Monday Morning Crew Chief: Media edition

I've dumped on AMA Pro Racing a bit, over the last few months. But I have to say that after they rushed to put together "Fans Choice TV" streaming video coverage of racing at Daytona, it wasn't that bad. In fact, the short track coverage was really quite good, as watched on my iPad from Calgary, Canada.

Other commenters have noted that it's not HDTV-quality, but since all the 'television' that I watch is actually streaming video, I only noticed a few spots where it sort of bitmapped for a moment, or the sound dropped out (and that was on my 88 year old mom's spotty internet connection.)

It's interesting to think that, really, a good streaming video service could deliver the racing to far more fans than some obscure cable channel that few viewers even have access to. And, while I suppose Fans Choice TV (a subsidiary of Nascar) may eventually try to monetize the stream by selling ad time, right now it provides an uninterrupted viewing experience.

The old television model (I'm thinking, like, 10 or 20 years ago) delivered viewers. That was why it was important to racing sponsors that races be televised. And, a lot of commenters, and AMA Pro Racing stakeholders, still hold that outdated idea; that's why there was general dismay that the 2014 superbike series was not going to be televised. It never really mattered; the potential reach of some niche, cable-only TV Sports channel is nowhere near the reach of Fans Choice TV. Few motorcycle racing fans could even find the 'broadcasts' last year; they can all stream video.

The only difference is that no one will just stumble upon AMA Pro Racing while aimlessly clicking through their cable channels. So what?

That old media-delivers-audience model is dead, and we all need to get used to the idea that in the 21st century, media is just that--a medium... that is to say, it's a way for (in this case) racers, teams, and sponsors to deliver content fans. It's no longer the medium's responsibility to deliver fans, it's just a pipeline to fans.

AMA Pro Racing has pretty much held up its end, as far as the Fans Choice TV 'broadcasts' go. If this is to work, and deliver meaningful and valuable sponsorship exposure, it is up to sponsors, teams, and racers to promote the stream, and encourage fans to connect that way.

There are some things that Nascar could do to improve its Fans Choice site, and make it more valuable to sponsors. For example, all the 2014 coverage should already be archived and available; that should happen even while the live stream's still on. But, it is already better than I expected. It's a new media world out there; they don't even need a TV deal if they make the streaming video service good, and keep it free. And, ironically, if they get a few hundred thousand people watching the live streams, I can guarantee that a TV deal will come out of the woodwork anyway.

Elvis has left the building, but his motorcycle's still here

I'm back in Calgary, visiting my mom (for her 88th birthday). What did I find in a local museum but...

Elvis' '56 Sportster. Really, it's a shame that Harley no longer makes a bike as spare and cool at this. My artist friend Bill Rodgers pointed out that, on the insurance form displayed with the bike, Elvis is described as "Vocalist, self-employed". That just about covers it.

There were a number of examples of heavily modified or decorated jackets, beginning with Rockers' jackets from the U.K., which were definitely sold as 'American style'...

Later on, in a case of what-goes-around-comes-around, the Brits exported punk music, and Seattle punk musicians and fans dressed to emulate British punk rockers, who were ironically referencing the Rockers, who were emulating Elvis.

(Sorry for the crap photos. All I had with me was my phone.)

'Factory' vs. 'Open'

From what I read, the other manufacturers in MotoGP are pissed that Ducati's factory team will not race under 'Factory' rules. Instead, they've opted to run in the 'Open' class. (For a detailed explanation of the difference in the two classes of machine--which will look and sound exactly the same, and which will just confuse the fans--I suggest you refer to MotoMatters.)

What I don't get is, the other manufacturers are all saying, "We race in MotoGP because it helps us to develop advanced technology that we'll apply to road bikes, later on."

That's a great story, as far as it goes, but it makes no sense. After all, the 'Factory' motors are sealed and motor development is frozen as of the first race. Teams running under Open class rules can tweak away to their hearts' content. It seems to me that that's the 'development' class.

When the organizers first proposed the two-class arrangement (they obviously learned nothing from the CRT debacle) I thought the Factory teams could run their own ECUs. It was depressing to think that we'd come to such a point; that teams forced to choose between a spec (read: frozen) ECU and free engine development on the one hand, and a free ECU and frozen engine development on the other hand, would choose the latter option. I.E., that the black box is now more important than all the reciprocating metal parts that it controls.

That was bad enough, but I only recently realized that the black box is, itself, a spec item. Everyone uses the same Magnetti Marelli ECU, but the factory teams get to write their own software. It's a sad state of affairs, if meaningful advancement over the course of the season is going to come in the form of code only.

