On Mon, 21 Jan 2002, William Whitmoyer wrote:
> Listers:
Hello.
> I saw a lone message on the digest about a Triumphs at Sebring Legends of
> Motorsport episode, so I thought I'd share a nugget of information that
> some listers may not know about:
Oops. Hot button issue!
What exactly is your source?
Some of us know of the "demise" of speedvision...
But I wanted to make a few statements contrary to your point of view. The
big thing _right now_ is that most of what you said is not 100% true and
very much conjecture.
Case in point - the coverage of WRC rallye is actually better now than
ever. According to my sources, that won't change with the switch to
SpeedChannel. The F1 contract is being discussed. The ads for Speedchannel
_do_ show F1 action. Granted it's pictures of Schumi and the "big crash"
at Spa a few years back - but there are pictures of F1 in the new
SpeedChannel promo.
Oh, SpeedChannel has a contract for CART. That's not exactly NASCAR.
I guess the point is that yes, there will be change. But there is no
indication that road racing in general will dissapear from the lineup.
Frankly, with more money available from NASCAR related stuff, it's even
likely that some better coverage of events will take place.
But the bottom line for any of this is that _you_ as a consumer have to
watch it so that the "numbers" go up and advertisers will want to spend
thier advertising dollars at SpeedChannel (as opposed to ABC or whatever.)
As for the increase in non-revenue ads (the re-runs of the old Triumph
ads, for instance) and the increase in info-mercials - well, if you were
an advertiser and there was no future in a relationship with a media
outlet - would _you_ spend your money there? I suspect not. And seemingly
Ron Popiel for all that's worth sees the air time as a good value. Go
figure. Welcome to the world of TV revenue.
Will Speedchannel be all NASCAR? I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
Will they show F1? Who knows. Will they show the Sports Car Club of
America Valvoline Runoffs(tm)? Who knows. I do know that SCCA Inc. is very
interested in continuing that relationship with whatever the media outlet
is. SCCA Inc. is trying to grow the Pro Racing activities, and they can
only do that with media exposure - look for Trans AM and the former
Speedvision World Challange and other related series to air on
SpeedCHannel. Did youknow that GrandAM has ties to NASCAR... there's some
pretty good road racing there. I suspect those ties will be exercised to
air some or all of those events.
But try this. Remember ESPN? Do you remember that _they_ used to show SCCA
races? How about when they did IMSA and various "odd" racing (like plane
races at Reno or the full URC Unlimited Hydroplane schedule.) Remember?
Now they don't show _any_ of that - most being cast over to ESPN 2 or the
other outlets (like SpeedVision of Fox Sports NET etc.). But ESPN's
business plan used that air time to build a relationship with viewers and
build audiences. When the time was right, they dumped the programming that
had lower numbers and built up the ones that had good numbers. Like
baseball and football etc. - but that was thier plan.
Do you understand my point?
Stated another way, the _business plan_ for the Speedvision folks was to
turn thier investment into something bigger that would either produce more
revenue or sell for big bucks. I'm sure the orignal investors are happy
with the $100M they're walking away from the deal Speedchannel with.
Is it sad that the charm of Speedvision will fade to black? Yes. Will I
watch Speedvision up to 7:59 PM on February 11th? Sure I will. Will I
watch SpeedChannel? No doubt. Will the world still spin when this is over
and done - COUNT ON IT.
Bottom line - how upset can you get over this? It's just another business
deal in a consumer society. If the prospect really bothers you, set your
VCR to record at SLP and buy a couple of cases of VCR tapes or buy a Tivo
(tm) and update it to 180GB and record what's left of Speedvision and keep
watching it 'till you can't stand it anymore...
At least, that's what I'm doing.
:-)
FWIW, Speedvision showed up in my life at a time of some interesting
emotions and events in my life. "Zoning" on Speedvision got me through all
that. I will miss SV dearly. But my perspective on this is really "what
the heck". Oh well.
Oh - and unless the folks at Speedchannel are really shrewd, I'll give 'em
two years before they fold. Maybe three. I think they're gonna have
trouble keeping up the cash flow given the costs that they've incurred. I
hope I'm wrong, but we shall see.
C ya,
rml
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