I was at the http://autosportradio.com show tonight and got to talk to Adrian Payne who is in charge of internet technologies for IMS. He is also interviewed by Don on the show and you should be able to see the replay on the website by tomorrow, Brian Barnhart is the other guest. Anyway I asked about the live streams of the USAC races since the speedway "hosts" the stream. He told me that they were stunned by the number of hits the races were attracting. Over 30,000 in the 1st 10 minutes each time they hosted a race. It overwhelmed their servers. I think they ended up with more demand than some of their qualifying webcasts last year. The good news is they are building a new system in preparation for the new IRL season and the USAC shows will be ported over to the new system. They will have servers all over the world(so if you want to watch from japan it should be easy to get in ) much more capacity and FULL SCREEN video. Next time you see Tony George(or Adrian) you might want to thank them because the speedway is providing all this free of charge to USAC. SO those of you who have been grousing about not being able to get in it should get alot better real soon. He said they should be on the new system by April, I'm sure at least by the 1st IRL race at St Pete on April 4th & 5th. :applaud:

Wow!!...Thanks to Tony George,IRL,IMS,and all involved!!...sure is great news for all open wheel fans!!.....can't wait to see end results on this package!!.......
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Brucer'

Wow...30K? I had no idea...Incredible.

DM

That was just the first 10 minutes DM, pretty amazing

I can see that if you count all the times people had to hit the refresh button over and over again. I probably hit it 10,000 times just myself alone. :rolling

Great news!!!

30,000 is a huge number no matter how you slice it. Hopefully someone at USAC will relay these numbers to an authority figure at a TV network.....

While 30,000 viewers is a lot for a niche web site, it is a microscopic number for a TV network.

Here's a link to Nielsen Media, which collects, and analyzes the viewing results for advertisers..http://www.nielsenmedia.com/nc/portal/site/Public/..if you've got the time to peruse the site, you'll get to a point where you'll see that last week's American Idol was watched by an estimated 25 million viewers. Now that's a lot of viewers and a huge number....

Even a fringe network like Versus has to have 100K or more viewers for a program, or the program has to be a "time-buy", where the advertiser buy the program slot from the network, and then keeps all of the advertising revenue, in order for the show to hit the air. And while I don't know for sure, I'd bet that "The Lucas Motorsport Hour" is just that, a time buy by Lucas from the Versus Network.

I realize 30,000 is a small number for TV.

I admittedly don't know much at all about how a series goes about pitching its product to television. However, I think having a number like 30,000 would at least be a good start to take to a network. That would show there's a wide interest out there, wider at least than the 3,000 or however many fans there are in the stands at any given USAC event.

I just want to see more sprint cars on TV. It's fun for everybody and it's key to growth.

30000/2500000 = .0012, or 1.2%. the size of the USAC site hits versus the American Idol viewers


Advertisers like to use % of viewers watching, so a network will usually only consider a show that'll drwa a specific demographic group. Your estimate of 3000 USAC fans attending a live show is exactly why most networks don't care to show sprint car racing.

There just aren't enough folks interested in the sport to draw viewers to watch it on TV...so as mich as we all love the sport, and would like to see more of it on TV, it probably won't happen....like I said, it's a niche sport....