valium

his talk at the Interntional Motor Press Association luncheon last month, go to the URL below and then choose the first article in the list.

I don't know if it's password-protected or not. I don't think it is. My personal feelings are that he and the channel are arrogant and "know what is best" for the viewers. Since he came from the Madison Square Garden network, that arrogance has been well-groomed (the owners of MSG own Cablevision, and are arrogant as well).

It is interesting to note that 40,000 people e-mailed SPEED to urge them NOT to make it a NASCAR-only channel-- which was exactly their plan.

It's a good read.<ul><li><a href="http://impa.org/impact.cfm">http://impa.org/impact.cfm</a</li></ul>

Liam in Montreal

I had no idea SO many people watched nascar though. I mean, I know alot of americans, and none of them watch nascar. I've never even talked to a family that watched/went to races. in my head, nascar people are only seen on tv when I watch the news.

but that's just a question of perception I suppose.. When I'm at pocono or the glen and I think that they fill the entire stands with people at every race, I'm amazed.

Liam

NASA racer

that pretty much happened JUST because of NASCAR. One race there provides the impetus for an entire rebuild of the facilities.

It is amazing how many people love NASCAR...you see bits and pieces of it with little stickers in the back of car/truck windows and caps and t-shirts.

I was in Vegas for work when they were having the NASCAR race and people were decked out with every possible article of clothing with their favorite driver's number/colors/car/sponsors...and they looked deadly serious like it was the most important thing on earth to them.

Still don't get it...boring as watching golf to me except when they run on road courses.

valium

nut for the whole year. Everything else is gravy.

KMHPaladin

I cruise the Speed Insider F1 forum often because I find it interesting to interact with fellow American F1 fans. I also check out international F1 forums, but it's nice to have that American perspective. Anyway, Speed Insider is virulently anti-NASCAR. There is a NASCAR forum, but it's not the primary one, so they are well behind the F1 forum in terms of posts. Many of the rabid open-wheel fans that Liberatore discusses hang out there.

Now, I think you have a point about the arrogance of Speed personnel. I don't believe it's Liberatore himself, but one of the executives has posted there, and he got rocked by people going after NASCAR. He indeed had the attitude that NASCAR paid the open-wheel bills, so we should shut up and take the medicine. He failed to mention that Fox's immense NASCAR contract means they <i>have</i> to promote NASCAR heavily to have any hope of recouping their investment.

At any rate, Speed Channel is unfortunately going to be heavily NASCAR influenced for some time to come. I can live with that, because they show series that I really like such as F1 and the ALMS. What I don't like is that good series like Speed World Challenge (a series bearing Speed's name and title sponsorship!?!), DTM, JGTC, ETCC, etc. get tape-delayed by 2 weeks or 6 months, while endless NASCAR feature shows that endlessly dissect previous races or go into insipid 'tech' features like "this is an automatic transmission" are played ad nauseum. The Speed management has forgotten that Speedvision was indeed profitable, and growing, before it was taken over by Fox. Open-wheel 'European' racing can survive as viable subject matter for a television channel.

I'm thankful that there is a vocal OW minority that keeps the NASCAR people in check. Having F3000, F1 Decade, etc. is very nice, and I have to give credit to Speed for taking some steps in the right direction. I also respect that they are running a business. However, I think that most non-NASCAR fans object to the fact that there have been relatively few additions since Speedvision in terms of road racing features, and a huge influx of NASCAR-related programming. I wish they would get rid of 3-hour plus moronic replays of the 1980 Daytona 500 and have some real racing shown live or nearly live.