|
Q: John, it's been 25 years since MotorWeek started.
A: Amazing isn't it? At the start, I thought that if we made it a couple of years it would be amazing and if we went five years it would be an eternity. To actually have lasted 25 years on national television, you know, it's not just a milestone. It's really a credit to all and the enormous work that everybody's put into the show for so many years and to our faithful audience who just sticks with us year in, year out.
Q: Why do you think they stick with you?
A: Well, they tell us that they really trust us, and I think that's about the highest
praise anybody can give you in the media or in any form of life today. They listen to us, they want our opinions. They value our opinions. I think a lot of our viewers use our opinions and then look at other sources, which is exactly what we tell them to do, not to just rely on one source. When we say something somebody else doesn't, they're all over us. You know, 'what's wrong with us or did we make a mistake?' So they keep us very honest and we get a lot of feedback. When we make mistakes, we say 'yeah, we've made a mistake' and I think they like that, too. But I think it's the quality of the information. We work very, very hard. Our motto used to be, and really still is, we're the last word on the automotive world. We really do try to be very precise and cover the subject matter very thoroughly. And, frankly, that thoroughness is rather unusual for television or any electronic media.
Q: You don't see it elsewhere?
A: You still see it in print, but not as much as you use to. But I don't think you see that much thoroughness on television. I remember one of the very earliest TV critics who gave us a review, it was a very good review in TV Guide as a matter of fact, and it said that we were a very dense program, and that didn't mean stupid. What they were saying was we used a lot of words for a TV show. We really believe in the written word. We think the pictures are great. That is what television does best, moving pictures. But without the proper words to go with it, the pictures can be rather superficial. And we don't just give you a few words to describe a picture. We give a lot. Our average road test has about 750 to 800 words in it in a five-minute piece. That's a lot of words.
Q: That sounds more like a magazine than TV sound bites.
A: And that's exactly what we are. We are an automotive magazine for television, and I don't just mean we're in sections. I mean our job is to be an adjunct, if you will, to the major print magazines. We travel in the same circles. We are considered a long-lead press, so we're looking at vehicles 60 to 90 days or longer before they reach the showrooms. And we want to have our show with the road test of that vehicle on at approximately the same time as the magazines feature it. I'm talking about the major car enthusiast magazines, like Car and Driver, Road & Track, Motor Trend, Automobile and AutoWeek, which all have their vehicle road tests. People can relate what they are reading to all of the pictures we have just shown them, and we find a lot of people do just that. So we see the print magazines as our competitors, but, first and foremost, as our companions in informing consumers.
Q: So how does MotorWeek fit in with other automotive television?
A: Well, the one thing that separates us from other automotive television, I guess there's probably more than one thing, is that we are a television show first, last and only. There are magazines that have television series. Often the TV show is sort of secondary to the print publication, and that's natural because printing is their main business. We have no print arm. We don't have anything to fall back on. We can't refer you necessarily to a longer article, so what you see on MotorWeek is all of us 100 percent. Because we grew up in Maryland at a facility that has reasonable costs, and we have great employees, plus we have the public television broadcasting system which gets us virtually everywhere, we have the luxury of being able to do more shows in a year than most of the other competitors can.
Now, there are a lot of other car shows. Some of them are infomercials that basically just show you products they want you to buy. Some of them are the new genre reality shows and they're in their shop and customizing cars and so forth, and they basically are very, very entertaining. I think we try and strike a balance between being informative and entertaining. We're not purely either one, but because of that we end up giving you much more useful information about new cars, which is really our genre. Beyond that, though, we do make sure, because we are a "magazine" style program with multiple parts, of giving even the viewer that's not necessarily interested in a new car right now something to hang their hat on. Maybe it's some advice from Pat Goss. Maybe it's an interesting look at how an automotive charity organization is run with Anqoinette Crosby. Maybe it's just something fun with cars, like what Henry Kopacz does, or motorcycles, like Dave Durso produces. We really do strive to make sure that if you don't like one segment, stick with us for about four minutes and we'll have a segment that you will like. And because of that, as our audience has told us over the years, we are a destination program. They look for us, they try to be home when we're on or, in this day and age, they try to make sure the TiVo catches us. And I don't care how you catch us as long as you catch us.
