By Sean Mortimer

In the past, there were a few unconventional attempts to showcase skateboarding on television, but all failed on a commercial level. Hot Shots was a 1979 documentary showcasing rollerskating, BMX, and skateboarding featuring a soundtrack of hillbilly music played on the wrong speed. The Ray Allen Show introduced shredding to viewers during the early 80s and Don Hoffman was a familiar sight at mid-80s NSA contests—armed with a stick mic and a camera marginally smaller than a Honda Civic. Though they tried, all were doomed to public-access purgatory.

Most skateboarding TV programs served as rudimentary devices explaining this strange world. Even when Stacy Peralta teamed up with Nickelodeon in 1990 for SK8 TV, the result was failure.

It wasn’t until the turn of the century that skateboard TV shows were twisted into a successful format that satisfied both skaters and suits. MTV’s Jackass (2000–2002) was the first popular TV series featuring skateboarding. Interestingly enough, it bucked the trend by avoiding the actual act of skateboarding, mining the culture for content instead. Skateboarding’s immature black humor hit a pitch-perfect note with nonskaters. By then the malls were littered with skate gear, both authentic and knock-off, and it was well-known that it was the look of a skater, more so than the act of skateboarding, that kids wanted. After all, what good are hacked-up shins if you can’t show them off? Skaters don’t wear shorts.

Bam Margera was the personification of mainstream exposure’s strength within the skate industry. Shortly after premiering his Jackass spin-off, Viva La Bam, (2003–2005) he had the best-selling board in the industry and propelled the heartogram into a worldwide fashion accessory. “Bam was the best-selling board by far, during the year or two after the shoe premiered,” says Kelly Jablonski, general manager of Ultimate Skateboards. The tradition continues with Life Of Ryan and Rob And Big currently crowding MTV airwaves, fine-tuning the formula that Jackass and Bam concocted. There’s even Fuel TV, a channel wholly dedicated to action sports. Skate TV shows are providing mainstream advertisers with backdoor access to the most cherished and fickle demographic—the teens to twenties—but not all skaters are digging it.

Dorking And Drama
Six months before the debut of his show, Rob Dyrdek told Alien Workshop owner Chris Carter about his plans. “I was happy for Rob,” Carter says, “but I wondered how he was going to make this show something people would want to tune in to week after week. He had a lot of ideas and this rapport with Big Black, and it worked out. It’s a really entertaining and funny show. They work really hard at it—they don’t just turn on the camera and let it roll. I think they have a good understanding of what people will or won’t like.”

Carter said Rob wanted to make sure that “pro skating” was properly portrayed. “He told me he’d try to have as much skateboarding on the show as possible,” Carter says. “They did an episode at Tampa Pro, which was really a great thing for skateboarding. It exposed the whole Skatepark of Tampa contest to a huge audience. Rob wanted to show that he was a skateboarder and he does a lot of skateboarding, which is good. He sits in on the editing on every episode. He’s an integral part of the final product.”

Before Dyrdek’s show premiered, a top pro asked if I’d seen the show, clearly concerned. Carter, with his decades of industry experience, was also aware of skaters’ deep distrust of the mainstream media. The 80s was sprinkled with exploitation skate films, often featuring the top pros.

“They [skaters] hold skateboarding very close to their chest,” Carter says. “It’s a passion, it’s their thing, and they don’t want someone else packaging it and presenting it in a way that’s wrong and cheesy. Skateboarders in general start with the negative and then you have a chance to get even or positive, so that’s where they started and then most people ended up liking the show.”

Some skaters don’t share the same appreciation for MTV’s other successful show, Life Of Ryan, which draws mucho ratings and mucho flack. Dyrdek’s show follows a zany skaters-are-wacky formula similar to Viva La Bam, whereas Ryan is more of a personal drama that Mediaweek refers to as a “scripted/reality hybrid.” Exposing a skater’s personal life is what standard viewers crave, and Ryan scored MTV’s highest ratings for a 2007 premiere according to the Hollywood Reporter. But the ingredients that make Ryan popular with the masses seem to be exactly what irritate some skaters—the emphasis on Sheckler’s emotional turmoil over finding the perfect girlfriend with his misunderstood “skater” reputation. This translates as an ultra-wealthy, successful pro skater whining through his own TV series.

And highlighting Sheckler’s wish of total dominance over the Dew Tour doesn’t endear him to hardcore skaters. The power of Ryan’s backlash is unprecedented. Major skate mags’ articles are peppered with snide comments about the show. “It’s definitely created more awareness of Ryan to the masses,” etnies Marketing Director Don Brown says. “And it’s definitely created some controversy within the core as far as being able to peek into Ryan’s life.”

But even before the MTV show, Brown recognized that Ryan was atypical and divided skaters. “He’s an anomaly. He doesn’t have the same life as the average skater,” Brown says. “I sponsored Sheckler when he was seven and I could see he was going to be an amazing skateboarder. He has parents who are very supportive and he comes from a wealthy background, so he’s always been different than the average skater. There’s always been a lot of jealousy out there from what Ryan has accomplished and what he’s received from it.

“It’s definitely created an increase in sales for Ryan’s signature etnies shoes,” Brown continues, “and it has created an awareness for all of Ryan’s sponsors’ products in general. It’s great for the core retailers because Ryan’s reached out a lot wider and is driving kids to skate shops to buy product. It’s healthy and good for skate shops as they need as much support as possible.”
“I was optimistic that the  show [Rob And Big] would expose Alien Workshop to millions of people who have never heard of it,” Carter says.

