The Cost of Advertising

It's that time of year again. After another seemingly endless off-season, we got to see some of the early returns and disappointments of all the hard work by the teams. Gordon was expected to have a strong qualifying effort, and he didn't disappoint, capturing the pole for Sunday's 500 miler. Mark Martin finally got the Daytona monkey off his back by winning the Bud Shootout. Mike Skinner continued his hot hand by winning the shootout qualifying race. In many ways, it seems like this season is starting out the same way last season ended.

There is another similarity between this season and last season. That similarity is the seemingly endless complaining about the television coverage of the races. CBS televised first round qualifying live this season. As far as I know, never done by a network station before. Around 3:00, coverage was briefly interrupted for an update from Washington on President Clinton's impeachment trial. CBS was scheduled to air a golf tournament at 3:00, but went over their time slot to bring more qualifying to us, due largely to the fact that Gordon was scheduled to be one of the last drivers to attempt his qualifying run. Shortly after Gordon's pole winning effort, CBS switched to the scheduled golf program.

The Bud Shootout qualifying race was covered by ESPN, and they did a nice job. Mike Skinner and Robert Pressley got out of the pits first and the camera shot of them flying off pit road side by side was commendable. CBS covered the Bud Shootout, and again the camera shots were outstanding. The shot of Skinner and Gordon "touching" at over 190 MPH was exhilarating. The roof cam clearly showed fluid was being laid down by someone and the effect on the visability the drivers had.

A weekend to be remembered by us race starved fans, right? Wrong. CBS caught heavy criticism for interrupting qualifying coverage for the news update, and then caught even more flack for switching to golf after Gordon's excellent run. I'm not talking about the normal griping you always see after a race, but serious complaints. Post were rampant on the internet on various message boards about how evil CBS was to do that to us fans, people were encouraged to email CBS and let them know how we felt and so on. The call was made to have ESPN cover all the races and not allow the networks to ever cover NASCAR racing live and so on. Don't forget about the endless commercials. The fact that CBS aired the entire 25 lap shootout commercial free had little effect on our anger at all the commercials before and after the event.

What does this have to do with The Cost of Advertising? We, the viewing fans must pay the cost of advertising. Race cars have often been called moving billboards. At no time is that more true than in today's corporate age. Sponsors fork over the big bucks, counting on their sponsored car getting air time and inducing the consumers to buy their products. Corporate America also sponsors almost all of the events. The Bud Shootout, Coca Cola 600, Excide 400, and Winston 500 are just a couple of examples of this fact. Again, the hope is to reach as many people as possible with billboards, banners and the sort to get increased exposure. Thousands of fans are at the track for each Winston Cup event and millions more tune in their TV to watch it. If you notice, the majority of the commercials before, during and after a race are for the same products that directly sponsor the race teams. Mobile 1, Quaker State, Pennzoil, Texaco, Citgo, Bud, Miller Lite, Winn Dixie, AC Delco…..you get the picture. These companies aren't paying the networks big bucks to show their commercials because they think it will make a good tax write-off. They do it because they think that they can reach more consumers that will be influenced to buy their product by advertising a race than they will by advertising a soap opera. Having said that, a major network like CBS can reach many more viewers than a cable station like ESPN or TNN. I'm not knocking the cable stations, but contrary to popular belief, not every television set in the country gets an ESPN or TNN. Just about every television set in the country DOES get CBS, NBC and ABC. Why is this important? Ask Cale Yarborough, Joe Falk, and Bud Moore why its important. As of this writing, these car owners have yet to secure primary sponsorship for their teams this season. Cale Yarborough , Bill Elliott and Scott Barbour have secured temporary sponsorship for speedweeks at Daytona. This is largely due to the mass audience that will be tuning in to CBS next Sunday for the race. Hopefully, these teams will have a good day and the sponsors will sign on for the long term. A top ten finish in a nationally broadcast race certainly wouldn't hurt. I said that we, the fans must pay the cost of advertising. This is why. We take time out of our schedules, sometimes making our schedule around the race, to enjoy three hours or so of our favorite sport. In my house, the Daytona 500 is somewhat of a major event. There will be guest. There will be chili and Budweiser and Busch and Miller and Coke and Pepsi products. Every few minutes, our viewing pleasure will be interrupted by some goon with a hammer trying to pound on a piston, only to find that a bottle of the Big Q keeps getting in the way. Mario Andretti and Robert Yates will still be arguing about whether the engine or driver is more important. When all the silly commercials are over, race coverage will continue and hopefully Ricky Craven, Dick Trickle and Jeff Green will be on the track with their temporary sponsorship being shown to millions and some CEO somewhere will think to himself that this is a really cool way to get exposure for his product. The cost of all that? A few minutes of our time.

Good luck to all of the drivers over the next week and the course of the season. May you all keep the tires under you and the nose pointing in the right direction.