I interviewed Jason Britton, host of Speed TV’s Super Bikes!, yesterday. Here are some highlights relating to his new show, for what it’s worth.
Tyler Olsen: When do you start shooting the next season of Super Bikes?
Jason Britton: We are currently shooting our new show for Speed called Stealth Rider and they’re basically producing a stunt film in the most iconic locations in the U.S. So anywhere from shooting stunt demos in front of the Whitehouse, the Capitol Building to shutting down the Las Vegas Strip and doing stunt shows in San Francisco in front of the Golden Gate Bridge. Every location in the U.S. that’s an iconic desirable location we’re bringing stunt shows to.
TO: How long does shooting go.
JB: We’re shooting 13 episodes for this show.
TO: So it’s a whole new series.
JB: Yeah.
TO: Some stunt movies are produced on a hairstring budget. This sounds like it has some financial clout behind it.
JB: Yeah, Speed Channel is behind the show 100 per cent so we got the budget and we’re going through the proper channels, shutting everything down as if it was a feature film, which they’re trying to decide at this point if they’re going to show it in select theatres after the 13th episode or they’re going to have a one-hour episode on the network or how they’re going to do it.
TO: Is that part of the Super Bikes! thing or is it branded differently?
JB: It’s going to be in the Super Bikes! time slot and they’re still going to continue to air Super Bikes!, the reruns, until they figure out where they’re going to go from this season.
It’s similar in a way. We’re doing stunt shows, we’re travelling around the country but this is more focused on location, location, location. We’re not going to a stunt show to do our show at an event or an event we created, we are bringing motorcycles to a general population, people that don’t know anything about motorcycles, people who are travelling to these destinations as a tourist attraction. We’re putting motorcycles right in the middle of that.
TO: You are the event, essentially.
JB: Yeah, we’re bringing a new demographic to motorcycling because our viewers are generally people that are enthusiasts and are into motorcycles whether its stunt racing, road racing, drag racing, whatever it may be. Of course there’s going to be some people who are into bikes and have seen the show – we’ve run into that quite frequently – but for the most part, when we were in Vegas we had probably 3,000 people on the strip that were in awe of what was going on and out of those 3,000 people there were maybe 10 per cent that were enthusiasts. The other 90 per cent hadn’t seen anything like that.
TO: As somebody who has championed the sport, how exciting is that to get new people showing interest in it?
JB: Oh, it’s incredible. I mean, we’re pioneering motorcycling period, let alone motorcycle stunts and bringing that appeal to a brand new demographic. We’re putting the interest in people’s lap who never saw motorcycles in this light. They saw the guy on the bike and said, oh that guy’s going to kill himself or that guy’s crazy or whatever. You know, we put it in front of them in a way they’ve never seen it and we’re getting a great response and it’s a great feeling to open people’s eyes and some of the emails I’ve gotten, some people who have come out while we were filming took the time to look into things a little bit and find my website and get my email and email me about what they witnessed and how it drew them to look further into motorcycling and how they could go about getting their first bike and things like that.
Other highlights:
Best place to ride: Hawaii, from which he just came and where it was 80 degrees.
Worst injury: A tie between a broken back and broken neck
Favourite trick: Headstands, because it’s high risk
Workout regiment: Four times a week; rides a road bike 30 miles per day, four days a week.
Check the Province’s Driving section for what he says about Canadian riders. Jason, who seemed like quite a good guy from our interview, will be at the Vancouver Motorcycle Show January 21 to 24 at TRADEX in Abbotsford.
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