I have been reading both Jon's and powerTV's links to the various discussions. I am on Jon's side for the most part, but here are my thoughts I'd like to add:

1) The magazines Primedia put out SUCK now. WAY too corporate across the board. Too much advertising and not enough "meat". For $4.00 for a few pages of nice pictures, and a couple of "tech" articles that I'll never be able to afford the products of, (I.E. advertising plugs) it's not worth the buy. Like everything else, They got too big for their britches, and lost touch with their focus audiences. Seems like it's become too many corporate non-car people involved with the advertising/publishing, producing something that is what they think "car people" want. I quit subscribing to them when the internet came along...no need to read them anymore. Just a recycle-able IMHO. Why pay for a bunch of ads, only to throw something out? In the hot-rodding world, word-of-mouth is still king. KING. DO YOU HEAR ME CAR-MAGAZINE PEOPLE? While I understand the advertising revenue pays the bills, the amount of plugs in an article kills it for me. Yeah, Edelbrock is great. Can I afford the $300+ carb that you said worked great in your dyno pull? Um, no. I'll buy one used from somewhere and rebuild it if it's so great. $300 bucks is three weeks of groceries spread out over 2 months for me. Oh, and you like those Flowmaster mufflers? You do a great tech article on how they beat out (hypothetically), Borla for 2 HP? Let me hear them in person with the exhaust tubing I am running on whatever POS I have at the moment... I'll decide for myself if I want them. A 30 sec. spam on "Horsepower TV", advertising them without a price won't make me go after them... (and to add to that, when I look to see what they are actually priced at, and my first thought is "hell no!" makes me want to vomit.) I don't make a move until I've asked someone else about something, and what their consensus is. $60-100 for A MUFFLER that can be made AT HOME is ridiculous. The ironic thing is, I used to like Flowmaster, when they were small. They went and got big, and over the years their prices increased...and the only thing to me and some friends is how their "sound" now only sounds 'right' on 5.0 Mustangs. My buddy with a '51 Chevy and a 350 agrees that they sound like a drag boat, and it doesn't fit his car...but they were "THE" muffler to go with when he got his exhaust done...

2) I watch "HOSEpower TV" on Spike occasionally, on the weekends. It's infotainment. Nothing else. More of a "I wish I had the money those companies want for their products" than anything else for me. If it's a giant marketing campaign, they sure as hell aren't making money off ME because I can't afford their stuff. 500 HP is great, but there is no way I can afford the $2500 supercharger they used to get to that. Who are these shows geared towards anyways? I am a single guy, no kids, etc....good job...I still wouldn't dream of blowing 2 paychecks on this!
I do, however choose to watch their show, in the hopes that I'll glean something I can use (for free) or just to vegetate and think about how I shouldn't be watching TV and I SHOULD be out in the garage working on my own stuff...

3) SEMA has become evil. They started out looking out for us 'car' guys, but like "big oil" have become entrenched with our so-called US government, and I don't trust them anymore. A lot like the outdated Unions that are destroying Michigan. Looking out for their own interests and hoping they come off as "good for the common man" as a guise. Big money is involved, and so is government...don't believe them. How can they be out for "us" if they are tied to government and they work with the government?

4) If you smell a rat, don't encourage them. Ignore it. They will go away-eventually. "powerTV" seems like a fluke, they will go away too. I never heard of them before this website, so, they certainly don't have any clout with me, and I probably can't afford what they are pushing or promoting anyways, so let the people with the money get screwed in the end...they always do...in fact, I would never buy from any website or person that promoted products on a post alone...if I need something, I ask people...period.

Spammers get NOWHERE with me...and I think most people recognize their tactics and are turned off by their techniques...

Those are my thoughts off the top of my head on this matter. I'm sure I'm not alone...and I DO have more pressing issues to worry about...

I'd also like to add that this whole "lets jump on the so-called RatRod bandwagon" is pissing more people off than it is promoting the hobby,IMHO...

Cheers-

Great post Mercman1951 .

Saw a good article on the front page of MustangBlog.com today about the PowerTV disaster:



Full article: PowerTV Exposed For What They Really Are, Spammers.

