Looks like the Channel 4 Car Website is now going the same way as the Car Forum and Driven. It has been declared uneconomically viable and will finish on December 31st. They blame lack of advertising revenue. It is a shame because I have found most of the news articles, at least, interesting and informative. Some of the videos and other articles did feel a bit like they were trying to be like Top Gear but they weren't over the top.
The forum closed about a year ago and although I'd stopped actively contributing to it (mainly due to a few idiots who moved in) it was nice to know it was there and I would still dip in from time to time. It's hard to believe that it must have been about 2002 or 2003 that I joined the forum in a bid to get Channel 4 to do something about the serious dumbing down of Driven. At the time, the producers were using similar arguments as today stating that they had to keep the show fresh to bring in advertising revenue. Unfortunately, their idea of fresh was to stick large pretend nappies onto Japanese cars and drive them at each other in a Sumo ring. Very infantile and very un-entertaining.
Top Gear have since proved that you can be absolutely stupid and extremely entertaining at the same time and long may that continue. I do, however, still want a sensible source of car news reviews and the like as well - remember William Woollard and Chris Goffey? That is why I liked Fifth Gear who did flirt with silliness for a while but always came back to good old-fashioned car reporting. It looks like that has now also gone to Car-Programme Heaven - maybe we need another series of Pulling Power?
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