Q: So what is the legacy that MotorWeek is leaving to television, to this whole genre?
A: I think we brought the joys of motoring to television. Before MotorWeek came along, automobiles were treated by television as pretty much a negative issue. You only basically ever saw them when there was a bad news story about recalls or pollution. The American love affair with the automobile really didn't exist on TV before MotorWeek. There was a little bit of TV road testing going on, but not very much, and most of what you saw was quick and superficial. Or, you saw cars only as props or parts of travelogues. What we basically did was say, look, you know, automobiles are the second biggest purchase you make. Enjoy it! We want to make sure you know everything about them, not just how to buy them, but also how to maintain them. If you're not happy with a car, it can make you absolutely miserable. So we strove from the very beginning to be a helping hand. We recognize that cars aren't quite as important to people as say their homes, but they're right up there. And I think our legacy is that we help people get along better with their cars and maybe make a few more wiser decisions than they might have without us.
Q: It sounds like you deeply care about the viewer experience.
A: Well, the viewer is everything. I mean if the viewer doesn't come first, you've got no purpose being in front of a camera. If the viewer doesn't get it, then why bother? They don't all love us, but we do try to give most of them a reason to keep on watching. The viewers are everything, and I'm amazed that some people in television forget that. To us the viewer will always come first. If they've got an issue with a program, we want to hear it, and if we agree, we'll do something about it. If we don't, we'd like to argue our case. But the viewer is absolutely where everything begins and ends. If we don't think something is going to really work, we don't do it. We don't make the mistake of programming what we like. We program what's new and what we think the viewer will watch. We really do value their opinion enormously. Good or bad.
Q: And as the creator of the show, what was your personal inspiration?
A: I was a car fanatic from the earliest days that I can remember. You know, I was the kid who was out trying to drive his father's car up and down the street long before I legally could do so. I couldn't touch the pedals, but that didn't stop me. I have an engineering degree, so I was a bit of a gearhead. I tore cars apart and put them back together because that was the only way I could afford to keep one running when I was in college. And here I was a television producer at Maryland Public Television working on Wall $treet Week with Louis Rukeyser, and I had a chance to do a new show. I said we've got all these great car magazines, why hasn't anybody taken the automotive print magazine and brought it to television? The concept was to do something a little bit broader than the major car magazines. They often get called enthusiast magazines because they're looking at the hardcore automotive consumer, the men and women who just eat, sleep and drink cars. And I said, well, I don't want to be quite that narrow. We want to sort of be a bit like, oh, Car and Driver with a measure of Popular Mechanics and Popular Science thrown in. So we got Pat Goss to come in and talk about how to repair cars, and in those days we had Craig Singhaus to do basic personality pieces, people and their cars, car events, the features that Henry Kopacz does for MotorWeek today. And then we later added the FYI segments, which get into just about anything that consumers will find interesting and valuable to know about cars, from charities to auto auctions to how to buy or lease, you name it. Those are segments that Lisa Barrow did for over a decade and Anqoinette Crosby does now. So we wanted to have a market basket of subjects. However, the anchor for the show, the beginning and the end, are the new car road tests. We drive and test more than 150 cars a year. It's our stock and trade. And to this day it's what I think most people still watch us for.
Q: So you started the genre, and other cable shows have come and gone.
A: Yes. There have been a number of cable shows. There hasn't been another broadcast series. Most of the cable shows have come and gone. A few of them are still around. And of course the genre of the reality automotive shows, that's pretty new. I can honestly say I think we set the stage for them with segments that Henry and Craig Singhaus would do, because sometimes they would tend to be little goofy, which is what we wanted, and that's kind of what those are only more so. But, yeah, we showed people that you could shoot cars for television, that you could do it in a timely way, that people like seeing cars move on TV, and that you could have fun with them. And I will take some credit for helping start that.
