Full Throttle

The engine that has driven the nations #1 auto racing venue to ever greater heights is it’s ability to use, some say abuse, all manor of media to promote itself.

Everything from websites, NASCAR specific magazines and TV shows, Hollywood films, logo encrusted crockpots and the race cars themselves that have in some ways have become “stars” of their own have all been massaged by NASCAR’s media machine.

Those of us that started out in the political side of the Blogosphere have long noted the demise of the print media as a primary (in many cases as a source at all) means to obtain valuable news coverage. Every top rated newspaper has lost and continues to lose subscribers in droves as readership moves in other directions.

The powers that be in NASCAR (i.e. HWSBO and company) haven’t lost sight of that reality.

“Newspapers are making business decisions, but you hope they are making decisions that also serve the readers well,” said NASCAR’s Ramsey Poston, the director of corporate communications.

Poston said NASCAR, despite all its TV money and its own web site, doesn’t see newspapers as increasingly superfluous. And he points to Miami as a clear case in point. “The numbers in Miami (with the Miami Herald’s cutbacks) have clearly gone down,” Poston said, pointing to the impact on the France family’s Homestead-Miami Speedway and on NASCAR’s TV ratings, too. “We’ve taken a really big hit in Miami, which is not good. We have a lot of work to do in Miami.”

The article gives an excellent overview of the problems NASCAR faces as the media landscape changes. Included are notes of how NASCAR has taken aim at it’s own foot via Saturday night races that crowd print media’s deadlines and the latest “media whores on the block” ESPN, that are insisting on later starting times next year.

NASCAR’s director of corporate communications Ramsey Poston has said “We are always trying to sell this sport,” and part of NASCAR’s job is to make the sport more user friendly for newspapers.

Why does the new NASCAR “scoring loop” and the introduction of a stats package come to mind? Kind of sounds like “quarterback ratings,” and “team ERA’s doesn’t it?”

Anyway, my snarkyness aside it’s an interesting article and a peek, if every so small, into the NASCAR media machine.

NASCAR, NEXTEL Cup, Auto Racing, Motorsports, Full Throttle