[petek]

My perspective on this:

Way back in the Dark Ages of televised motorsports (late 70s), almost all races were tape-delayed, pre-empted by golf or a local flower show and generally not a very interesting TV show. Most of the networks weren't interested in showing cars going round and round and most people weren't interested in watching these shows. A good crowd at most NASCAR races was probably one-tenth of what they draw now.

So what changed all that? NASCAR made some effort to appeal to a broader audience, but in my opinion, one event had the biggest single impact. In 1979 (I think), somebody at CBS took a risk and put together live coverage of the Daytona 500, complete with multiple camera coverage of the whole track and multiple in-car cameras - something rarely attempted and never done very well before that. The show was sensational, at least by the standard of the day, and it got really good ratings, at least for a non-ball sport.

That event showed both the viewers and the networks that this show could be exciting and make money. So, I think the questions we should be asking are:

How do we show Big TV that FIRST will draw more viewers and make them more money than the rock-paper-scissors championship?

Anyone here know how many viewers it takes to make sponsors notice?

And maybe, as was asked somewhere on CD recently, do we want to make the changes necessary to make the competition TV-friendly? I'm not sure that it would be a good thing, myself. Personally, I thought the racing was better before TV and NASCAR fell in love.