Q: John, you've got so much enthusiasm for MotorWeek. It's apparent as you talk. What keeps you motivated? What keeps driving you to do this series?
A: The industry does. I'll never forget what a very good friend and fine producer here at Maryland Public Television asked me once, "How do you do the same show week in and week out, 52 weeks a year, year after year?" And I said, "Because every week it's different." And it is. The cars are different. The subjects and people are different. Oh yeah, you can put the segments in pigeonholes. But it is still fresh all the time, because the cars and technology evolve so quickly, there's so much competition, there's always a surprise and delight. And just like consumers get surprised and delighted, so do we. Pat Goss, nobody reads about car care more than he does, and, as our chief technician, he's always got something interesting and new to say. So not only do we want the viewer to come away and say, "Wow, I didn't know that," the staff also comes away saying "Wow, I didn't know that either," after some of the pieces we do. So I think we're constantly learning and it's always exciting and there's always something new. I mean a new car comes out every week. So there isn't time to get complacent or bored. You can get bored with the schedules, but we never get bored with the subject matter.
Q: So when did you realize MotorWeek would be a hit with your viewers?
A: You know, that's a real good question. I think we were probably on the air a couple of years. I'd say about the time we got to season three I realized that we might be on to something here. Because in those days most mail was basically of course hard copy, and we were getting 500 and 600 letters a week and that was an amazing amount. And people would write us from not only all over the country, but we'd get the prison letters and those watching us on Armed Forces Television, which always are very interesting. We found that the soldiers would write us from overseas because we gave them a link to home.
Q: Do they still?
A: Oh, yes indeed. But now it's email. We still give them a slice of home. It is amazing how many soldiers, the first thing they'd do after they'd get home is to buy a new car. They used us as one of their information sources. So I think around the third season we realized MotorWeek wasn't just a flash in the pan. And then as we passed each milestone, five years, 10 years, 15, 20 and now 25. I'd say around 20 is when I realized that this thing might actually have staying power beyond me.
Q: John, talk about the people behind the scenes. How much work does it actually take to do a show?
A: Weekly television, and I mean every week, because every show we do is new to a large degree - the amount of manpower and womanpower that it takes to generate that much TV is astounding. I often refer to weekly television as a big black hole, because no matter how much we put into it, we could always put in more. But two very talented writers, Dave Durso and Jessica Choksey, basically are writing scripts from the moment they come in on Monday until the moment they leave on Friday. I'm editing scripts often late into the evening and on weekends trying to keep up. In addition to that, we have other producers who are out doing segments. Of course we have Henry and Anqoinette. Dave Durso finds time to do his motorcycle segments. It takes about, if I had to say how many people times 40 hours a week, I would say it probably takes about 400 hours for every half hour, 500 hours of actual work on a time clock for every half hour that you see. And that sounds like an enormous amount, but that's about what it takes. It takes a good full five days with a good staff of about 17 people working to produce a half hour show, and we do it 52 weeks a year.
Q: And what does it mean to have two producers hitting the ground every day?
A: Brian Roberts and Dave Scrivener are really outstanding. I said that viewers are everything to the show, but the show really is the people you see on the credits. It's not the video, it's not the cameras. It's the people who are there making it happen, because if they didn't believe as strongly as I do in the project, MotorWeek wouldn't be as good as it is. This program never was a one-man band, and it now would be impossible for it to be. I will admit that I have the passion that got it going and I gave it direction, but believe me if there ever was an ensemble cast that's responsible for a television show's success, it's this one. It took me probably ten years to figure out how to delegate authority, and I think I'm probably being kind to myself, but the project kept growing. MotorWeek kept getting more complicated. We wanted to do more, and do more and more stuff in unusual places. We aren't just shooting in the back lot here at MPT. We're traveling all over the world constantly. Every month we've probably got at least one crew overseas if not two. So after a while you start thinking, you know, you can't do this alone, and we basically have the responsibilities in the office divided between Dave, who handles all the special projects and also handles a lot of the creative input behind the show, and Brian, who makes sure that everything works on a day-to-day basis. Brian is in charge of putting the show together every week and he's our main liaison with the manufacturers, making sure that the cars arrive when they're supposed to. So between the two of them and me, we pretty much are able to stay on schedule. I must say it is a constant challenge and we beat ourselves up if something slips through our fingers. It is an enormous task to keep this program up and running day in and day out.
