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TV or not TV, that is the question |
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| TV is a wonderful thing. Sitting in my favorite Lazy Boy chair with a sandwich in one hand, a beer in the other and the TV remote close by is what makes life truly great. There are some things that are just made to order for TV. For instance, I can watch re-runs of “Law & Order” on TNT all night long. “Breaking news” can often be entertaining too, especially if it's an on-going police chase. I live in Los Angeles and a “live” police chase is almost like a regularly-scheduled program. And of course, a good sports program can be great entertainment. Football, baseball, basketball (what happened to those Lakers?), and NASCAR can usually hold my attention for a while. TV entertainment, particularly a sporting event, has to fit into a certain time frame, however. Viewers can only take so much before they get bored, fall asleep or switch channels. Have you ever noticed that football, baseball, basketball and even a NASCAR race all seem to fit into the “3-hour” maximum zone? It's tough to hold the viewers attention much past three hours. Maybe that's why drag racing on TV has never really caught on with the public, other than some hard core fanatics. A real drag race can't be squeezed into a three hour time limit. I'm not knocking drag racing on TV, since I tune in occasionally myself. I'm talking now about the NHRA or IHRA National Events on TV. I know it's only a few classes that get the exposure, but it's better than nothing, I guess. Unfortunately, drag racing on TV isn't the same as being there, is it? Watching a drag race from the stands and cruising through the pits between rounds is an all-day deal. There is no way that experience can ever be captured with a TV program, no matter how many camera angles they use. Every now and then, and strictly by accident, I catch a Sportsman drag race event on TV. These programs are usually on at 3:00 AM , and the whole program may last less than 30 minutes. Typically, the producers of these Sportsman racing TV shows don't have a clue as to what they are showing. These shows seem to be edited to act as “filler”, between more important TV entertainment, like a dog show in New York or a poker showdown in Las Vegas . The amazing thing is that the Sportsman racing TV producers can actually get some companies to fork over money to sponsor these programs. Because I'm involved with a Sportsman Racing Series myself, I frequently get questions from sponsors asking if we at Fun Ford Weekend have “a TV package”. I tell them that we don't. It's not that our organization can't put a TV package together (we have in the past), it's that we have found that they are basically semi-worthless, other than feeding our own egos (“look ma, I'm on TV”). Not long ago, a major national advertising agency (one of the largest ad agencies in the world) did an in-depth study about drag racing on TV. What they found out was very interesting. First, the people that watched NHRA National Event drag racing on TV were very different from the people who might watch Sportsman drag racing on TV. The NHRA viewers had a very high propensity to be “entertained”. These viewers were similar to the viewers who watched other sporting events on TV. Typically, they didn't drag race themselves (like the people who watch football and baseball on TV don't actually “play” football or baseball themselves). They watch for the enjoyment of watching, and there's nothing wrong with that. The study went on to show that the Sportsman drag race fan (and potential viewer) is a little different. For one thing, he doesn't watch that much TV in the first place. This typical viewer is a “doer”, not a “watcher”. More often than not, after dinner he is in his garage working on his car. On the weekends, if he isn't actually racing somewhere, he is working around the house building a new deck or painting the back bedroom, or possibly out goofing off with his buddies on a dirt bike, or going camping with his family. What he doesn't do is to sit around and watch drag racing on TV. Sooner or later, these TV advertisers will realize that to get the attention of the Sportsman drag racing marketplace (the targeted buyers), it's more effective and usually less costly to sponsor an actual event or to get involved with a Sportsman racing series as a sponsor, than it is to advertise on a lame TV show. What is the value of advertising on TV if the very marketplace that they are targeting isn't going to be watching?
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