Sorry for the delay on this reply, I've been on the road until today.
Of course, Speed Channel may not turn into my worst nightmare, but follow
the money. NASCAR is huge and it makes logical sense to enhance the
ratings by broadcasting what the middle market wants...that's where the
money is and why Wal-Mart is so successful. In the beginning, they've got
to keep the existing market watching while they build the NASCAR market
share...so as to keep their ad rates as high as possible. As soon as they
get the NASCAR base, bang, they drop the original viewers. My take on the
current ad drop is that the older advertisers would stay on if Speed
Channel was not radically changing the viewing environment..if Speedvision
was good to advertise on, than a larger, similar audience Speed Channel
would be great.
The difficulty of going to a SpeedChannel2 is getting it on
cable/satellite. The competition is huge now (even Disney is having
trouble launching new channels), which is what made Speedvision such a buy,
even at $100 million...it's already in place.
We can only hope WRC continues, F1 re-ups and CART, well, no one really
wants CART now...they may have to buy airtime this year because their
ratings are terrible. But, I disagree with you on one point, I think
SpeedChannel will do very well as all-NASACR someday...it's got the viewers
out there waiting to watch and can pump advertisers for huge bucks once
they are up and running. NASCAR viewers are more brand loyal than other
market segments and NASCAR gets a premium for licenses, ads, etc..I've
negotiated with them and they have the data to back this up.
I'm cynical..why? I'm heavily involved in mass market business and the
consumerist, mass market nation pays my wages. The rub is, Speed Channel
is doing exactly what I would do in the same situation...and I know I'd
dump the old stuff as soon as the new stuff came online to a predermined
viewership level...and I'd do it in order to clearly build a
SpeedChannel-NASCAR brand link in the consumer's eyes and rake in the
NASCAR advertising to pay for all the accrued expenses. Is that
conjecture? Sure..but it's somewhat-educated conjecture and a good bit of
bitching...I knew something like this had to happen someday, as Speedvision
was too niche with too large a distribution and too few viewers to remain
that way forever. I'm just following the dollars here. The world will
continue to spin and I will continue to bitch after Feb 11 :)
PS I've got Tivo and I'm saving as many shows as possible..how do I upgrade
from 35 hours capacity?
At 12:19 PM 1/22/02 -0500, you wrote:
>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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William Whitmoyer
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