 years for open-wheel racing in America. Everything from how it was handled in real-time to the reaction in the following days, months, and years was nothing but negative. And so, what could have easily been one of SPEED's cornerstone programs was quickly undermined with reputational damage that only a well-timed television show release date and a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic could fix. But there were more important factors influencing the downfall of the channel.
NASCAR boom fizzles out
In the early 2000s, NASCAR was second only to the NFL in terms of viewership for a weekly sports league, and would regularly sell out tracks with capacities over 100,000 seats. This sport was on top of the world, with big-money sponsors like Budweiser, Lowe's, Home Depot, Target, Miller Lite, and many more. There were big names like Gordon, Earnhardt, Stewart, Johnson, Wallace, Labonte, Martin, Jarrett, Waltrip, and more that were household names. Everything was looking great, but as the series continued to tweak the format, older names retired, newer drivers failed to make an impact, and sponsors pulled out. And with all this, TV ratings declined. And we're talking like 50-plus percent decline, not just a few hundred thousand people. As NASCAR rose in popularity, SPEED hooked itself to the sport, and as NASCAR fell, the channel sadly fell with it.
The Great Recession still lingers
Perhaps the biggest impact on SPEED and indeed car culture as a whole was the fallout from the Great Recession in 2007 and 2008. Suddenly, we had major carmakers like General Motors and Chrysler (who at this point was part of Daimler-Chrysler, so you can add Mercedes into this) who were on the brink of collapse. Both in the auto industry and in the rest of the world, jobs were cut left and right, and people were suddenly forced to make some very uncomfortable financial decisions. In the immediate impact, car companies were forced to reduce motorsports funding and marketing budgets in general. Consumers were not going to buy new cars at rates they were before. It was a real wake-up call.
But the effect of the crisis of the late 2000s goes deeper than that. In an effort to avoid repeating the same actions that got them in a hole in the first place, car companies began scaling back on development of what they considered "niche" models. These were often high-performance models or things which were less practical and—more important to the manufacturer—less profitable than your mainstream options. After the Great Recession, general consumers decided that they needed cars which were the jack of all trades, masters of none, because in reality it was not practical for most people to own more than one car anymore. So companies began to churn out cheaper, more practical, but slower, (subjectively) uglier, cars which were more focused on being economical (I'm not going to say efficient because that's a different argument).
Companies like Honda dropped their enthusiast offerings like the S2000 in favor of crossovers and SUVs like the Pilot, Passport, and HR-V. Ford stopped making anything that wasn't an SUV except the Mustang, and even then that became a lot more expensive than it was before. GM did the same thing except with the Corvette. Car culture in general went into a recession, one from which we are still suffering. You know what probably wouldn't fare well in an age of dwindling car culture? A media outlet and television channel themed exclusively about cars. Hence the inevitable fate of SPEED.
The End
In retrospect, it was not much of a surprise. But at the time, August 2013 felt like a real gut punch as SPEED was phased out in favor of a new "more diverse" sports network in Fox Sports 1. And to be clear, I use the term "diverse" in the dictionary sense, because what Fox did was take SPEED and turn it into their equivalent of ESPN2, making it a channel that included many sports instead of just motor racing. To some, that might be a great idea, but not to me. Why? Because cars are a part of our every day life, whether you like them or not (and if you don't, I'm not sure how you made it this far in the article but props to you I guess).
Cars are an extension of who you are as a person. Maybe not everyone sees it this way; some people might see a car as little more than a tool, something to get you from A to B and nothing else. That's fine, but I disagree with you. I think a car says as much about you as your house, your clothes, and to some extent, even your attitude. You can tell usually by looking at someone's car whether they care about cars or not. Is it clean? Is it a cool color? Is it a specific model or trim that is unusual? Is it modified in some way? If the answer to all of these is no, then that person probably isn't a car person.
America is built off of car culture, and it was so nice to have a place where car culture, past and present, was celebrated in a way that things like food, decoration, hell, even golf are. That place had the perfect name, one that I hope makes a comeback in my lifetime, maybe in a new form, maybe in its old glory. SPEED.