Listen up, you punks: I'm not reminiscing about the old days just because I'm a bitter old bastard who can't get with the times*. But there was a time, not that long ago, when packages came air cargo from Japan, or when parts were even hand-carried, still dropping bits of swarf or smelling of freshly welded Ti; passengers flew directly from Saitama Prefecture, or Shizuoka, or wherever, and drove through the night in rental cars to the track, to meet mechanics in deserted pit lanes where one light burned in one garage. And when the riders arrived from the hotel in the morning, they didn't necessarily even know how many cylinders their bike would have that day. Those days are still within living memory, and lo, even though Marc Marquez leans over further today, Grands Prix are not as fabulous now as they were then.

The factories claim they're racing to develop and test new technology, but they're severely restricted in terms of test days, and their 'A' riders can't do other development work.

It's senseless, especially to fans--who won't be fussed to appreciate the nuances of such-and-such a Factory bike that's finishing behind an Open bike. The whole championship-within-a-championship has no external relevance, anyway. And the most frustrating part of it all is that Dorna's rationale is, We're trying to control costs; but no rule ever has that effect.

Gardiner's Seventh Law of Racing: Every team always spends all of its budget, in search of any possible advantage. Every team spends every cent, full stop.

When they restricted test days in Formula 1 car racing, development budgets went up, not down, because teams had to develop fantastically expensive new simulation technology.

But wait, it gets worse; now it seems, the Open class spec software is not really frozen, either. How much more will it develop over the course of the season? Will Dorna take input from the Open teams? The Factory class looks more and more like a simple handicapping system; win too much, and we'll cut your fuel load. And Dorna does seem to think that way, if what I read this morning is true; Open teams will be fuel-penalized if they actually win races.

Who the fuck is writing these last-minute rules for them? DMG?

*I am a bitter old bastard who can't get with the times, but that's not why I prefer the old days. I prefer the old days because they were better.

Parsing Superbike Rules

Back in the days before Mikhail Gorbachev summarily executed Communism, the U.S. had a huge strategic interest in Russia, but virtually no knowledge of what the country’s leaders were thinking. In the absence of any good spies for our side, all we could rely on was a type of intelligence specialist known as a Kremlinologist.

Kremlinologists looked at things like, the order of the limousines as they lined up to pick up Party members after meetings, or, how many cases of what quality of vodka were delivered to whose dacha; they used that kind of more-or-less-openly available information to try to determine who was in favor in the party, and from that, what the inscrutable Commies might’ve been up to.

I’m kind of a Kremlinologist of motorcycle racing. I don’t have many inside sources, and I’m certainly not privy to Dorna’s secret plans. But I wonder if the change to Superbike homologation rules means more than just, they want Bimota to field a team this year.

Over the last few years, it’s become a lot easier to meet the FIM’s minimum-production-quantity rules in the SBK class. In 2007, just before the global economic meltdown, these rules were published for the 2008 season:

• ≥125 units on hand prior to homologation inspection (a month or so before the racing season starts). Motorcycles must be on sale to public at that time.
• ≥500 units produced by the end of June, Year 1.
• ≥1,000 units produced no later than end of December, Year 1.

At that time, the FIM said that beginning in 2010, the minimum production run in Year 1 would be raised to 3,000 units. This seemed to indicate a move to limit pseudo-manufacturers like Petronas. (I doubt they ever even made the first 125 machines!) Most recently, I think the rule called for 2,000 machines at the end of the second year.

Now, the FIM says...

• ≥125 units on hand prior to homologation inspection (a month or so before the racing season starts). 
• ≥250 units produced by the end of Year 1.
• ≥1,000 units produced no later than end of Year 2.

This recent change clears the way for Bimota (which was unable to complete homologation requirements in time for Phillip Island) to compete in the remaining races. It also takes some pressure off Erik Buell, who (even with Hero’s financial help) may have been hard-pressed to produce 1,000 bikes this year.

When Dorna took over SBK, there were many who thought they’d basically kill off the series, to reduce competition for MotoGP. But now, I wonder: Does Dorna imagine a future in which the major manufacturers—Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki & Ducati, certainly; possibly Kawasaki, BMW—compete in MotoGP while SBK’s field is skewed towards smaller, niche manufacturers like Aprilia, Bimota and Buell?

Two series set up like that would segment the market of potential participants, and might not cannibalize each other quite so much.

That said, another outcome could be that the lower production requirements could actually encourage big manufacturers to produce more ‘homologation specials’. Sportbike riders who remember the heady days of the RC30, Yamaha OWO1, or later the ZX7RR wouldn't mind...

Beware of geeks bearing gifts, Part τρία

I’ve written about the risks that Google Glass present to motorcyclists here, and recently on MotorcycleUSA.com, here. I thought people would find that column pretty boring, but it picked up an above-average 400+ ‘likes’, so maybe I’m not the only guy worried about the road safety implications.

