[Peter Matteson]

Originally Posted by 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.

One important item missing in this story is that there was a huge blizzard in the Northeast that weekend and many people were snow bound. At the time there were only 5 channels in most markets so this was the event every one watched. The blizzard was the real factor in bringing out the popularity.

I can try to float this to people I know who work at ESPN. (I live in CT and most of us here know some one who works at the Bristol office.) However I would rather see if we could get PBS live coverage. It would be garunteed to be in HD everywhere that way and I think they would see a pay back for the broadcast.