OK! Good topic but (as usual) I have something to disagree with. If you were going to boil it down to the problem with motocross today...the problems is money and its relentless pursuit. People are not racing for fun anymore, they are not searching for sponsors to support their racing habit. They are trying to strike it rich. Promoters want TV time to sell to sponsors - that's where the big bucks are! If we were running around on grass tracks or up and down hill sides, it wouldn't be on TV and no one would make any money. Disagree? Look at other forms of motorcycling...desert, cross country, Enduro. Competition is much better there and much more interesting, but if you are not IN it, you'll never SEE it. No one is striking it rich there. None of those guys have even been on MTV much less have their own show.
When Supercross came along, it made the sport of motocross TV friendly but it also generated the need for bigger and more dangerous obstacles to keep that audience's attention for 7 minutes of programming and 3 minutes of commercials. But motorsports in general are not gladiator sports and TV knows it must balance the carnage within the event. You can't show death and dismemberment on TV without offending your audience (yet). They also don't want to block camera angles with berms and jumps so gone are those gigantic hills that block the view - and gone are the 2-strokes that fill the stadiums with a blue haze that blocks visibility.
Motocross was sacred for a time. You had the outdoors on one hand, that tradition which built the sport and on the other, Supercross. It was like Broadway and Film - coexisting unequally (financially) but both sides of the same coin. But promoters and fans were not satisfied. Outdoors started pushing their "gimmicks" to satisfy TV and fans with little concern for the riders. In Europe, they resisted the trend and put it in the rules that there would be no double jumps (unless naturally there) and limits in the rules for promoters and track designers. But then, since the FIM had sold off the rights to the World Championship to private promoters (today YouthStream), they succumbed to the argument that since the Supercross and Motocross stars are one and the same, it shouldn't bother them to leap a few jumps and allowed these Supercross obstacles to appease the TV audiences. Today, there is little difference between Motocross and Supercross except on is Outdoors which allows higher speeds.
Interestingly, I was watching the MX1 and MX2 event in France yesterday and was going to comment. There were a couple of camera angles, They'd follow the riders up the hill and into a turn and pause right on a UFO Knee Protector billboard. Even after the bikes were through, empty part of the track, for just 2 seconds - pause and cut away. Then the rhythm section into a hairpin. Big Fox billboard and Parts-Europe banner. Of course, you'd sell your best spots where they would be seen on TV, but it almost seemed like the racing was secondary to the amount of time each banner was displayed. Like the contract said, "we'll guarantee to show your banner for a minimum of 1 minute on TV (30 laps with 2 seconds per lap) - more if a rider goes down there!" I was also watching Thunder Valley but I wasn't so cenacle about it. I'm sure it was the same, I was just distracted by other things to notice.