Q: John, who has inspired you along the way?
A: There have been a lot of people, people on the business side, and first of all in the automotive media business. While we share a last name, there is no relation, but David E. Davis, the longtime editor of Car and Driver and Automobile magazine, was a true inspiration. David E., I remember reading him long before I got a chance to do MotorWeek, and his ability to make cars both fun and informative in print inspired me a lot. And I have had numerous times to meet him in person, a very interesting gentleman. I'm an old TV baby. I grew up in the '50s and '60s with television, so I loved watching great communicators like Edward R. Murrow with such a relaxed style. I'm from North Carolina. I used to work at the radio station in Chapel Hill, where Charles Kuralt started his career, and when I got to college, Kuralt was already a star at CBS News and he was the idol that everybody in radio in that part of North Carolina looked up to. And again, an easygoing communicator who managed to tell stories that were interesting and informative. And then, I have to say in combination with that, in the early months, was Entertainment Tonight. We started about the same time and as far as one program that influenced my thoughts on how to put together MotorWeek, that was it. I looked at it and said 'that's the fastest half-hour on television and I want to be like that.'
Q: John, one of your producers always tells people that when he grows up he'll get a real job. I wonder if you have a saying like that.
A: Oh yeah, and I don't want a real job! I know too many people with real jobs. People write and say you must have the best job in the world, and I always pause because it's easy to dwell on the paperwork and the personnel issues and all the stuff that you really have to put up with when you're in any kind of an employee-employer situation. But when you look at what we get to do, we get to test all of the newest vehicles. We're living every kid's dream, and it is one of the best jobs in the world. And sometimes we have to knock ourselves in the head and remind ourselves that if we didn't do this, we could be stuck in a cubicle, without a window, and never go anywhere and drive our own car every day, and do the kind of jobs that most people are quite happy doing. So we're extraordinarily fortunate.
Q: When you think about the many poignant moments of MotorWeek over the years, what stands out in your mind?
A: When you do a weekly show, it all goes by so fast it's very difficult to dwell on what you did because you're always worried about the next program. I will say the most poignant moment was when we finished show 101, because we had done a pilot for the show a year before, in 1980. We had a chance to show it to public television executives. And I'll never forget, it was the first showing at a PBS meeting, and one of the programmers came up and said, "John, for a television host, you're a very good producer." Because what he was saying was I was as stiff as a board. Even though I had done TV in college, it had been awhile. And I had been a producer at Maryland Public Television for quite a few years at that point, about five years. So the show sat on the shelf until we heard that a competing station was going to do a car program. We dusted it off, got it on the air in, let's see, in less than three months, and I was just as stiff as I was in the pilot. I was so glad when that first show was over and that really was a very scary moment, I think, either when the show was over or when it went out on the satellite and we knew it was gone for good. Another poignant moment I guess was at the 10-year anniversary when we looked back and said, 'Wow! This has been an amazing run.' And I can tell you another poignant moment is going to be come October of 2005 when we really do cross that threshold into our 25th year.
Q: Any memorable moments from the early road tests?