Google founder Sergei Brin recently got married. He posed for wedding photos while wearing Google glasses. Proof, if nothing else, that money can't buy taste.

Notwithstanding the fact that the first such distracted driving case was just thrown out of court in San Diego county, at least eight U.S. states are considering legislation that would make it illegal for glassholes to drive.

Now a Reuters report out of San Francisco (I noticed it on Canada’s Globe and Mail web site) tells us that Google’s actively lobbying at least three of those states—Illinois, Delaware, and Missouri—not to restrict distracted driving by glassholes.

The details of Google’s lobbying program are incredibly infuriating, and prove just how disingenuous the company is, as well as how willing they are to pro-actively increase the danger to all American road users.

Google’s making three arguments: The first is, they’re citing the San Diego case as evidence that the courts have already shown that they are disinclined to regulate Google Glass. 

That’s not true: The San Diego case was thrown out because one judge decided that he couldn’t determine whether or not the glasshole’s device was on or not. The defendant actually only claimed it was in ‘sleep’ mode, and an alert prosecutor might have changed the outcome of the case by pointing out that all it takes to wake the device up is a tilt of the user’s head. I.E., you could wake the device up while driving without even wanting to. Even if the device is off, I have an issue with drivers intentionally blocking that much peripheral vision. Right side shoulder checks? Not so much.

I think the whole, but-it-was-off argument is analogous to some Montana cowboy driving with a couple of beers in his system, and an open beer in his hand. OK, he’s not over 0.08% blood alcohol, but who really thinks that should be legal?

The second argument Google makes with its lobbying is, it’s too early to restrict use. Since there are only a few thousand devices in circulation, they can’t possibly constitute a threat worth regulating.

Those fuckers. So, we should wait until there are millions of them in use, and all those glassholes are writing enraged letters to their legislators? Maybe we should let the liquor industry, and especially heavy drinkers, rewrite our DUI laws, too.

Last but not least, Google’s coyly bleating that “[Google Glass] is not meant to distract but rather connect people more with the world around them.”

BULL FUCKING SHIT!  If drivers want to "connect" with the road and drivers around them, they’ll take the glasses off. Wearing the glasses connects them with distant and virtual parts of the world. That’s the DEFINITION of distraction. They'll connect alright; by physically smashing into pieces of the world, along with cars, motorcycles, bicycles and people.

According to Reuters, Google says that tech issues [read: attracting tech investment] are a big part of current policy discussions in the states. “We think it is important to be part of those discussions.”

Translation: Us and Apple have, basically, about half the money in the U.S. If you want us to invest in your state, keep your lawmakers away from our products.

I was wrong. #XGIceRace maybe #IsHappening

I stand corrected.

There really were only a couple of hundred tweets in the Twitter search response, when I searched the #XGIceRace hashtag.

But, Paul James corrected me, pointing out:

#XGIceRace generated more than 6,000 tweet and retweets. And after tallying media coverage from the weekend's activities in Aspen, more than 400 media outlets (mostly mainstream) covered the H-D X Games Ice Racing stunt and Street 500/750 introduction news, for a total of 34.2 million media impressions. Good result for H-D, good for the racers, good for the sport. We view it as a success. See, we can be creative…

I still wonder, though, whether ESPN was really excited. I scoured the X-Games own website and found nothing connected to the ice race. If they thought it was more than a marketing tie-in, wouldn't it be mentioned?

Harley-Davidson was onto a good thing, conceptually, introducing a model at an X-Games demonstration event. It was a rare moment when, looking at a marketing effort from the motorcycle industry I found myself thinking, "I wish I'd thought of that."

I was a little underwhelmed by the promotional video they released to the moto-media...



...but the way they'd set up their promotion, it didn't matter what I thought. What mattered were how many people Tweeted their approval of the ice racing show. Presumably, there was some threshold response that would've made ESPN consider including ice-racing as a medal event in coming years.

But using Twitter's search function for #XGIceRace (which was promoted on air, as well as heavily touted on motorcycle web sites, and by Harley itself) turns up only a couple of hundred mentions in the week following the event. I doubt if that's enough Twitter traffic to impress the X-Games, which has something like half a million followers.

Part of the wan response can be put down to the fact that H-D's existing fan base is lukewarm to the new water-cooled 500/750cc models. When it was over, there was no mention of ice-racing anywhere (that I could find) on the X-Games own website; no photos or video. Nada.

There's a ton of great ice racing, on MX-based bikes here in North America, where races are held on outdoor ovals, and indoor short tracks (in hockey arenas). There are also a few epic races held on long "road courses" plowed out of frozen lakes. Check out this helicopter view of the famous "Numb Bum" course in Alberta...