Looks like they're also a fan of lowROLLERchevy's "SpammerTV" graphic

haha, sweet

I would just like to let everyone know that SVTSnake.com has taken the proper measurements and has banned every Username associated with PowerTV. We had two active usernames: nmrajames and powermelissa. Believe it or not, I was not even aware of this until Hotrodders.com had contacted me through e-mail. I thought PowerTV was a legitimate company that wanted to sponsor my website. I have received at least 6 different emails from Jon Ngyun and Melissa Lawrence which looked like official email requests asking to advertise on our site. Never did I know they were actually spamming our site until I just checked our website history using their usernames right now. These actions are clearly unacceptable. We have kept the "spam threads" intact in order for Jon to have some live evidence.

Thanks Jon.

Kind regards,
Dominick V. Strippoli
Owner, SVTSnake.com
www.svtsnake.com

Thanks for checking in Dominick. Good to know that you guys have taken care of them on SVTSnake.com. Also, thanks for keeping those threads intact. We have a full cache of all the referenced threads, but it's good to know that they are still live.

More sites covering this:
MustangHeaven.com has exposed PowerTV:
http://www.mustangheaven.com/forums...read.php?t=2220

TractorSport.com (an interesting flowbench/dyno forum) has also posted about it:
http://www.tractorsport.com/cgi-bin...11&st=0#postid2

Finally, we made it onto JokeADay.com:
http://www.jokeaday.com/7wildlinks.shtml

Several new discussions on this today. Two public ones. The 2nd one is a boat forum -- looks like PowerTV was expanding.

http://www.motorcitymarauders.com/f...read.php?t=5331
http://forums.screamandfly.com/foru...ad.php?t=150010

One more today:

http://www.motownmuscle.com/forums/...ead.php?t=65593

And: http://www.rx7club.com/showthread.php?t=723915

Also, someone from Camaros.net pointed me to this discussion, where they called her out a while back: http://www.camaros.net/forums/showt...6611#post688267 .

Here's a good quote from a Camaros.net admin in that thread:


He really hit it on the head when he called their site an "infomercial repository".

QUOTE-

[Hi, guys! Let me know if there's a special place I can post video links or if there was something I worded wrong to come across as advertising.

Sorry! ]


Like she wasn't advertising, or getting paid for her "innocent" post.......scumbag!

Now you've gone too far dissing Billy. He's my hero!!

This truly is a sick, sick world....


In a while, Chet.

__________________
It's not what you take with you when you leave, it's what you leave behind you when you go.

Another public discussion about this: http://www.smallblockposse.com/ubb/...ic;f=9;t=001561

That's 45 sites discussing this publicly. Plus, I have a list of another 26 sites that are in private discussions about this (I can see the referrals in our traffic logs). For now, I've decided not to post the urls of members-only discussions on this.

Most of the parts manufacturers involved in this scam have been at a conference recently, the "MPMC" (Motorsports Parts Manufacturers Council) conference: http://www.sema.org/main/semaorghome.aspx?ID=50381 . Many of them assured me that this would certainly be one of the topics of discussion. We'll see what they have to say.

"BUT WAIT! If you call within the next 5 seconds we'll DOUBLE the offer!!" I remember watching these kinds of ad in the 50s on shows like 'Victory at Sea', 'Industry on Parade', etc. Knives that never dull, glass cutters that never miss, food slicers that make a gourmet meal in 3.12 seconds, . . ., . . ., . . . Same pitch, same hook, nothing's changed but they're in color now.

My wife and laugh constantly at 'ol Billy. Basically as you started out, but we always add, "and we'll throw in 2 Super Chamois. Call now and we'll even double your order, and pay the shipping..." I guess some things never change. If marketers didn't believe the buying public were stupid, we wouldn't need threads like this. The only changes are the brand snake oil and the delivery method...



In a while, Chet.

__________________
It's not what you take with you when you leave, it's what you leave behind you when you go.

It all started when the Popeil Brothers (Ron Popeil's dad and uncle), who were old time carny-type sales people in stores, discovered TV and decided young Ron was a better TV spokesperson.

But wait, there's more......