'Moto: Inside
the Outdoors,' lots of gas
Fuel TV series follows lives of motocross racers
By Tom Conroy
Feb 16, 2010
As coverage of the Olympics shows, TV producers often strain when trying to get viewers to care about unfamiliar sports. Try as they might, the biathlon is always going to get a smaller audience than figure skating.
It’s unclear whether Fuel TV’s new series “The Moto: Inside the Outdoors” is aimed at the huge part of the U.S. population that never watches coverage of motocross or is rather intended to please the sport’s many fans.
The footage of the races — in which packs of young men on lightweight motorcycles speed around curvy, hilly dirt tracks — is undeniably exciting, but there’s not a lot of it. The “inside” stuff, meant to give an insight into the riders’ lives and the workings of the competition, is probably too fundamental for fans and too sketchy for newcomers.
The show will likely divert viewers who stumble upon it while flipping channels, but not enough to make them seek it out next time.
A newcomer to the sport could actually finish the premiere episode, airing on Fuel on Wednesday, Feb. 17, at 8 p.m., without knowing what “the outdoors” means. (My guess, after a Google search, is that it refers to outdoor motocross racing, as opposed to supercross, which takes place in stadiums.) We also could have used a little more information on the various classes of racing — how does 250 differ from 450? — and how the racers are ranked.
Instead, we get a lot of hyped-up narration that will sound familiar to consumers of old-school sports coverage. All a racer needs to succeed, the narrator tells us, are “a reliable machine, a trusted mechanic, a solid piece of ground and an unwavering will to twist the throttle.”
Much of the exposition centers on various racers whose progress is presumably going to be followed throughout the season. Attentive viewers will get enough biographical information to pick favorites.
As in many solo sports, the lower-ranked participants still depend on their parents for support. One underdog, Justin Barcia, is shown outside the big truck that his mom drives from race to race.
The implied bad guys are the Alessi brothers, whose father, Tony, comes across as a bit of a stage mother.
Those up-close-and-personal segments provide sufficient rooting interest for the season’s first race. We won’t give away the ending, but as the narrator explains, “The die has been cast for a battle that will wage across the American outdoors.”
A little less of that hype and a little more plain exposition would have helped more of us understand why we might want to follow along.
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