A: Oh, lots. I mean we had no money and we had marginal cooperation from some car companies. The Detroit car companies were great. They were willing to take a chance on us, and that was saying something because frankly they were getting beat up in the press in those days in the late '70s and early '80s. And we also had an easy time getting cars from high-end brands like Mercedes-Benz and Jaguar, but we couldn't get a Toyota, we couldn't get a Honda, to save our life. It was very difficult, so it was very frustrating. We went around those manufactures and borrowed cars from local dealers or distributors or rented them. And we tested our cars at an active airport, and the airport had a stretch of asphalt where we could run our slalom and our accelerations. The only problem was at the end of this piece of asphalt was a river, and on either side were city buses that had been taken out of service and were being stored. We had this relatively narrow lane, so when you're doing your slalom and your acceleration, if for some reason the brakes fail, you're going to get wet. And there was always the chance that you could meet up with a derelict bus. I remember that we had a choice of either running that way towards the river or turning around and running the other way. In that case, we'd be running into a hangar with jet fuel tanks sitting over on one side. Of course the viewer never saw any of this and we were always very, very careful. I have to say safety has always been paramount.
Q: What's been your favorite car to review over the last 25 years?
A: Oh, man, that's so difficult, but I'll have to say it's actually got to be one that we just did, and that was the new Ford GT, which is the modern reincarnation of the GT40 race car that Ford won Le Mans in back in the '60s. It's an incredible car. It's a car that I grew up lusting after. A friend of mine's father owned a Ford dealership in my hometown of Durham, North Carolina, and his brother had one of the street legal racecars, and I'd drive behind him going to school in the morning just, you know, fogging up the windshield. And so that car, and its recent reincarnation, I think has to be my favorite cars out of all the ones we've tested in almost 25 years.
Q: Any unusual ones?
A: Oh, yes. I mean we've had so many, we've had a lot of cars that have come and gone. I mean things from the Subaru Brat to the 2CV, the little Citroen that's been around since just after World War II. We've had, of course, every production car you can imagine. We've had a lot of exotics. The Bitter - Bitter - was a low-volume German car made, gosh, I guess back in the '80s. That was a pretty exciting piece of work. We've had a lot of Ferraris and Lamborghinis. There have been just an awful lot. It's pretty difficult to put your finger on any one or two that really were remarkable, because every week there was something else that was interesting.
Q: If I ask you about the sweetest ride, does anything come to mind?
A: The sweetest ride was the first time I ever got to drive the original Mazda Miata back in 1989, and I loved it so much that I bought one and owned one for 14 years.
Q: John, how about milestone vehicles from the past 25 years and how they've changed the car market?
A: Oh, yeah. I think it's interesting, a lot of it was Lee Iacocca's work, the original Chrysler minivan in the early '80s. That vehicle changed the whole concept of not just vans and people movers, but trucks. About the same time, American Motors Jeep Division cranked out the first compact 4-door SUV, the Jeep Cherokee. In those days they had two models, the Cherokee and the Wagoneer. They ushered in the entire world of SUVs as we know them today. I think during that period, those are two vehicles that, and of course mention that the minivan was front-wheel drive, those two vehicles probably had more to do with ushering in a wholesale change in the American automotive market than anything else. We already had some Hondas and Toyotas, but these were vehicles that actually were new concepts. I think the original Ford Taurus was a very important car. I'm trying to think. Oh, the first Toyota RAV4, that was the first time anybody had taken a car-like structure, a unibody car-like structure and made it into a truck, a small SUV, a super-compact little SUV, and that was a milestone vehicle. Another, and this also is a Toyota product, was the first Lexus RX 300, which I think showed people that you could take a car chassis and not just make any old SUV, but a premium SUV. I may have to come back to this, the cars. But obviously, believe it or not, a car that I thought was extremely important was the Chevy Citation. It was not a great car, but it was General Motors' pioneering front-wheel-drive sedan for the America, and it sort of paved the way for all the front-wheel-drive domestic cars that came later. Of course they were following the Japanese at that point, but it was a momentous car. But there have also been lots and lots of others.
Q: Reporting from the forefront of automotive technology, what new developments are exciting you the most?