  

...it's literally and figuratively cool, eh? At the end of the day, the question is, "Should there be ice-racing at the X-Games?" The answer to that is yes, but sorry Harley, it should be this kind:
 

You gotta' love a race bike carrying so much lean angle that the left handlebar has to be cut way down to prevent it catching on the racing surface.

A riff on moving pictures

A couple of weeks back, I got an email out of the blue from Courtney Olive, who was a guy I interviewed years ago for a story on the 555 rides (Google it.) Courtney'd scored an interview with Lotfy Nathan, the director of "12 O'Clock Boys".

If you've been living in a cave for the last few months, that's a documentary film about a group of young black guys who gather to ride MX bikes in central Baltimore, contravening just about every imaginable traffic law. Their actions fly in the face of common sense (and, they occasionally fly face-first into immovable objects) but hey, who's judging?

Well, actually, lots of people. The film's a SXSW Film Festival selection. If you're an indy film geek, you know that's a. huge. deal. Especially for a guy who was essentially a novice film-maker. I haven't seen all the recent moto-docs out there, but I don't have to watch them to be virtually certain they're not Southwest-worthy. Getting noticed by the SXSW judges is about the equivalent of qualifying for an FIM 'Superlicense' to race in MotoGP.

Anyway, the reason Courtney contacted me was, he was hoping to place his story at Cycle World, and he wanted an email contact for an editor. I gave him one, but was careful to warn him not to say that he knew me when he queried them. I had a hunch his story would be good.

He wrote me a while later to say that Cycle World had turned down his article, on the grounds that, basically "it's not an image of motorcycles we want to promote". I hooked him up with Motorcycle-USA.com, which did run the story and I feel better about that anyway.

Motorcycle doc news has been in my inbox lately. Two films--'Why We Ride' and 'Road Warriors: The Bleeding Edge of Motorcycle Racing'--just shared the AMA's Hazel Kolb 'Brighter Image' award. I guess there was no chance '12 O'Clock Boys' was going to get a brighter image award, but I am still trying to process Cycle World deciding to pass on what (I was right) turned out to be an insightful piece of writing about the movie.

I'm probably not going to make myself popular by saying this, but Why We Ride and Road Warriors are destined for obscurity; meanwhile, as Courtney told me, 12 O'Clock Boys "is a film for the ages." Cycle World's editor's didn't get something that Courtney grokked right away: image-conscious motorcyclists may hate the behavior in 12, but the things those guys get out of motorcycling are very closely related to the things we get out of it.

2.
It seems as if everyone's making motorcycle "films" these days. My co-religionist Stephen Pate's taken it upon himself to call out the most egregious examples of this hipster phenomenon.

On the face of it, Stephen and I are both throwing stones from the front yards of our glass houses; I'm involved to one degree or another in no less than three motorcycle films that are in various states of development (or should I say, three circles of development hell?) And, Stephen's shifting emphasis from pure, high-level restoration work to a media-centric business model that I'll probably write more about soon.

I think I can speak for him though, in that what drives us around the bend is the way most of these guys seem to have settled on motorcycles because they make good subject matter. I'd like them a lot more if I thought they really loved bikes and riding, and after years of just living the life, felt that they had unique insights of their own to add to the canon.

3.
Go-Pro is everywhere. Now, the camera that's ubiquitous wherever motorcycle riders gather is also attempting to become a media channel. I couldn't believe it when I saw that Marc Marquez had what seemed to be his own personal Go-Pro camera on the top of his helmet at the Superprestigio. I mean seriously... if there's anyone who doesn't need to record his own motorcycle adventures, it's him. His every move is already documented.

A long time ago, in a land far away I lived and worked in a beautiful National Park in the Canadian Rockies. All summer long, busloads of Japanese tourists would arrive at some incredibly scenic jumping-off point along the highway; they'd all troop off the bus, stand in front of some mountain vista, and take turns photographing each other, with their backs to the landscape. When they were done, they'd get back on the bus and drive to the next spot.

Ironically, a lot of those photo locations were trailheads, from which hikers or climbers or horsepacking trips (yes, children, there was a time before mountain bikes) set off to actually experience the landscape. But those tourists had their backs to it; the only time they saw it was in the background of photos they were framing in their friends' cameras.

"OK, got it. Here's your camera back, and here's mine; take a shot for me too, please."

Everyone who lived and worked in the parks was bugged by that phenomenon, although we knew that those people were paying our bills.

I may just be an angry old man. But most people who record every lap of their track day, or won't even go for a street ride without recording it, are so obsessed with documenting their ride that they're not really experiencing it first hand.