MotorTrend+ is Shutting Down

Update from Finn. 

Well, E36 M3.

It's pretty amazing (and impressive, frankly) that single guys with just a phone camera are able to put out arguably better content than a big corporaton (whoever owns MT this week).  While I enjoyed earlier episodes of Roadkill, the more recent stuff has been 'meh'. And I don't blame the 'stars'.  But those shows have been severely outclassed by Vice Grip Garage, Junkyard Digs, Pole Barn Garage, Sleeperdude, etc. .  So long as YouTube doesn't screw with paying those guys, I look forward to the future with these independents who make stuff their way, and the way a lot of us prefer to watch it. Tony Angelo even makes fun of the business he once participated in.

When it migrated to Discovery streaming is when I cancelled my subscription.  The beginning of the end of Roadkill for me personally, was the episode where they drove Finnegan's Trophy Truck on the street.  100% not aligned with their viewership.  That's a rich man's toy.  Not roadkill worthy.

Warner Brothers has the reverse-Midas touch; everything thing they touch turns to E36 M3. I remember how quickly and thoroughly they eviscerated Rooster Teeth just months into ownership, before eventually shutting that down in it's entirety earlier this year.

I'll miss Roadkill, Roadkill Garage and HRG. I know the hosts all have their solo stuff but some of that (*cough* Finnegan's Garage *cough*) isn't that good (Stay Tuned and the D/F channel is fantastic) and some of them don't really have any other online presence (Dulcich), and a lot of the times with the solo stuff some of the spark is gone and you lack the crossovers between them. It happened with Hoonigan after they started losing hosts; I didn't really like any of the solo content from the hosts, the fun was all of them interacting.

I'm also really depressed that I never got out to a Roadkill Nights. I always wanted to get out there, but just couldn't never make the stars align. I wonder if Tom Bailey/Sick The Mag will pick that event up and do something of a similar scale. 

It happens to almost every YouTube show that tries to ring the cash register in a big way. They lose focus on the content and focus on revenue instead. If they bring in the corporate world it happens even faster. 

It seems to infect most of them eventually. I end up canceling my subscription and finding something else to watch. 

I wonder what the plans are for the Motor Trend cable TV channel, if it will just continue with reruns forever or if they'll shut it down too.  

 Yeah, a lot of Finnegans content I can't watch and almost all of Lucky Costa's content as well.  D/F's channel is good, as is Tony Angelo's.  It's just hard for me to wrap my head around how MotorTrend screwed this up, as they had 5 shows that were performing well...

Guess I'll cancel my subscription after the final episodes of Faster, HRG, and Roadkill air.  There is nothing else on Discovery+ to keep me there.

Indy - Guy said:

The beginning of the end of Roadkill for me personally, was the episode where they drove Finnegan's Trophy Truck on the street.  100% not aligned with their viewership.  That's a rich man's toy.  Not roadkill worthy.

In their defense, that wasn't the original plan. The Hemi Gremmie hurt the engine, parts weren't available, they couldn't get the parts, and Finnegan had bought that trophy truck for his own personal use, and they just kind of pivoted to that as a last-minute plan. While budget-wise it wasn't Roadkill, the idea of doing things with vehicles that you really ought not to do was pretty Roadkill. It let them live out the original plan for the dirt track car that was cut up for Nascarlo, which was take a full-race vehicle and try to drive it on the street until they got in trouble.

In reply to NickD :

Yeah, I guess you make a good point. It's just the point in time for me that I started having this sense that things were a bit off  (compared to their roots ).

Additionally the more I watched Finnegan, the more I can't stand him.  His "schtick" just rubs me wrong.

Russian Warship, Go Berkeley Yourself said:

I'm sure they will air what they have.

Aren't they owned by the same company that scrapped the complete Batgirl movie?  Or do I have two conpanies confused?

Indy - Guy said:

In reply to NickD :

 the more I watched Finnegan, the more I can't stand him.  His "schtick" just rubs me wrong.

I found he gets old and wears on me too.

Frieburger does a great job with his history of Los Angeles and old drag racing history.  I also enjoy some of Tony's videos but they can sometimes drag on.

Mr_Asa said:

Russian Warship, Go Berkeley Yourself said:

I'm sure they will air what they have.

Aren't they owned by the same company that scrapped the complete Batgirl movie?  Or do I have two companies confused?

And the completed ACME vs. Coyote film. Yes, WB has been trashcanning films that were completely filmed and edited for tax writeoffs.

Datsun240ZGuy said:

Indy - Guy said:

In reply to NickD :

 the more I watched Finnegan, the more I can't stand him.  His "schtick" just rubs me wrong.

I found he gets old and wears on me too.

Finnegan's solo content is dreadful. I watch maybe one in ten videos that he puts out. Far too long and he just goes over the same things over and over, never completes anything, never fixes anything write, and despite having a bunch of "experts" come on his channel to build or set things up, nothing seems to work right. He's put out like 3 or 4 hour and a half videos on fixing clutch issues with the one C10, and then it still doesn't work right. Really calls into question the expertise of that guy from the clutch company. And all that could have been chopped down into a single hour long video covering the iterative fixes. Or he spent years trying to get a diaphragm clutch to work in Blasphemi, and everyone in the comments kept saying "Just go to a slipper clutch", and then after all that futzing around and excuses about not wanting to use a slipper clutch (including a 1.5 hour video of the designer of that Bangshift Billy device not even being able to get the car to do a burnout with his damnfool contraption), he finally goes and puts one in and, lo and behold, all his clutch issues were solved. He spent a fortune on a "professionally-built turnkey drag boat" and it's never worked right since he owned it, which means either the builder isn't as good as he claimed or the owner/operator is the problem. He made the video where they went to the dragstrip with the Rubber Duck Firebird with new carburetors on it, in an attempt to go eights, and then never thought to, ya know, bring different jets or carb tuning parts, and wasted the whole session running to some guy's shop to borrow a box of jets. Spent a whole video buying a C2 Corvette and another mocking it up for a Sonny Leonard 712 and new chassis just to realize that he doesn't actually fit in a C2 Corvette with a cage. And then he talks about wanting to go sixes in a new chassis that he bought (Surprise, also turned out to have a lot of fundamental engineering issues because he seems to get taken for a ride on everything he buys) and I think, "Not likely."

Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin: The writing has been on the wall for MT for quite a while.

I cancelled my subscription when MT deprecated their Android TV app and told me that I'd just have to search for and open the content on my phone and cast it to the TV (as if that ever works properly). Their customer service was terrible as well. Shortly after that they moved to Discovery and I figured it would be under a year before they were axed; that's just about right. 

Freiburger has also acknowledged the end of Roadkill on social media posts, basically pointing people to check out his personal YouTube channel.It both sucks and is a blessing at the same time, if that makes any sense.  

It really sucks when these things go away, especially for the crews and all the people the show brought along losing their jobs. The personalities should mostly make the transition to YouTube if they haven't already, which honestly, isn't a bad thing. Creative control becomes theirs, and they can do things how they want to going forward.

Freiburger's channel has been really entertaining so far. Tony Angelo, another former MT TV guy, has been absolutely killer with the Stay Tuned stuff. And there are so many more personalities/characters on YouTube that have always done it better than any of the (quoting Tony here) "WE'RE GONNA LOSE THE SHOP!!!" morons on the reality shows ever have. Hell, look at VGG; Derek's double dipping with Roadworthy Rescues on TV, but his regular YouTube stuff is so much better. Assuming that's going away now, he'll be just fine with keeping just the YouTube stuff going. 

I'm guessing all the branded events like the Duct Tape Drags, Roadkill Nights, etc will just rebrand as something else and stay largely the same. The "don't get it right, just get it running" stuff isn't going to die because Roadkill is going away. That is here to stay. 

In reply to Tony Sestito :

Duct Tape Drags is Freiburger's.
It was rebranded when corporate canceled Zip Tie Drags.

In reply to Russian Warship, Go Berkeley Yourself :

That's right! I forgot about that. Duct Tape Drags is a better name anyway. 

I feel like guys like Finnegan and Lucky especially are great at being car guys and not great at being show hosts.  I find Lucky to be easy to listen to but his show is just a bit.... too casual to feel like it's going anywhere, like it needs some structure.  I would watch a show where someone else is in charge and he's the right-hand man doing tech work and participating. Finnegan is worse (and watching him blow up something on his '55 Chevy every other week has gotten old for me).  Freiburger could do content with Steve Dulcich to add something interesting, they often have good interplay on camera.  A YouTube channel I like, Dirt Head Shed, is another instance where MotorTrend falling apart has driven someone to start their own show.  I have really liked nearly all of the Vice Grip Garage episodes that I've watch; they were good in the early days and they're really well done these days.

I can't do this sort of thing so I'm trying not to be too hard on anyone I've mentioned.  It's wild watching media companies just trash goodwill they've built up and taking successful formulas and failing hard.

In reply to pres589 (djronnebaum) :

Dave Chapelle has great content, but I often skip episodes unless I really want to see it, because his filming is usually a bit too shaky.  Makes me nauseated, especially if I'm watching while eating.  This is one area Freiburger has been doing pretty well on.  Probably why VGG is so watchable to me, as it uses a stationary camera most of the time.

In reply to eastsideTim :

I'm really curious what camera/lens/etc setup VGG is filmed with lately as that work always looks pretty decent.  I have no idea what Chapelle is using but I would agree that his video work isn't great.  I can't really tell what he's doing, like if he's working a full time job somewhere and doing this on the side or what.  Freiburger was always into production photography for Hot Rod so I wasn't surprised that he generally had that together from the begining.  

I have an idea of what I would use but it's so easy to lose the forest for the trees on these things.

In reply to pres589 (djronnebaum) :

I like Chapelle and his work. He did comment on one of the recent UA videos that he needs to upgrade his camera to something with better stabilization after playing around with one of the other guys stabilized cameras. He does work a day job but I do hope he keeps cranking because I think he'll learn how to make better videos as he goes.

NickD said:

Mr_Asa said:

Russian Warship, Go Berkeley Yourself said:

I'm sure they will air what they have.

Aren't they owned by the same company that scrapped the complete Batgirl movie?  Or do I have two companies confused?

And the completed ACME vs. Coyote film. Yes, WB has been trashcanning films that were completely filmed and edited for tax writeoffs.

If they make the movie, they retain copyright.

eastsideTim said:

In reply to pres589 (djronnebaum) :

Dave Chapelle has great content, but I often skip episodes unless I really want to see it, because his filming is usually a bit too shaky.  Makes me nauseated, especially if I'm watching while eating.  This is one area Freiburger has been doing pretty well on.  Probably why VGG is so watchable to me, as it uses a stationary camera most of the time.

Freiburger has much more effort into his videos than most of the named YT channels.

He has a professional video guy and editor in all of his newer videos, AFAICT.




T/A has "the crew" film most of the time and while I doubt they are "professionals", contrary what is mentioned above they are using more than just a cell phone.



 

Dirt Head Dave used a video guy for a while when he started out, but looks to be doing most, if not all of his own work at this point.   He will be fine, I assume.   He is always trying to do a little better with his videos, and 4xFred even mentioned how DHD was going to go a bit insane once he started making videos as he was such a perfectionist.

As an aside, something I was told quite a while ago about making videos- "You can get by with weak video, but poor audio is a killer on YT"