A: I think we've turned a page on automotive electronics. We've gone from them being invasive and taking some of the fun out of driving to where they're going to help you in your driving experience, but not destroy it. You know, initially we had things like anti-lock brakes and stability systems and all kinds of electronic doodads that sort of took a lot of the control of the car away from the driver. Now they've been massaged so they're there to help you out of a sticky situation, but not basically interfere with what joy of driving there is left. On the entertainment aspect, we're seeing it's much easier to use stereos, navigation systems, all that stuff that was gee-whiz a couple of years ago but frankly caused so much distraction you thought it was unsafe to use them. And now they're starting to massage the systems in ways that can make your trip easier and your life more pleasant, but not take your eyes off the road. So we're turning from being caught up with all of the technology and just finding it fascinating to figuring out how to make it work the best with human beings. That interaction of man, machine and technology was actually something that I specialized in when I was in college. I spent a lot of time working on ergonomics, you know, how machines and people fit together, how the instrument panels were laid out and how things worked. So that area has always fascinated me on how we work with machines, not so much how the machine works for us or we command it, but how we work together. And I think that's becoming more important in how cars are designed.
Q: What else do you see as you look ahead to the auto industry?
A: I see us continuing to morph into one type of vehicle. I don't know whether it's going to be a minivan-like SUV or what it's going to be, but you know the walls between cars and trucks are down. They're not falling. They're already down. Almost all of the new sport-utility vehicles are actually based on, not cars, but trucks. They're technically still trucks but they're based on chassis from cars so they drive like a car. And, no longer is it good enough to have a five-passenger capacity. You've got to be able to carry seven. And pickup trucks now have four doors and can seat people in normal seats in the back. No more little jump seats on most of them. So it does seem to me that we're trying to morph cars and trucks into one or two all-purpose, all-around utility vehicles that, by the way, also may have sport suspensions so they handle like a sports car. And even when you look at something like a sporty coupe, you know, the seats fold down and it has rear-access doors. It may have height-adjustable suspension so you can drive it not so much off road, but on unimproved roads. I do think that one day we're going to wake up and there's going to be one type of vehicle and it will be a jack of all trades, or at most two or three. So I see a lot more of this morphing going on, combining types. Crossovers is the generic term for it, but we haven't seen anything yet.
Q: Do you think people would stand for less variety versus more variety?
A: I think they might stand for less variety and types, but they won't stand for less variety in brands or choices of where you can get it. And of course each brand will have its own take on it. I mean you pretty much don't have station wagons per se, but you now have sport-utility vehicles with all-wheel drive that basically are the modern station wagon but nobody will call them that. So, technically, while we may head towards fewer vehicle types, with so many more brands we'll actually have a much bigger variety than ever before.
Q: So the automotive technology is evolving and innovating constantly. What about the TV technology? What do you see in the future?
A: Well, we're obviously going there full-speed ahead. This year is a big year for us in that this will be our first year where we're actually producing and sending the program out in widescreen 16 by 9 format. And it was a very tough decision for us because most people will be watching on a TV where they will get a band at the top and bottom. That's known as the letterbox. But the 16 by 9 ratio will allow us to show more of the car and have less dead space. We made the decision by saying, you know, cars fit this wide screen. They look better when they're moving, they look better when they're standing still, so we're going to go that route so again we can show more car in a better light every week. Beyond that, you have things like high definition, which is going to cause an entirely different way of shooting because the pictures are so much clearer. You have to actually be much better at shooting them. You can't afford for the focus to be off even the slightest bit, so I think it's going to get even harder to do the program in the future than it has been in the past. But that too is part of what keeps us going. It keeps the videographers going because they have new things to try. The show has a totally different look after you do all this stuff, so that's exciting. It's not just the products that change every week, but every few years the technology changes and that causes you to step back and reevaluate and sometimes start almost all over again in whatever you're doing.
Q: And what will high definition mean to the viewer?
A: Well, that's a very good question, and I think that it will probably make them feel like they're more one with the picture, that the picture is more real than it's ever been before. I'm not so sure we can show that many more details. There's only so many, you know, there's only so many small things you can show on television, but it certainly can heighten the experience of whatever they're watching. In our case, we want people to feel like they're getting behind the wheel with us. We want them to feel that when we go inside a car to show them how the seats operate that they can almost feel like they're sitting in the seat, and I think high definition television is going to enhance that experience.
