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The Inside Scoop
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The story of how Ted Jones went
from half-owner of the IHRA to TV mogul
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By Brian Wood Photos by Roger Richards |
Inside Drag Racing is one of the most popular and longest running television shows on the air dedicated to presenting the sport of drag racing in all of its entertaining forms. The pride and joy of Ted Jones and his Bristol, Tennessee-based Masters Entertainment Group, the show is seen every Sunday at 11 AM EST on ESPN2. In addition to Inside Drag Racing, Masters also produces the Mothers Polish Car Show, Street Rodder, Pleasure Boater, American Tractor Pullers, In the Driver’s Seat and shows dedicated to the NHRA’s AMS Pro Mod and Sport Compact programs.
Ted Jones is an interesting individual who has parlayed his love of the two-lane acceleration game into a lifelong career, and the following narrative tells the entire story of his journey from racer to track owner to sanctioning body owner and ultimately into one of televisions most recognizable talents. “As a kid in High School I drag raced as most everyone did back in the 60s, because that was the thing to do. One night I was paying my entry fee at a little hole-in-the-wall eighth-mile drag strip in Kettlersville, Ohio so I could go out and tear up another universal joint, something caught my attention. They didn’t have anything like a cash box or anything at this particular time, so the track owner just had all these bills tucked between his fingers – fives, tens and twenties – and he was stuffing them from time to time into a carpenter’s apron he wore. It suddenly dawned on me that I was on the wrong side of the fence. Here I was paying him money so I could go out and tear my car up when I should be the guy taking in the money.
“I eventually approached him with an offer, and even though I had to finance it all, in 1963 I ended up buying my first drag strip. I did a lot of remodeling to the place and started an aggressive advertising campaign. I was the sports director of a radio station in nearby Sydney, Ohio by this time, and I put together a series of ads and promotions for the track that ended up having great results. The previous owner had never advertised at all – he just depended on word of mouth, but since my chosen career was in radio and television, I realized the power of the media and made it work for me. As a result, Kettlersville Drag Strip just boomed and became a real money maker for its time. “I soon figured out that if one was good, two would be better, so I built a strip in Vanwert, Ohio from the ground up - right in the middle of a corn field. A short while later I bought Muncie Dragway in Muncie, Indiana, which was actually called Mid-America Dragway at the time. It wasn’t long before a fourth track was added to the list as Shelby Dragway, also located near Sydney in Shelby, Ohio, was purchased. So now here I am with four drag strips which are all operating weekly. Two ran primarily on Saturday night and two ran on Sunday afternoon, and quite often they each ran twice a week.
“I had been trying to come to some kind of arrangement with the NHRA as far as sanctioning went, but I could never work out a deal with them. Fortunately, Larry Carrier formed the IHRA about that time, and he came to see me regarding having my four tracks come under his sanction. We struck a deal that included the provision that Muncie Dragway become the home of the first-ever IHRA Northern Nationals.
“Eventually, Larry convinced me to sell my tracks and come to work for the IHRA in Bristol, Tennessee, which I did. Later, when Larry sold the organization to Billy Meyer, Meyer and I parted company within the first 30 days since he had done away with all the class racing overnight, something he never told me he was going to do. He was so intent on putting the NHRA out of business that he just lost sight of the big picture. He literally never talked about anything else, and I couldn’t take it. I eventually told him he was crazy and walked out the door. “Lo and behold, a year later he called and offered me the IHRA, lock, stock and barrel. Jimmy Ruth and I ended up buying the organization, but when his health failed him a few years later he told me that he would have to sell his share of the business in order to pay off the inheritance taxes so his sons could keep their family-operated stone business going. This was the basis of his financial empire, and he knew that inheritance taxes after his death would devastate them unless he took care of things before hand. “I agreed, of course, so after he passed I arranged to sell his share to a group of eight prospective buyers headed up by Carlton Phillips. I didn’t realize at the time that there were going to be problems, but one of the provisions Jimmy had made was that I had to approve whoever bought his interest in the IHRA. I initially agreed to the sale, but after our first board meeting I could see that it was going nowhere, so I immediately offered to sell them my shares as well, and about a month later they agreed to buy me out. The funny thing was that they were so afraid that I was going to go right out and hook up with the NHRA and become a competitor that they wanted me to sign a non-compete agreement stating that I wouldn’t have anything to do with organizing or promoting drag racing for five years. “By then I already had my future mapped out, however, as I was already involved with television work. When the IHRA first teamed up with ESPN, they didn’t understand the sport at all. They kept calling the start line the start/finish line, for example, and they had no idea what the red light was for and so on. They ended up hiring me as a consulting producer for the early IHRA shows to keep them from doing something stupid. Through that, I not only met a lot of key people at ESPN, but I also learned that there was a need for another company out there that produced drag racing and drag racing-related programs because the only ones doing it at the time were Diamond P, and they were strictly doing things for the NHRA.
