Roadkill is officially dead. Cohost Mike Finnegan shared that news over the weekend, but at the time, we didn’t have a lot of details other than the fact that the production company was shutting down, and there would be no more episodes of Roadkill once the 13th season aired. I tried reaching out to both Finnegan and David Freiburger for a comment, but odds are, they simply received too many requests and couldn’t handle them all. That said, we now have something even better than a short email — a 30-minute video of Freiburger telling the Roadkill story from his perspective.
The video starts by confirming that not only is Roadkill dead, but so are the rest of his shows. That sucks for Finnegan and Freiburger but also for everyone who worked on those shows. The video below may have just been shot on a phone in a garage, but there’s an entire team behind each of the shows that have been canceled. Having worked for MotorTrend previously, I can also confirm that the producers, editors and videographers all do so much more behind the scenes, and while you’ve probably never seen one of my video reviews, I promise the final product was so much better than the quality of the raw footage I turned in, it was hard to believe the former came from the latter.
If you saw the news and were worried MotorTrend and Hot Rod would be closing down completely, you can relax. At least temporarily. Video is run as a separate business, and the magazines should still be fine. You won’t find a lot of details on why the folks at the top made the decision to cancel so many popular shows, so you’ll probably be disappointed if you watch the video looking for juicy gossip. Instead, think of it as more of a reflection on what Roadkill meant to him and why he loved making it so much. It isn’t exactly short, but if you were ever a fan, it’s definitely worth your time.
As far as future plans go, it sounds like Freiburger will be sticking to YouTube for now. In fact, almost all of the hosts of the canceled shows have their own channels, and I strongly encourage you to follow them. Heck, even if you’ve never been a fan of anything they’ve done in the past, at least check them out. Independent channels need our help, especially since it’s no longer the early days when YouTube was willing to throw a ton of money around in an attempt to compete with television.
