Chris Harris on Cars: So Many Mixed Feelings

"this is not matt farah's foxbodymiata" (fantastic-mr-foxbody)
01/13/2015 at 12:30 • Filed to: CHOC

I really want to dislike him and his channel. Unlike, apparently, 98% of the commentariat I really wanted /DRIVE+ to succeed. The dozen or so guys that make up /DRIVE have spent years putting out high quality, high budget (for the internet) no nonsense car videos for the small percentage of the general population that actually care about this stuff.

When I stumbled on the channel I was truly amazed at the quality of both the production and the presenting. I especially loved the range, from basic car reviews to expositions of interesting private builds to great-hair hosted 30 minute total nerd-outs.

So when I heard that the channel had lost it's Google funding and was asking for 4 dollars a month to keep things going, that seemed more than fair to me. Based on the amount of time I spent watching and re-watching their content it seemed crazy not to cough up the price of a gallon of 91 octane (this was back in the dark days of like 3 months ago) for the privilege.

Nothing in this world is free, and lets face it... theres not a lot of viral possibility in high nerd-content car videos. The majority of the world could not give a single flying fuck. Hence asking for little money from the smaller audience is the best option.

This brings me to Mr. Harris. Those of you who listened to the now deleted Chris Harris The Deserter episode of the Smoking Tire Podcast or read bits of the reddit thread that Mr. Farrah participated in know where this is going. Let me fill the rest of you in, as best as I remember.

If any of this is in any way incorrect or incomplete, please let me know (and Chris, I know you right for the front page... so if you're reading this please feel free to share your side of the story). The whole point of this is for me to make up my mind about how I feel about the whole situation.

Anyway, here are a few things you need to know (according to the folks at the Smoking Tire, mostly Matt Farrah)...

1. Mr. Harris was one of the main people within the /DRIVE network pushing for the subscription method.

2. When the giant comment section shit storm about /DRIVE+ started picking up speed, Mr. Harris used his Piston Heads pulpit to defend and promote his unconnected /DRIVE venture.

3. Up until Mr. Harris left, /DRIVE+ had been doing quite well, and was ahead of projections in terms of subscriptions and revenue.

4. Mr. Harris announced his sudden and unexplained departure on twitter having given his colleagues at /DRIVE no prior notice at all.

5. Mr. Harris is now running a free channel using the same name as his /DRIVE show, videos shot while under the /DRIVE roof (and questionably under a /DRIVE budget), and even the drive branding in the opening sequence of each video.

All of this seems pretty sleazy, childish and disrespectful to me. I could be wrong, but it smells like Chris Harris's ego or wallet were hurt by the large drop in views caused by the launch of the paywall, and he wanted out. I would have a lot more respect for him if he had waited it out a bit to see where things would stabilize.

Now wait, you're thinking, all of this seems to favor the Chris Harris is kind of a dick side of things. Where are the mixed feelings?

Don't worry, all will become clear at the other side of the rest of these gifs of a WRC Homologated 997 GT3 rally car being hooned by, yes, a one Mr. Chris Harris.

Ok. Enjoyed that? Got a clean pair of trousers on?

I think my point is pretty clear. While I'm kinda disgusted with the way it seems Mr. Harris treated the rest of the /DRIVE crew (again, this is all third hand information, which I probably mis-remember). On the other hand, even before he left the content had become a little weird, and much less frequent on the other side of the paywall. I had already unsubscribed. So maybe he just sensed it was all going down hill, saw all the comments begging for a CHoC solo channel, and jumped ship.

Still kind of despicable, but maybe Mr. Harris is just a baddass cut throat business man, and 'Murica loves that. Even in an Englishman.

Most importantly though, I fucking love the videos he puts out. He's a pretty good driver, Neal his camera man/editor is great at his job, Harris shows a lot of passion for everything he says and drives, and he also runs a pretty damn good interview.

So is it bad that I keep coming back and supporting him with views?

Go watch this, his latest video, and tell if I'm wrong. (Yes, yes I see the irony).

*If the gif's aren't loading, it's probably because I'm too lazy to make them efficient, and they're kinda enormous. It might also just be kinja though.

DISCUSSION (10)

Sir_Stig: and toxic masculinity ruins the party again. > this is not matt farah's foxbodymiata
01/13/2015 at 12:38

I'm kinda in the same boat, although to be fair CHoC led me to find out about TST, so arguably they came away with a bigger fanbase, as Chris being part of /Drive was a sort of confirmation of quality.

I do think it was a bit of a dick move to leave without letting the others know, but hopefully /Drive+ goes well. I think I will subscribe and binge watch all the stuff I have missed pretty soon...

