From IMG’s "Fast Facts," distributed at the race.

1999:    Sunday:         59,751
         Weekend Total: 142,264

1998:    Sunday:         70,269
         Weekend Total: 175,980

Given that it rained in 1999, the decine in attendance is not surprising.

You see, Dave, IMG’s figures are used to lure sponsors and advertisers and
perhaps secure temporary credit for the event. If IMG engages in
contractual relations with parties on the basis of erroneous figures,
that’s called fraud, and bad things can happen to IMG as a result of using
fraud to induce parties to contract with it.

The great shame here is that when you author your frauds, nothing worse
happens to you than being exposed in this community as what you are.
Perhaps if you felt the sting of your deception, you wouldn’t be so quick
to spread lies. In any event, this biased and erroneous piece of fiction
you’ve published has eroded any scrap of credibility you may have had as a
journalist.

We rarely get to see you wear your journalist’s cap here, as you post
almost exclusively as a fan. The one time, however, that you come here as
a journalist, you’re so far afield that we’re all laughing at you.

This latest bit of anti-CART resentment will stay with you for a long time.

First of all, this is cross-posted to both newsgroups, simply because
it contains data that both should find interesting for discussion
purposes.

These are the actual numbers of "households", based on the Nielsen TV
ratings, for both CART and the IRL through the Portland and Colorado
Springs races, respectively. Remember that Nielsen uses this
"household" term to represent how many TVs are tuned to the given
telecast, and not the actual number of people watching, since it is
currently impossible to know how many people are in front of each TV.
These numbers are not the Nielsen "ratings" number (which you usually
see as a 1.3 or 5.5, etc.). Since a "network" TV Nielsen "point"
represents more "households" than a cable TV "point", I thought I
would go straight to the actual "households" number to remove that
confusing detail. I also have included CART’s 1999 number for the same
period, for reasons to be shown at the end of this post.

CART 1999 & 2000 "Households"

Event           1999            2000            

Homestead       1,580,000               1,326,000
Long Beach      1,501,000               547,000
Rio             1,256,000               518,000
Motegi          291,000         1,085,000
Nazareth                524,000         467,000
Milwaukee       1,226,000               233,000
Detroit         1,299,000               538,000
Portland                1,076,000               443,000
                ________        ________

Totals          8,753,000               5,157,000

Let’s look at what kind of change that is …

Event           Change +/-      % +/-

Homestead       – 254,000               – 16.1%
Long Beach      - 954,000               – 63.6%
Rio             – 738,000               – 58.8%
Motegi          + 794,000               +272.9%
Nazareth                - 57,000                - 10.9%
Milwaukee       – 993,000               – 81.0%
Detroit         – 761,000               – 58.6%
Portland                - 633,000               – 58.8%
                ________

Total           – 3,566,000

Now, the IRL in the year 2000, and I will put Indy separate …

Event           Households

Orlando         1,289,000
Phoenix         1,682,000
Las Vegas       1,273,000
Ft. Worth               233,000
Colorado        1,027,000
                _________

Total           5,504,000

Now Indy, with Pole and Bubble days …

Event           Households

Pole Day        1,260,000
Bubble Day      1,543,000
Indy 500                5,565,000
                _________

Total           8,368,000

Now let’s contrast the two series, in couple of ways, for the same
relative time period …

If you compare the 8 races CART ran relative to the 5 races the IRL
ran during a like period of time in 2000 (but not counting Indy and
its Pole and Bubble days …), you get …

CART Households IRL Households

5,157,000                       5,504,000

which shows that 347,000 more households watched those 5 IRL races
than watched those 8 CART races …

Or if you look simply at the singular Indy 500 telecast as compared to
CART’s 8 races, you get …

CART Households Indy 500 Race Households

5,157,000                       5,565,000

which shows that 408,000 more households watched the one event, the
Indy 500 (rain delay and all …), than all 8 CART events.

An interesting point to consider right here is that, by and large,
many of the households for both CART and IRL telecasts are "repeat"
households (i.e. the same TVs watching each event, as in "following"
the series …), but the Indy 500 race number represent *NO* possible
"repeats" …

Now, let’s add *ALL* the IRL numbers, and then do some further
comparisons …

IRL 2000 Season (through Colorado)

5 Events                        5,504,000
Indy 500 Pole Day               1,260,000
Indy 500 Bubble Day     1,543,000
Indy 500 Race           5,565,000
                        ________

Total                   13,872,000

CART 2000 Season (through Portland)

8 events                        5,157,000

So, if you take the complete IRL season (through Colorado) and the
entire CART season (through Portland) and compare just the number of
Nielsen ratings households, you get …

IRL Households          13,872,000

CART Households 5,157,000
                        _________

Difference              8,715,000

Or, more than 8 million, 7 hundred-thousand *MORE* "households" have
tuned into IRL events than CART events in the year 2000 during the
same period.

