skate tv ?

[sk8norcal]

article from slap....

Slap Magazine - Skate TV?

By Mark Whiteley • Photos by Lance Dawes, Anthony Acosta, and Ryan Gee

We've all heard it before: Skateboarding used to be a secret society of sorts; a collection of misfits doing something the rest of society didn’t like or understand. Well, those days are long gone, and for better or worse, the whole world knows about skateboarding now. Why? Television. Between the X-Games and MTV, every man, woman, and child with access to a TV knows what a grind is. With that wide-spread exposure comes both the potential and reality of change to traditional skateboard culture, and that change has a lot of people talking and typing lately.

Skating has had its brief flings with mainstream recognition before—we were on the cover of Life in the ’60s, on “Wide World Of Sports” in the ’70s, and in commercials and movies in the ’80s, but the last dozen years or so have planted skateboarding firmly in the consciousness of the population at large. Most grown adults have seen Tony Hawk blast an air on ESPN, and most young adults saw Bam Margera assault family, friends, and himself on his MTV show and movie series, Jackass. Then, in the last few years, the recognition factor by the average kid exploded: Rob Dyrdek’s “Rob and Big” show and Ryan Sheckler’s “Life Of Ryan” show have taken it to a new level, with both shows’ ratings amongst MTV’s most popular of all time. Why the sudden buzz around skateboarding from the outside world? Are the shows as popular as they are simply because of skateboarding itself?

When it comes to skateboarding itself, the guys starring in the shows have all been very talented skaters, without exception: Rob has been pro for one of the most respected companies in skateboarding for nearly 20 years, Bam earned his stripes over many years of quality skating before he got his Jackass fame, and while Ryan certainly has his detractors, he is a very talented skateboarder. There’s no denying that. If you disagree, take it up with Danny Way. In the case of Bam and Rob, the premises of their shows even arose from “core” skate videos: Bam’s first glimpse of Jackassery came via Toy Machine’s Jump Off A Building, and Rob’s first outing with Big Black came via The DC Video. But again, is skateboarding alone enough to captivate the minds of millions of viewers around
the world?

The answer is no. If it were, the short-lived “Skate TV” skate/talk show on Nickelodeon from the late ’80s could well have catapulted skateboarding into its current location in the psychological stratosphere of the world’s collective conscious. But it didn’t—watching skaters just skate and talk about skating apparently wasn’t exciting for most people. It took the spectacle of competition in the X-Games (which includes the perceived rivalries and point-scored actions that most people who watch “sports” need to have in order to appreciate what’s being done); the wild physical comedy of Jackass; a take on the classic odd-couple pairing of “Rob and Big” going about their day-to-day lives; and the drama of a young man dealing with competition, wealth, fame, and love on “The Life Of Ryan” to add up to something that could captivate the minds of people around the world. Basically, it took taking the general idea of skateboarding and skateboarders and shaping them into the forms of more established themes of televised entertainment—drama, comedy, competition—to make skateboarding as widely recognized as it has become.

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[Parallel Man]

Has Mark Whiteley never heard of Fuel TV?

Yes, it's SUPPOSED to be all "extreme" or "action" sports but in truth it's about 2% surfing, 5% BMX, 6% snowboarding and 87% skateboarding.

Every time I turn it on some guy is holding a hand cam following some other guy hopping, skipping and jumping from one curb to another concrete planter.