via youtube.com
FastLaneDaily on youtube has become one of the great rough diamonds for cars enthousiasts on the web. They are also on fastlanedaily.com, but I guess most people watch them over youtube with about 15,000 to 25,000 viewers per show. Remember, it's a daily web show where some episodes attract more than 50,000 viewers over time. Even for YouTube standards, that's really good.FastLaneDaily, or FLD for the fans, is a bit of a raw and acquired taste. When you first watch the show, your likely reaction is: WTF. But then more and more viewers get it. It is great entertainment, politically incorrect, often over the top and awkward. But that's the charm of that "unpretentious" show. FLD wraps up some good info in a couple of minutes and always with a twist. And most importantly they interact with the viewers, they try new things.
Then, over the holidays and new year, some business changes took place. FLD moved locations and for 2 weeks they angered their viewers by replacing the loved and hated Derek D by a voice-over clip which used the same manufacturer car teasers as all the other boring voice-over car shows...
And people voted the new format down. There wasn't one FLD "voice-over" show which got more than 2 stars on youtube, most viewers just rated it "one star", some said they just gave a better rating to encourage the team to return to the previous format. To get less than 2 stars by by thousands of regular viewers is a punishment. It is not a statistical blip but a clear message. The new format just didn't work, whether it was intended to be permanent change or just a filler until things have settled down after the business and location changes - it doesn't matter. The guys behind the show now learned, if you want to produce another format, please do so, create a new show, but don't change the great interactive, lively format of FLD.
Yes, you can become better pros, improve things, try new stuff, but don't turn into a show like all the others... especially when your format is becoming the source of inspiration for a few others: Oncars.com which is ok, maybe a bit too slick, and drivingsports which is presented by 2 guys who seem to work with less funding than FLD, therefore they might lack producers/directors, but they improving. The FLD format is reasonably cheap to produce, you can set your tone, engage viewers and make infotainment which all combined has a great commercial potential. TopGear is great, the industry stardom is overshadowing everything else on normal TV. But therefore TopGear leaves a lot of room for different shows. And nobody could ever make a daily or weekly TG. Only bottom up interaction shows like FLD and it's off-springs have a chance to really make a splash.
So FLD, you (have) become the benchmark for a daily format, your siblings and off-springs make the hot even spicier. Let TopGear provide a few highlights per year we all can talk about. That's a good future, best of luck. And thank you for bringing back Derek D, I really didn't know that I would miss this guy so much - until those 2 weeks :-)
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