Just simple numbers and simple facts …

Please draw your own conclusions …

Hope this helps …

Allan          

http://www.speedvision.com/pub/articles/racing/04IRL/000707a.html

  Just in case the jury was still out for some of you -as expected – in
order to keep the CART teams from coming in and pissing in his sandbox
again, and making the amatures look like, well, amatures, Mr. I’m Taking My
Speedway and Going Home moved the Indy 500 schedule back to three weeks.

  I guess the ole 25/8 rule was just too blatant, even for that schmoo.

Stevie Z

–
"Life is like riding the bus…both require change." – Dennis Miller
"Ours go up to 11." – Nigel Tufnel/Chip Ganassi
"At 230 mph, a race car has your undivided attention." – Jimmy Vasser
"Perfect speed, my son, is being there." Richard Bach, JLS
"Next, you’ll need a proper spring Reverb unit.
Unfortunately the new digital units don’t produce
the proper crashing sound when you drop them." – H.R. Williamson

Bait for spammers (With credit to E. Needham):
root@localhost
postmaster@localhost
admin@localhost
abuse@localhost

From A.P.
"Indy returning to tradition:"
"The month of May will once again be devoted to the Indianapolis 500.
The race will switch to the original three-week schedule that includes two
weeks of practice and two weekends of qualifying, Indianapolis Motor
Speedway President Tony George said Friday."

Well TG just couldn’t stand a CART team coming in and whipping his IRL
drivers.  So he changes the structure so the IRL drivers will have a decided
unfair advantage.

Later,
Ray

Will cart and irl be united again?

Tariq

What was with ABC’s audio? 3/4 of the race with no sound, and then they cut
away right at the end to go to golf. No interview with Moreno. Pathetic.

Lloyd Curtis
Call the ball

Wow! Some start at the Cleveland race.

11 cars spin and 5 are knocked out of the race. That’s almost HALF the field
involved.

You never see that in NASCAR, the IRL or even Indy Lights.

But it surely isn’t the fault of the drivers. No, these are the "cream of
the crop". I guess the turn wasn’t wide enough.

Checked out the sports on my local news and all of them showed the incident.
Most of the sportscasters and news people joked and laughed about it.

Is this the image of the series that Bobby Rahal wants to put forth?

Either there’s no passing on the short ovals or else there’s contact in the
first minutes of the race on the road courses. This is becoming
embarrassing.

Tom

–
"We need to make peace with Indianapolis. We need to go down
there on bended knee and say, ‘What can we do to make you happy?’ We’ve
danced long enough, and it’s time to get married – or at least go to bed
together"

 "In all honesty, Tony George doesn’t need us. We need to find a way to
convince him he does."

Pat Patrick – USA Today, Friday, May 26, 2000

Since DigiGuide Offline only goes two weeks into advance I had to go out and
get a listing mag for once. According to both Satellite TV Europe and
What Satellite TV this is the British Eurosport scedule for the next three
races:

July 16 Molson Indy Toronto
9pm-10.45pm (British Eurosport) Short Turnaround (8pm-10pm BST ESPN)

July 23 Michigan 500 Presented By Toyota
9pm-10.45pm (British Eurosport) Short Turnaround (6.30pm-10pm BST ABC)

July 30 Target Grand Prix at Chicago Motor Speedway Presented by Energizer
10.15pm-Midnight (British Eurosport) Short Turnaround (9pm-11pm BST ABC)

Looks like a bit of an improvement. Inside Cart also returns to British
Eurosport this Friday(7th July) and is repeated on Saturday morning, check
listings for times. Hopefully we’ll get to see that interview with Moreno,
maybe?

One alarming thing out of this is I could not find any sign of coverage on
Channel 5 for these events, just lots of golf and MLB. But terrestrial
schedules are always subject to change and Eurosport’s schedules are very
subject to change.

This has been your schedule update, I hope you find it useful!

Adam Hatton

Haha.. well congrats to Moreno for his first win.  Unfortunately, here
in West Coast barely got to see anything at all.  Overall we got to see
about 60 – 65 laps and the overall "story" of the race.  Yeah woohoo.
For everybody who doesnt get tape delay, here is a example:
Page: Welcome back to Cleveland race..there is no change in the order..
Johnstone: Yeah
Couple shots of different cars…
Page: We’ll be right back

Commericals
Page: Hi from Cleveland, as you can see Andretti has lossed a positon…

Replay of losing position
Johnstone: Some analysis
Some in car shots and aerial shots..
Page:We’ll be back to the Marconi Grand Prix

Commerials

Horrible is all can say.  I could see the ABC editors editing out
portions of the race during the telecast. The commerical breaks occurred

every 3-4 minutes.

question for you mechanical gurus out there:

we keep hearing in pre-race discussions about how certain teams, the
patrick guys and moreno in particular it seems, can find ways to turn
what would normally be a three-stop race into a two-stop race because
they’ve been able to find something that gives them better gas mileage
than the rest of the field.

my question is, how do crews find those mileage advantages? what’s
involved beyond a driver’s particular style and using the right mixture
settings?