“So by the time I sold my share in the IHRA, I had already decided to do television production on a full-time basis. When I told the new owners what I wanted to do and that I wanted to cover IHRA events since Diamond P was doing the NHRA, they added a clause to the non-compete saying I could do television and I was off and running. “Shortly after, I started Masters Entertainment Group and brought Butch McCall in to work with me. Butch had been my marketing director at the IHRA, and he was the only guy who ever had the organization show a profit with their television programming. In other words, he was so successful in selling advertising on the IHRA TV shows that we actually made money doing television. Later, I got the TV rights to the IHRA, and we were actually able to pay them television rights money, and it was the only time in the history of the IHRA that the production company actually paid the sanctioning body money for the show. It had never been done before that. “We were able to do that because of Butch. I had wanted him to come to Masters Entertainment Group as the marketing director, but he said that he’d seen Larry Carrier become wealthy with the IHRA and he thought he’d rather have a piece of the business. I said ‘fine,’ and he and I became partners in MEG. It was without a doubt one of the best moves I have ever made. “One of the first shows that we came up with when we started the company, beside the IHRA race coverage for ESPN, of course, was Inside Drag Racing. Our aim at the time was to have a weekly magazine-style television program that covered IHRA drag racing. However, we soon found ourselves branching out to Super Chevy Shows, bracket racing and a lot more. “Bill Bader subsequently bought the IHRA in 1998, and when he left ESPN for TNN, he burned an important bridge. We were soon called into the ESPN office and told that while we could continue to produce Inside Drag Racing, we were to have nothing to do with the IHRA – they were completely out of the picture as far as ESPN was concerned.
“Fortunately, we had already started to expand our horizons with IDR, so we just continued to actively pursue all types of drag racing for the show. At around the same time, NHRA Today went off the air when NHRA switched from TNN to ESPN, and it wasn’t resurrected. In fact, I subsequently hired the show’s former producer, Cindy Harmon, as a member of my staff. Imagine my surprise and delight when the NHRA asked us to put in a bid for a new show to be called NHRA Heat, and we ended up getting the job. Naturally, Cindy took over as the show’s producer, and it was a great addition for us. “Soon after that, the NHRA approached us about carrying some of their coverage on Inside Drag Racing, and of course, since we were both tied in with ESPN, that wasn’t a problem at all. While we do carry some NHRA stuff these days, primarily event results in our Race Report segment, we have stuck to our original policy of covering a wide variety of racing. We do the National Mustang Racers Association, the Edelbrock Pro Street Series, the B&M Bracket Racing Series, the All Harley Drag racing Series, AMA/ProStar, the Summer Slam import event in Englishtown, New Jersey and lots more. We covered the NHRA’s Hot Rod Reunions in Kentucky and California last year, for example, as well as a Pro Mod warm-up event in Darlington, Couth Carolina. We basically go everywhere and cover everything these days. “I’m proud to say that Inside Drag Racing has become the most financially profitable show that Masters Entertainment Group produces – it’s our flagship program and the foundation of the company. It makes more money than any other project we have. The show would not be as successful as it is without the support of our sponsors, of course, and we’ve had some great ones who have been with us right from the start. Summit Racing Equipment and Flowmaster Mufflers are among the biggest and best, having been with us right from the git-go. “Initially I hosted all the shows because we had a very small staff, but now, since I’m trying to head towards retirement, I’ve had Bret Kepner host more and more shows. Rick Carlson has also done some shows, and we might be bringing another announcer on for the 2005 season as well. Quite frankly, I’m trying to phase myself out of it because I’ve literally been living on the road for a long time now. With all the shows we do, I’m somewhere different each and every weekend. It seems that the harder I try to back off, the busier we get with new shows and projects, and I’m right back out there again.
