Owned by AB Groupe Language French | Country France | |
Launched 26 March 1996 (1996-03-26) Picture format 1080i (HDTV)
(HD feed downgraded to letterboxed 576i for SDTVs) Slogan La chaîne de tous les moteurs | ||
AB Moteurs is a French television channel dedicated to motorsports.
Contents
History of the channel
The channel was created in March 1996 for the AB Sat package under the name Automobile as a channel dedicated to cars in all ways (collections, history of classic models, tracks, etc.).
Due to the same of AB Sports to the Pathé group in 1997, the channel was reformatted to fill the gap on the AB Sat package, and appeal to a young male audience. The channel was renamed AB Moteurs in 1998 and contained programmes around all kinds of motorsport: cars, bikes, aeroplanes and boats, broadcasting a number of races live, in competitions with the other French sports channels, Eurosport and Sport+.
In 2008 AB Moteurs tried to attract a larger public by reformatting their programmes into four main strands: – Competitions (Live) – Tuning – Tests – Documentaries
Their principal rival is Motors TV.
Capital
AB Moteurs is owned by AB Sat SA and has a budget of €24 million, provided 100% by AB Groupe.
Programmes
The programmes consist of practical documentaries about car ownership, whether precision (tuning) or general, but also show replays of motorsport events such as NASCAR, the DTM championships, Rally, Moto GP, etc. AB Moteurs shows live NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races uninterrupted with French (Pat Angeli and Philippe Chéreau) and Turkish commentary. Numerous clips of Sprint Cup Series races from recent seasons with Angeli's and Chéreau's excitable and enthusiastic commentary have been uploaded to YouTube.
Shows
Broadcast
AB Moteurs was originally shown only on AB Sat, but is now available through a contract on French, Belgian, Luxembourgish, Monegasque and Swiss cable and on digital television.