Re: I hope the rumor is true!
 

That may be true. But for the casual fan, the consumer's that the big-money sponsors of NHRA are trying to reach-out to, I wonder how many times they will come back after the second- or third-time they find the program has been preempted, or rescheduled or moved to another channel they don't receive? Exposure is fine, but when the program I'm watching is cutoff to allow a rain-delayed restart of another race series, I have to wonder how many folks will just turn away.

Re: I hope the rumor is true!
 

Crap. I was hoping they cancelled Tom Compton.

Re: I hope the rumor is true!
 

You aren't kidding. Steve Evans was the absolute best, and they always showed the sportsman finals with interviews afterwards.

Re: I hope the rumor is true!
 

I don't see how they could get much less exposure, or the quality of the coverage could get much lower.

ESPN is exactly why so many teams cannot get sponsors.

If you had $6M to spend on motorsports sponsorship for advertisement purposes, would you put your money on a car that might get 2 minutes of "prime time" exposure on the second string network for ESPN? Especially given that the "prime time" might not even happen if it rains at some stick and ball sports stadium.

Honestly, if you look at it, the winning Pro Stock car might be on TV for a total of maybe two minutes. That is one car out of a minimum of sixteen that you need to find $5M a year sponsorship for.

If you've ever wondered why great guys like Davey Connolly can't get a sponsor to make a Pro Stock ride happen, there it is. Hell, Erica Enders can't get a sponsor, and she's a pretty successful female driver, which is a rare commodity right now. Like him or not, John Force is a wildly popular and successful drag racer, and he's out hustling sponsorship money.

The fact is, NHRA professional drag racing simply does not offer a good return on sponsorship dollars, even for corporations that produce automotive products.

The ratings for NHRA on TV just plain suck. NHRA loves to blame it on racers and down time, and they love to complain that sportsman racers are in the way. But the truth is that their programming stinks, it's poorly done, and the air time is crap. They need a real professional production group, better on air personalities, and a contract for real air time.

Re: I hope the rumor is true!
 

The ESPN show is not very good,but the biggest reason why ratings are not that great is that nobody really cares about Drag Racing.

Nascar does okay because there are more wrecks and fights between drivers.People like to watch that.

Re: I hope the rumor is true!
 

^^^
True.
I am amazed at how many NASCAR fans watch just for the wrecks.

I have never heard of anyone say they watch drag racing on tv for the wrecks.

It's sad that Sunday evening drag racing on ESPN is less important than a pre-recorded women's softball pre-seson game. :rolleyes: ( or something like that)

Re: I hope the rumor is true!
 

I love drag racing more than most, and even I hate to watch it on TV.

Funny thing is they have had the cameras up John Force's butt for the last 20 years, and even he is losing sponsors. He has probably had at least 50% of the coverage himself.

Re: I hope the rumor is true!
 

One thing that bugs me about the coverage lately is that there seems to be more background noise being picked up and coming through my TV. I was watching coverage of the U.S. Nats and they were doing a feature on Tony Schumacher. The background music was so loud I could hardly hear what He was saying. I haven't been watching as much because it gets too hard to hear what anyone is saying.