Mustafaluigi > this is not matt farah's foxbodymiata
01/13/2015 at 12:40

I honestly never noticed the Drive branding at the beginning of his videos. If he truly is separated from the Drive channel then he needs to at the least, remove the Drive branding.

stuttgartobsessed > this is not matt farah's foxbodymiata
01/13/2015 at 12:43

I didn't know about this. I would have loved to hear that podcast from TST, but I only started listening last week. I totally think it was a confirmation of quality for Chris Harris to get on board with /Drive, and I love the content that was being put out be everyone at /Drive. I was one of the people that was angry that they started charging, and are now seemingly re-releasing old content (possibly for NBCSN (is /Drive still on TV?)) but I had no idea about loosing Google funding. That changes my perspective a bunch.

Anyway, I'm still going to watch Chris' videos because they are amazing and I love how he talks about what he's driving (definitely the accent). I hope he's not as much of a dick as this makes him out to be.

BeaterGT > this is not matt farah's foxbodymiata
01/13/2015 at 12:43

I only watched /Drive for the CHoC content so I guess this doesn't really apply to me. You never want to see business dealings gone sour but I suppose that's just the way it is sometimes.

Sir_Stig: and toxic masculinity ruins the party again. > Mustafaluigi
01/13/2015 at 12:43

He still shows up as a producer in some /Tuned videos (the 510 one for sure) and I think he still co-owns drive, so he must have retained some usage rights when he decided to fly solo.

deekster_caddy > this is not matt farah's foxbodymiata
01/13/2015 at 12:45

I listened to those smoking tire podcasts about what you discuss, and the ones about how getting paid by Youtube/Google sucks badly. It's certainly an odd way to leave a whole bunch of people in the lurch, and burn your bridges.

Regarding the /drive + model and paywall, I'm not down for it. Run some ads, put them inline with your content, use something besides Youtube to distribute. Even make your own media station since it's all digital content anyway, and you get paid directly from the advertisers instead of waiting for Google/Youtube. I don't mind watching the ads if I know that's how you are getting paid for your time. But it's very, very hard to push a casual watcher like me over the paywall. I don't watch enough video to justify a regular pay model, and I'm going to lean towards the free/ad supported viewing before I pay for any content, with very few exceptions.

I use Netflix for the shows I want to watch ad-free. I don't mind waiting for last season's shows or slightly older movies, because I don't have time or money to go to a movie theatre, and I got sick of paying for a cable TV package for one channel. My kids have no idea what they are missing, and the selection on Netflix is good enough.

Decay buys too many beaters > this is not matt farah's foxbodymiata
01/13/2015 at 12:46

I only ever watched /Drive for Harris (and maybe the occasional Drive Clean), so when they went to a pay model I didn't follow (and I didn't want to support the slippery slope I see coming from paid subscription based youtube channels). In any case, I'm glad I can watch his stuff again.

Bob Loblaw Made Me Make a Phoney Phone Call to Edward Rooney > this is not matt farah's foxbodymiata
01/13/2015 at 12:48

The manner in which he bolted from /Drive may have been suspect, but I can't blame him at all for branching back out on his own. I don't think many would disagree if I suggested that he was carrying the network, and I would be very surprised if the viewership numbers didn't support that. There just wasn't (isn't) a lot of other worthwhile content coming out of /Drive aside from Harris' segments and the little bits he did with Buxton for NBCSN.

There just didn't seem to me to be much reason for Harris to be on /Drive. He does his own production with Neil Carey, he's more than capable of doing his own distribution, and the move to the paywall seemed to be a move that everyone begrudgingly accepted as necessary.

Instead, he now continues to do his own production and generate plenty of traffic and viewership, continues to do his own distribution, and instead of a paywall has a voluntary payment system set up where viewers can contribute what, if anything, they feel his work is worth.

He might have left in a dickish fashion, but I have to wonder if all of this hadn't been brewing for a while within him and the timing just happened to be less than ideal with the /Drive+ situation, but even if it wasn't I struggle to fault him. I'd rather give him money directly to continue doing his segments than to pay /Drive money to dilute it out to other channels that I quite honestly hated.

Brian Silvestro > this is not matt farah's foxbodymiata
01/13/2015 at 12:52

It's just him and some guy named Neil that shoots and edits the videos, you know. That's how it's always been. They've been completely separated from /Drive ever since Chris left.

The little /Chris Harris on Cars intro animation started with his videos, I think.

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > this is not matt farah's foxbodymiata
01/13/2015 at 18:01

Chris is still a partial owner of /DRIVE, isn't he? Maybe he was just one of the founding contributors, but his bio is still on their website... http://slashdrive.tv/bios

While is sounds like it wasn't handled as well as it could have been, I think that the issues they had with international viewers probably figured a lot in his decision. I remember reading that many outside of the US had problems getting past the paywall (they didn't even have the option, maybe).

Anyway, I hope both Chris and /DRIVE continue to put out great content, and patch up any broken relationships in the near future.