Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

I hope CBS has a really good broadcast of the WOO event last night because mine (at the cost of 40 bucks) felt like the 10 yr. old peaking through a hole in the fence watching a baseball game..... as a dirt vision member I feel like I got seriously short changed last night.... Great race/lousy broadcast...  To all the WOO people involved:  You blew it.....    You should remember  CBS is not here every race. we are... if you don't dance with the one the brought... you can go home alone..........  

Man, I hate to say it, but I kind of agree. I didn't see what the CBS SN broadcast looked like, but the DV feels like it lacked in general.IDK why- can't put my finger on it, but it just feels like it did.

I hope they don't lose sight of their primary focus with TV invovled. 

I thought the broadcast was fine but my opinion is shaped by having to wait for Speed Sport to show up in the mail when I was a kid in the early 60's.  Racing PPV has finally come of age just in time to usher in my seventh decade when the last thing I want to or can do is chase races.  

What am I supposed to be outraged about?   I was able to watch two Features on the same night after watching Midget racing all week on another channel. I'm not seeing any problems, life is good.

Stan Meissner

The CBS broadcast was really bad I thought. A main only, they didn't show about 5 laps toward the end of the race, the screen froze up several times and the show was packed with commercials. I expected CBS to do a great job with their broadcast but, they really blew it! I have always had good results with Dirtvision and I will be watching Dirtvision next week for the Jackson Nationals. 

You can tell an ass... but, you can't tell 'em much

The down time and dead air sucked. 
 

Did they really take the time to completely rework the track before the A main? It was nice to see the peaks into Knoxville, but the amount of completely silent screen seeing trucks circle the track over and over felt amateurish. 

I'll start by saying that I did not see the television broadcast as I was at the track last night. But the whole program was rushed and moved forward several hours, with hot laps starting at 430. I didn't mind this too much until the hour and 20 minute wait after the B main to run the A was ridiculous...

With that being said lets look at the facts. If anyone has been to a dirt track with 50+ cars running on a summer afternoon, you know that if it's not watered and reworked at some point through out the night it will becoming dusty, then one grooved, then rubber down which racers hate. Tom Helfrich and his crew are 2nd to none in track prep in my opinion (except to maybe Knoxville) and always have great, racy slide job producing shows with multiple grooves. Also, it takes a lot to produce a televised event. There has not been a live WoO race in years so I get how there could be a learning curve. Sprint car races,, especially on a bull ring like Tri-State are very faced paced and the action is nonstop all over the track. Unless you have 10-15 cameras watching the entire track all night you are going to miss things. I expect the future CBS televised races to get better as they come and I am estatic that sprint car racing is getting another shot at some national attention. 

So let's all pump the brakes and hold judgement until we see what happens going forward. Just because the internet gives you a place to cast stones at every topic you can think of, doesn't mean you should. 

you pretty much missed the point. Dirt Vision is a pay per view service...   I wasn't watching CBS.  In fact, none of the stuff you are talking about has anything to do with anything as far as I can see......      On dirt vision, I spent half the night staring at a field... it was a nice field and all that but its still a field.... I spent half the night with an open mic that sort of sounded like it was in the middle of that field.  and of course during the race Johnny spent time with CBS that was lost to us.. Dirt VIsion put out a bad product last night.... the car count, the race track, CBS, no one else is responsible for that... That is all on the WOO

You also Didn't pay $40 just for that race. You could have also switched off the woo broadcast for Knoxville weekly show or the Woo Late models. 

The downtime was poorly handled but not that end of the world. 

Yep, that's exactly what I did.   I watched the Knoxville weekly show and thought it was very good.   They had their show over by 10:30 and that was with repairing the turn 2 fence after Matt Moro punched a hole in it.   Then I went to bed.     The WoO race is being repeated on CBS here in a little bit.   I'm recording it and will watch it later today.    One of the reasons I decided to watch Knoxville instead was I knew it wasn't going to be long and drawn out.     Now I can watch the CBS telecast and forward through the interviews and all the boring stuff.   

Your right. I did miss the point entirely... I'd be a little upset too if I paid for a product that was comprimised for a product that could be had for free. Not good business. 

I am guessing they wanted all the Preliminary stuff done early (before 8) so people could watch the special sprint show on CBS at 8.. 