Q: So looking back, how has the production technique evolved?
A: Oh, well, in the early days, first of all the cameras were heavier and we always had to have a technician with us, so you had bigger crews. I mean most of our shoots now are two people where it used to be four and five. You had to make sure every shot was within standards. Now the cameras are very automatic. But I think the biggest thing that has changed is how many shots we use for a test. In the earliest days, because of the complexity of the equipment and it was more cumbersome, a five-minute road test had about 16 or 18 shots in it. Now, and this has actually been true for quite some time, we may have 40 or 50 shots in that same period. The audience is used to very fast-paced television, you know, things like MTV and ESPN and so forth where they never dwell on a picture for more than a couple of seconds. We've obviously adapted. We've got lighter equipment. You can work faster with it. We gave our talented editors much more to work with and all of their equipment is now highly computerized. You can show more details than you ever could before. So we've gotten far, far faster and shoot far, far more shots to get people more information than we ever did before. In the early days, we'd show you one wide picture and we'd talk about five things. Now we'll talk about ten things in that same spot and show you a picture for each one of them.
Q: Thinking about production and content, how do you see the show evolving over the next 25 years?
A: We've always had a philosophy that the cars are the stars. The focus remains that frankly we're there to show you what's going on in the automotive world and don't get too hung up on the people that you see. And it also is an excuse of how we got around my being so stiff in the early going. But, we are not blind to what's going on in our genre. A lot more of the shows are very, very, very entertaining. They get their audiences very much involved with the subject matter, and I think we have to be cognizant of that and look for ways that keep our credibility, keep all the information, but make sure that the audience feels that they're interacting with us even more than before. And so I think that's a real challenge to not lose focus of what you really feel like the audience is watching you for but to basically change and stay up with the times. We constantly watch, not just other car shows, but just television in general, because we want, like everybody, a younger audience. We have a fairly young audience, one of the youngest on public television. I want to keep that. In order to keep that, I've got to make sure that the program evolves with the other shows they watch as well. The fact that they can sit and home and still watch a 50-some-year-old man and not turn it off is amazing. I appreciate that fact and I consider that a great compliment. But, we are constantly looking at other programs to stay fresh and keep going.
Q: How about the Internet? How has the Internet changed the show? How has it changed the car buying process?
A: Oh, it's changed everything. It's changed how we write, because now instead of having 50 press kits sitting on your desk, you may have one, but when you're doing comparisons to other vehicles, you just go to the web sites that have the information and you pull it all down. Of course auto buying, 85 to 90 percent of the people, so polls say, look at an Internet site before they go buy a car, so people are much better informed. They hear us, they go check our website and other sites. We noticed that our web site use goes way up right after the weekend shows and people looking to go back to the road tests that we already have up there. So they can say, 'I thought I heard that on MotorWeek, I want to make sure it's there,' and then of course they can use our site or other sites to link to just about anywhere they want to go. It has made the consumer much smarter. It has made our job easier in that at the end of the show they can check on what we said easier. They don't have to wait for a transcript anymore or a videotape. And it's made the writing much richer because we can find, do research on details much quicker. So it's changed everything. I mean in the old days, if you went home at 5:00, you went home at 5:00. Now most of us go home and work another few hours and we're checking our e-mail, we're checking the sites, we're getting a note back from somebody at a car company we had a question for. So it's made work longer, but it's made the product much richer and the car buying experience much easier.
Q: And how do people see video clips?
A: Well, we're very excited that we've started a new venture in conjunction with cars.com where they will be hosting our MotorWeek road tests on the cars.com site. With more high-speed computer connections nationwide, the time is right to partner with a cutting-edge and very popular web site like cars.com to archive our road tests. We believe the demand will be high, because these road tests are often the first video road tests available anywhere. This is going to allow viewers to watch the show and then very quickly thereafter be able to access that road test and not only hear or read what we say, but be able to see it. So we think this is a milestone and a fitting one for our 25th anniversary.