“I was optimistic—it certainly couldn’t hurt. Depending on how much exposure the brand would receive, we wondered if it would drive people to skate shops, which is generally where our products are sold. Right after the first show aired there was a sharp increase in Rob’s decks. It was twofold at first and then it became more like fivefold.”

“It [the show] created a market for Big Black,” Carter says. “It shows the power of that exposure to the mainstream. I was very surprised at how popular he had become when I went to stores and saw the product line of Big Black stuff.”

Traditional videos promote a brand’s product to skaters, but skate TV shows create a celebrity that attracts a different segment of the population. Dyrdek did a Go Skateboarding Day signing, and Carter watched as the autograph line snaked out the skatepark and took three hours to finish. There were freshies and heshies “and a lot of girls standing in that line,” Carter says. “But it was interesting—there were very few people who weren’t associated with skateboarding who came to see him. They all had kids who skated or were skaters and we thought that was cool. We were relieved to see that.”

The crowd scene at the recent Goofy Vs Regular contest, a core skate contest with the dirtbag flavor of yesteryear, was a telling scene for the power of Sheckler’s popularity. Crowds of teenage girls screamed like middle-aged women at a Tom Jones concert. It was clear that these girls cared little for skating and all about Sheckler, a celebrity regardless of his skateboard talent.

“You could see the masses of people there to see Ryan rather than to see skateboarding,” Brown says. “It’s at the same level as with Bam and the whole Rob And Big deal. Skateboarding comes from that raw, core foundation, and when people burst out of that bubble, it gives people a reason to dislike that person. I know it’s not the world that we came from. We came from when skateboarding wasn’t about money or being on a podium, but it’s changed over the past ten, twenty years and we can’t ignore evolution.”

Filling The Tank

Fuel TV, which takes the middle path by mixing skate culture with skate action, was initially greeted by the industry with what one could call “extreme wariness.”

“At the beginning, I think everybody was cautious,” Shon Tomlin, Fuel’s vice president of programming and development, says. “Some people wrote it off and others gave it a try. As it slowly rolled out, people saw what it was about and more and more started to embrace it.”

Fuel built an interesting bridge between traditional skate videos and mainstream TV shows. It lacks the gloss and budgets of MTV’s shows, but that’s not a bad thing. “They’ve done a really good job of taking action sports as a whole and communicating that to the masses,” Brown says. “But Fuel TV is not the station that core riders are going to watch 24/7. I never sit down and say I’m going to watch it, but I will have Fuel on in the background and check out something that catches my interest.”

One show that catches Brown’s interest—and a lot of other skaters—is the irreverent Captain And Casey talk show. “I love the Captain And Casey show,” Brown says. “They’re a bunch of nutcases drinking beer all day in coffee cups and just having fun. That’s what skateboarding is all about: having fun and goofing around and making fun of yourself, making fun of everybody around you.”

“Both Chris Casey and Jeff Carlson—the Captain—come from skateboarding,” Tomlin says. “They have so much to do with calling the shots.

I’m very hands-off in regards to telling them what to do. It feels like something any skater who had a little bit of money and friends could pull off.”

Fuel also provides another distribution tier for skateboard videos. Most skate videos have a pathetically short shelf-life, but Fuel reruns them and uses their edited content in various programs, exposing authentic skate content to people who wouldn’t watch a straight skate video. “Most of the skate content on the channel is made by people who skate,” Tomlin says, “so it’s hard to argue with it when it’s coming from people within the community.”

MTV, obviously slicker and reaching more people, is about generating profits rather than fostering a long-term relationship with skateboarding. “Our audience traffics in the latest trends and culture,” Brian Graden, president of entertainment at MTV Networks Music Group said to ImOnMTV.com. “For MTV, the only thing that is dangerous is playing it safe. We have a much younger audience and are always trying to find the next wave to surf, more so than other channels.”

MTV’s massive exposure can ignite massive sales increases, but it’s usually limited to younger skaters. I asked Carter who he thought was responsible for Dyrdek’s sales increase. “People who watch the show,” he says, “probably the younger buyer, sixteen and under.”

Fuel is trying to stretch that demographic and create a longer-lasting impact. Brands naturally want customers for life, not just a few seasons. Tomlin says most viewers watching the skate programs are probably around twelve to 24. “But there’s a whole group of viewers in their thirties and forties who still skate or have kids who skate and are interested in seeing the Vans Pro Tec Pool Party. We try to cover all aspects.”

And that wider coverage seems to be authenticating Fuel to the industry. “The most dramatic change in the last year has been advertising from the endemic community,” Tomlin says. Element, Flip, Globe, and Volcom have all bought time on Fuel. “A lot of great brands have gotten involved. It’s been cool to see companies create their own commercials. And they’ve been coming back—they aren’t just testing it out.”

The access skating provides to the teenage demographic is rare, and while skate TV is still in its infancy, it will continue to grow as long as mainstream advertisers have that entry.

But it’s still limited entry within the industry. While talking to Brown, I mentioned that mainstream TV still doesn’t know how to handle skateboarding. They amputate and prune important cultural characteristics to make it fit into their box. Brown agrees: “But the shows are intriguing to people because skateboarding is against the grain—it’s a whole other world that they don’t understand. Skateboarding is constantly evolving and elusive and exclusive to the point where you can never really ‘catch it.’ As soon as people do catch up with it then we’re in trouble. It’s up to us as an industry to keep moving and not get caught and not let people emulate who we are and make sure that we’re being ourselves.”

Tags: captain and casey show, fuel tv, Jackass, life of ryan, mtv, rob and big, rob dyrdek, ryan sheckler

This entry was posted on Friday, February 1st, 2008 at 7:41 pm and is filed under FEATURES. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.