Further proof that the old days of Speedvision, where you could catch all kinds of racing action on Speedvision 24/7 is long gone. Speed it appears is set to start showing “other” sporting programs including and possibly major league baseball. Now I love baseball, but I don’t want to see it on Speed. I want to see racing.

The downfall began in 2001 when Fox Sports bought Speed and made it the 24 hour Nascar network. Over the years though they’ve introduced reality shows such as Past Time and Pinks moving further and further away from pure racing. Ok, yes those shows have racing and are car related but I think you get what I’m saying.

Now the Wall Street Journal says that Fox plans to expand Speed’s coverage to baseball and other sports. This is because Fox Sports just signed a big eight year deal with the MLB which in order to be profitable for them will mean having to spread baseball across more networks.

The moral of the story here is when a nice niche company like Speedvision gets bought out by a giant mega corporation the product will always get worse and likely cease to exist in the future. This happened to MTV, ESPN, Speed, every radio station ever, etc. Competition is good, and centralized ownership is bad. Always. It’s why Teddy Roosevelt did a lot of trust busting, because he knew that Speed would get bought out….. ok I’m probably getting pretty out there. Still it’s a shame. Speedvision was a great bastion for us race fans and in recent years it tried to return to it’s roots and show less Nascar and more racing. However it looks like the move away from racing is coming sooner then later. Let’s hope some start up network can come in and take over where Speed will leave off.

Source: Wall Street Journal