Q: John, how has the American driver changed in 25 years?
A: The American driver has become faster and less attentive. Ten miles above the speed limit is normal and often it's 15 or 20. We've forgotten most of the rules of the road. Virtually no one knows how to use turn signals anymore. There's much more discourteousness I think on the road, maybe not because people have changed their attitudes, but everybody is just in a much bigger hurry. So I believe that driving has become much more serious. I won't say more dangerous, but you certainly have to keep your wits about you when you're driving. And with things like cell phones and eating in the cars and things that we all do every day, plus all of the trials we're trying to think about from, you know, problems at home, problems at work, we're all so distracted that you really have to be even more of a defensive driver than ever before. The good part is that the cars are much safer. They can handle an emergency steering input much better than cars even 10 years ago. So while speeds are up and all that, the cars themselves are there to protect you more. But I definitely think we've seen a deterioration in driving habits in this country. I don't believe personally that our driving tests are anywhere near strict enough, but that's the way it is and it's probably not going to change. So just drive carefully and watch out for the other guy. The same old time-honored advice, but I think it's more important than ever.
Q: Looking back for a second, what has it meant to you to work with the many MotorWeek reporters over the years?
A: Enlightening. You always like working with intelligent people who may see things differently than you do. I mean that's the joy of life is finding new ideas or that, you know, I didn't think about it that way, I didn't see it that way. Gee, that's really fascinating. Once the producers and talent have had their basic idea for a subject signed off on, they're given a lot of freedom of creativity to go out and produce and come back with a really solid segment that will be fun to watch. And we don't watch over their shoulders very much. It's kind of up to them to give the audience something the audience really wants to see. And most of the time they're amazingly successful and I end up being just as excited about watching a piece as somebody at home is. And so I want to see the reporters essentially teach me something new or make me laugh or just make me have a good time, make me enjoy watching MotorWeek.
Q: So looking far, far into the future when the history books are written about the genre of automotive TV, what do you hope they'll say about MotorWeek?
A: I hope they say that we were the first ones to really do the exciting world of automobiles justice on television, that we were the first ones on TV that were really able to embrace the American love affair with the car, week in and week out, 52 weeks a year. I hope they had fun watching us. I hope they learned something. But I hope they also realize that it was a labor of love for us. And I'm extremely proud of the fact that we were able to create something that wasn't there before and that so many other people appreciated. I mean nothing, you know, you love pats on the back, but we have so many people who write us and say 'I've watched you since I was a kid. I've watched you week in and week out. I grew up with my father watching you.' And it's all terrific. It just makes us feel great. I have to tell you even though we are a program that most people think is very male-oriented, the biggest compliments we've ever gotten are when the ratings come back and show that about 40 percent of our audience is female. We don't talk down to anybody. We also don't assume that you're a gearhead or that you've got all this car knowledge. We try and lay things out in a manner that everybody can understand. We also think that a lot of people who think they know a lot about cars probably don't. But generally speaking, the fact that we appeal to a wide audience, that's what I'm really trying to say, means that we've accomplished our goal, and the ratings tell us that that's what's going on. But I hope that history is kind and says we created something unique, we put cars on TV like no one had done before, and the world's, the consumer's a little better off for having that done.
Q: What do you want to say to MotorWeek fans?
A: Thank you. Just thank you for being there. Thank you for searching the schedules to find out when we're on. Thanks for being tolerant when the local stations have to preempt us so that they can do their fundraising because they've got to stay on the air too so that they can keep us on the air. Thanks for constantly coming back. Thanks for the letters and the emails. Thanks for letting us know what you think about us, even if it wasn't positive. Thanks for being great viewers and people who appreciate the fact that we're there for you. So, a simple thank you is the best thing I can think of to say.
Thank you, John, for your passion and 25 years, and thanks to the entire production staff and on-air talent, and all who have worked on MotorWeek over the years!
|