9before)

I have recently subscribed to dirtvision and have nothing but praise for their broadcast.  I purchased the broadcast when the first race was available at a discount and have decided to continue subscribing for at least the next several months.  Nothing but praise for Dirtvision!  Do they have a hiccup now and then, yes and that will happen now and then, but thoroughly enjoy their broadcast.  Last night I watched the CBS broadcast to see how the sport we love would be represented.  As a long time fan, I have seen many of the previous broadcasts over the years on several different networks like Diamond P Sports and the Slick 50 series, both many years ago.  Looking at things from the standpoint of how this could help propel the sport we love, I would say it did very little to help.  The broadcast was very poor.  Yes, I do have higher expectations for a broadcast from CBS and this fell very short.   Almost like it did not have a producer to guide the broadcast.  I even thought that maybe CBS sent out the second team or the bench team....very poor broadcast.  From the poor transitions from announcer to announcer to the frozen screen that eliminated viewing of the last restart that determined the winner.  They even stated that Donny Schatz is a 10 time winner instead of a 10 time series champion.  It really felt like a rag-tag production.  There should have been a storyboard of what the broadcast should hopefully follow and then ways to alter the broadcast if there were delays that would cause a change in that storyboard.  Did they not think of a research person to provide material that would have been valuable to educate the viewers who know little about the Outlaws?  I have also enjoyed Brad Doty as an analyst and his insight from a driver's perspective in the past, but last night he even seemed off of his game.  Maybe, it was not his fault, but the fault of the position CBS placed him in.  All in all last night's broadcast did virtually nothing to help our sport gain a wider appreciation and following in my opinion.

Television isnt all about honesty and integrity. It would be very easy to start the races at 6 but start the broadcast at 8. Squish it all together to eliminate dead airtime and there is very little chance the tv would catch up to the live event. Sure people with social media could know the winner before the tv shows the A Main but most wont seek to spoil their own surprise.

Even though I may not know you, I 
care what most of you think!

I thought the CBS broadcast was kind of amateurish. Also voice and video did not match up. Made it hard watching interviews when voice & lip movements did not match up. Yellow late, went to commercials, came back & showed a,still photo of Jacob Allen in pit area then went to more commercials. 10 laps to go when yellow came out, Sweet leading. 5 to go when they got back to showing race. Race had already restarted & Marcedo was leading! Poor showing by a major network. 

I didn't really have any issues with the Dirtvision broadcast. I basically expected their to be a little bit of downtime when I saw on facebook that heat 1 was already completed around what, 7pm maybe? I figured that they were moving things up in order to make sure that they could use that full hour for the feature. Not sure what financials were involved for it but I would imagine that they had 1hr of telivsion and at 9:59.59 their time was up and the next program would air on the network and the last thing they wanted is for the race to not be completed. And to have victory lane interviews. I also expected delays for commercials as well (ever go to an NFL game?? Delays there too). I figured that the Dirtvision broadcast would be slighly compromised and I did not have a problem with that. For $40 a month I got to see that race, Knoxville after, the race the night  before plus Attica, 2 nights of Knoxville last week, 2 Beaver Dam Races 2wks ago, 2 Lake Ozarks, Plus the Knoxville and Attica races those weeks too. I would say that 1 broadcast on dirtvision that was slighly not up to par but is ok, especially since I got to see all heat races and feature with no issue and the finish between 1st & 2nd was what .067 and the top 3 were racing each other for about 10laps.

As far as the CBS Sports broadcast, I cannot comment because I do not get that channel. I have seen mixed reviews but that seems to be with anything. My only constructive critiicism is although it is great to have racing live on a sports network, it is only CBS Sports Network. Sorry I don't mean to sound harsh to CBS but around where I am  (not sure if its the same for everyone) in order to get get CBS SN you have to buy an upgraded cable package or sattelite. Although it is available for Millions of homes, it is not probably at the top of a lot of people's channel list and more and more people seem to be going away from cable, down grading their packages, and going away from Sattelite to streaming services. Not sure what streaming services have CBS SN but again it seems like an upgraded package is needed or an app purchase. Basically it just seems like getting on Live tv on CBS SN is kind of like putting out a VHS at the time people are starting to buy DVDs.

Again I didn't see the broadcast but have seen quite a few criticism of it. I am not sure why they just do not match up dirtvision and just have the people who produce the races each week do the production on the broadcast tv. It seems like it has been the best production of sprint car racing that anyone has done in a long time. I think it might actually get more recognition if they were to get on youtube live for a race or two if they are looking to get more new fans interested and if they were able to use the dirtvision production, it might work. That drone view is probably the best shot in all of racing.

I have live Sprint Car, Midget and Late Model racing in my man cave with so many consecutive nights of racing that I'm falling behind on the few shows I normally watch.  The price is doable and I just successfully upgraded to a mesh wifi system and have eliminated any buffering and locked screens on my end.  I've got three cats that like to come and hang out and watch racing with me as well.

So what's that you say?  The broadcast wasn't perfect and the Outlaws will need to tweak their setup?  I am confident that they will review and correct those problems.  And Cedar Lake, my home track for years, is coming up and I'm sure they will have the bugs worked out for the double header.  

Life is good, I have no complaints.

Stan Meissner