“One of the new things we did this year was buy a time slot from ESPN that allows us to broadcast IDR at 11 AM EST every Sunday morning. We’re followed at 11:30 by NHRA2Day, and that’s worked out real well for both shows as thanks to our lead-in the ratings for NHRA2Day have actually gone up. We have a loyal viewer base that enjoys IDR because of the wide variety of events we cover. This year we’re upping the ante even more by presenting round-by-round coverage from five AMS Pro Mod Challenge events through a special deal with NHRA and AMS Staff Leasing. “Inside Drag Racing has now become such a popular show that we actually have a long waiting list of events that want us to come and provide coverage. When we have a rain-out of a particular event now, for example, we call one of the stand-bys on the list and let them know that a show has opened up and they’re on board. These days, as the result of the show’s popularity, a number of promoters and sanctioning bodies will pay us a considerable amount of expense money to come to their events. “One of the reasons that the show is so highly profitable is that it is so amazingly simple to shoot. You have to have at least one an ENG cameraman, of course, and in most cases the shows are all one-camera shoots. In some instances we use two cameras, but that’s rare. Then there’s the producer, the talent and the production assistant, or PA, and that’s all we need to shoot it. “After the show is shot, it comes back to MEG headquarters in Bristol to be produced. In most cases, Inside Drag Racing can be produced in one day, starting at nine in the morning and wrapping up around nine at night. We’re now required to provide closed captioning with the show as well, so that takes extra time to do, of course. “For example, if we shoot the show on Sunday, we’ll produce it on Tuesday and usually by Wednesday morning they’re doing the closed captioning. Theoretically, it can leave here on Wednesday afternoon heading for ESPN. They require that shows be in their hands one week in advance unless there are unforeseen problems such as rain delays, in which case they’ll give us some latitude because they understand that that’s the nature of the business.
“It wasn’t always such a streamlined operation, of course. In the early days it took us a lot longer to bring a show to life, but we’ve learned a lot over the years and modified our procedures accordingly. It moves along a lot quicker now, basically because we do so many shows now that we don’t have the luxury of extra edit time. “This year we’re doing 40 episodes of Inside Drag Racing, but because we have a waiting list we could likely do 50 with no trouble, and we may increase our output to that level on down the road. Our number two rated show is the Mother’s Polish Car Show. We have been doing 26 episodes a season for the past couple of years, and now we’re looking at bumping that up to 39 a year. As with IDR, there’s a long waiting list of car shows that want our coverage, and it’s strictly a matter of supply and demand. The bottom line, of course, is generating the kind of sponsor backing we need to produce additional shows, and fortunately that seems to be something we have well in hand, thanks to our great sponsors. “One of the things the network will do is repeat shows that pull high ratings, and it’s surprising what kind of stuff the viewers really like. For example, we did a show last year on figure-eight school bus racing, believe it or not, and the thing got such high ratings that the network literally wore the tape out they played it so much. You just never know what’s going to be a hit. “A lot of people who have been around drag racing for a long time don’t get too excited about jet cars, for another example, but we’ve covered two of the Jet Nationals events they’ve held at Atco Raceway in New Jersey, and again ESPN has practically worn the tapes out. Every time they run one of the shows it gets great ratings, over and over again. The general viewers love the jets. “Another thing we did on IDR was have a show that featured the first seven-second pass by an import car before imports were even cool. They had a race in Atco called the Pan-Am Nationals for a number of years, and the race promoter would bring in a bunch of cars and drivers from Puerto Rico, where high-performance import racing had an early beginning. We covered the event one season, and it was the first time I had a glimpse of just how huge the import scene really was becoming. I mean, you just couldn’t move anywhere it was so crowded. “Anyway, there was this guy there with a Mitsubishi Mirage, and when he ran that thing through the top end and 7.99 popped up on the scoreboard you would have thought that he was Don Garlits. I mean he was literally mobbed as he came back down the return road – they had to stop the race! It was unbelievable, and all because a four cylinder car had run in the sevens for the first time.
“We’ve had some pretty incredible stuff on Inside Drag Racing over the years, because if it’s drag racing, we’ll cover it. We have something really cool coming up for the 40th episode this year in our Race Report segment, which will be sponsored by CompetitionPlus.com for the last ten or fifteen episodes, by the way. In that episode we’re going to present the finals of an asphalt snowmobile drag race, and that’s really going to be something to see. “It’s been a great ride, and for me personally, starting
Masters Entertainment Group has allowed me to stay around the sport
of drag racing that I love so dearly. It’s been a way for
me to stay involved in it from a different slant and I still get
to go and watch people drag race. I love the racers and I love the
track promoters, because I used to work with so many of them for
years in the IHRA. It’s still fun for me today to see the
guys who used to be loyal IHRA racers years back. Guys like Warren
Johnson, Rickie Smith, Don Prudhomme, Austin Coil and Don Garlits,
who is now my best friend. I wouldn’t trade it for anything,
believe me!
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