Grand Prix of San Mariono, finally Options

[lapuwali]

QUOTE (JmuRiz @ Apr 28 2005, 10:16 AM)

Just to go on record...I thought the CBS coverage was not up to par...why not just let the Speed guys do the broadcast? Much more entertaining and not talking about driving over the curbs EVERY LAP!!!! Great race though, Unfortunately it shows that there is no way to pass in these cars, even if you are a second a lap faster, bah. I guess Ferrari is back, but if you aren't on the front row, it makes it tough! I know they are trying to get a new audience, but they dumb it down way too much. Even my sisters were getting a kick out of it, and they could care less.

Bernie, et al, would LOVE to get the mainstream US media interested in F1. They don't understand Speed. They do understand that F1 is right up there with underwater basket weaving as a spectator sport in the US, but they don't understand why. They don't understand that the taxicab racing crowd that is NASCAR has virtually zero interest in F1. They can't seem to stop salivating over the size of the US market, not realizing that reaching the 40 MILLION people who can now get Speed on their cable/satellite is the entire population of the UK (and you can thank NASCAR for that 40M number, it was 4M as recently as 2000). They're sufficiently greedy that they want the whole 300M population.

So, every few years, they try to get CBS/ABC/NBC interested in showing F1, and CBS/NBC/ABC show caution and say they'll try "a few" races to see how it works out. The coverage is universally awful and undermarketed, so ratings suck, and the fans just watch the re-runs on Speed a week or so later. This is at least the fifth year they've done this (not in a row). CBS/NBC/ABC go no way, until a significant management turnover (which seems to only take a year or so), when there's a new bunch of suckers in power to pitch the idea to, again.

If Bernie, et al understood the US racing scene, they'd give Speed the feed for free for several years, plus a marketing budget to push the sport to non-Speed viewers, and be happy with attracting a good percentage of those 40M people, and hopefully get more US people to pick up Speed, which helps both F1 and Speed. They'd support Speed 100%, as Speed is working to promote motorsport in the US far more than any other major media outlet. Motorsport is so unpopular in the US that there's a huge amount of room to grow, and having a US partner to do it is the smart way to go. Instead, they'd rather go with the existing media outlets, which have no interest in the long term viability of the sport.

Still, and I say this every time this subject rises, I'm so happy we get coverage at all. I (tried) to follow F1 through the 70s and early 80s, when the only TV coverage was a few laps of Monaco (and Long Beach when it was an F1 race) every year on ABC's Wide World of Sport. The fact that we get practice, qualifying, and the race was unthinkable 20 years ago.

[Gint]

QUOTE (lapuwali @ Apr 28 2005, 03:35 PM)

Still, and I say this every time this subject rises, I'm so happy we get coverage at all. I (tried) to follow F1 through the 70s and early 80s, when the only TV coverage was a few laps of Monaco (and Long Beach when it was an F1 race) every year on ABC's Wide World of Sport. The fact that we get practice, qualifying, and the race was unthinkable 20 years ago.

I hear that. I remember the days when the only racing coverage you could get - period - was on ABC's Wide World of Sports!

We've come a long way baby...