★★★★★ 0/5

SPEED (US) channel ends 18 year run

"This is the end of SPEED in America," says Presenter Mike Joy.

7
Leave a comment

2013-08-17_2324US motorsports channel SPEED ended an 18 year run on television yesterday, after showing a replay of Sprint Cup Series Qualifying at Michigan International Speedway from the day before.

The FOX Sports-owned channel will see most of the channel’s live events broadcast on FOX Sports 1 or 2.

Presenter Mike Joy told viewers it had been an honour and privilege to present motorsports on SPEED.

“But now it’s time to turn of the ignition and turn in the keys. This is the end of SPEED in America,” he said.

“Farewell to the motorsports authority, SPEED.”

It’s not clear how the end will directly affect SPEED’s Australian channel.

7 Responses

  1. Channel changes and scrappings/axings, this is very interesting by Foxtel and by association FOX in the US. There clearly are two many channels on the pay tv platform already and very few of them have anything good on them. FOX8, HBO, FOX Sports, 1,2 and3) and the movie channels. STUDIO is ok because (from the sound of it) the quality of content is good. At one time FOXtel bragged how many channels they had in order to lour people to it. But we have seen with the advent of Multichannels on Freeview (FTA) and the internet ie NBN that FOXtel is becoming less atractive and less necesary for peoples tv watching. This will make sports content and big event content more and more important, i can see Pay tv pushing hard for simulcast rights for major sporting events which FTA already have and have enjoyed for quite some time now. Watch this space.

  2. I wonder locally if this is an opportunity to get a content deal with the Golf Channel? I’d love to see British Eurosport 1 & 2 (heaven forbid in HD) get a run.

  3. @ David Knox – I just realised that Fuel TV has also been closed to be replaced with FOX Sports 2. Any chance you can get a comment from FOX Sports Australia regarding what the effects of SPEED and Fuel TV U.S. closures will have on the local channels? As Fuel TV had a lot of panel shows I can see it being effected fairly badly which is awful as it’s sport programming (namely the ASP events) is terrific.

  5. I tweeted SPEED Australia about what SPEED U.S.’s closure meant for them and they said it would be “business as usual “, which I think is due to the fact that even though SPEED has closed, their racing content is still on FOX Sports 1 & 2 (maybe even more now given 2 was a soccer channel)

Leave a Reply