When a president of a company public says they "screwed up", it shows both the power and size of the motorcycling community. This is on the home page of the Speed Channel...
AMA Supersport Race Should Have Continued As Planned
By: SPEED Staff
Charlotte, NC, May 6
Aaron Yates won the AMA Supersport race at Sears Point yesterday (Photo: Brian J. Nelson)
When the live AMA Supersport race was interrupted yesterday after only three laps in order to show the Winston Cup Wrap Up show from the Pontiac Excitement 400 at Richmond the motorcycle fans that faithfully support and watch SPEED Channel were understandably annoyed, and rightly so. This event had been promoted heavily as a "live" event both on-air and online and was part of a complete package of world class motorcycle programming scheduled for the day including two-hours of same-day MotoGP coverage from Jerez, Spain and two hours of live AMA coverage from Sears Point. That was the plan and a good one it was.
Now to motorcycle fans it may not look like, it but there is in fact both good news and bad news in the way things transpired. The bad news is obvious; the motorcycle audience was robbed of LIVE coverage from a great race. The good news is that now that this scenario has played itself out it should never happen again.
"LIVE programming is not supposed to be interrupted," SPEED Channel President Jim Liberatore said simply. "It just shouldn't have happened but because of the rainout at Richmond we were put in a position we hadn't anticipated and we made a bad choice. I hope the coverage Speed supplies week in and week out for motorcycle enthusiasts would support the fact that in this instance, we simply screwed up."
That pretty much sums it up. There was no conscious effort by SPEED Channel to deny motorcycle fans the live coverage of the Supersport race from Sears Point in favor of NASCAR programming.