tlc ends the grotesque run of occ – sort of

In 2010, February 11th came four days after Cincinnati’s V-Twin Expo and fell on the eve of Dealernews Dealer Expo. It’s appropriate that we remember the airing on that date of The Learning Channel’s final episode of American Chopper, a Frankenstein-esque money-maker for cable “reality” whose success in years to come will be impossible to explain.

In 2002, only eight years earlier, the clan from Orange County, New York wheeled a trailer load of rollers and a few customer bikes into Indy and onto a 40×40 island off the main floor of a then still growing Dealer Expo. My recollection, from an advertising perspective, was of feeling faintly woozy at the woefully amateurish marketing, even by powersports’ minimal standards, of a nondescript collection of clones. Continue reading →