Formerly the "Jeep" World of Adventure Sports, the Aura 360 produced (a great little Portland, ME based marketing/production company that also produces Baja 500 and 1000 programs for NBC as well) aired the first of its four "rally" focused shows on 10/31/10. While the remaining three episodes will devote substantial segments of its one hour time slot to the RallyCross events that have taken place in New Jersey over the past few months (last of the three events occurring this weekend) the 10/31 show contained extended coverage of Travis Pastrana's recent record breaking run up the Mt. Washington auto road.
Over the past year or so I have documented the ongoing ratings success or lack thereof, of the various shortcourse off-road series (CORR, LOORRS and TORC), the Baja 500 and 1000 as all have been fortunate enough to be featured on network TV during prime weekend sports viewing time periods. None of the three could be considered to be rousing successes as one series has folded, LOORRS seems unable to grow its audience (but at least has been consistent in its ratings) and TORC has been relegated to HD Theater (though its series there is ambitious and extensive) for now.
I am not going to claim that network TV is the be all and end all of broadcast marketing. With the quality and speed of Internet video improving by the day and more and more TV channels (SPEED, Fuel, HD Theater, etc.) broadcasting "dirt" sports like Rally and shortcourse offroad, there are certainly many viable options for a motorsport series to get its product in front of viewers. Network TV (particularly weekend afternoons) remains, however, the most widely available, free, over the air, traditional method with which one can reach said viewers. That being said, its not cheap. In fact, in most cases (XGames excepted) the occasions that these events are broadcast on network TV it is not the network paying the racing organization to broadcast its events (as would be the case with football, baseball, basketball, NASCAR, etc.) and instead these racing organizations and their partners (read advertisers/sponsors) are paying the network for access to their signal in order to get exposure.
So we get to last weekend's World of Adventure Sports, 3PM Sunday broadcast. Could a non-stick and ball broadcast have a worse airtime? I doubt it. Running up against a number of NFL contests the World of Adventure sports offered a nice alternative for viewers but there just weren't that many viewers to be had. Below is the weekend sports ratings for network broadcasts.
"NFL on Fox": Vikings-Patriots (89%) | 10/31 | Fox | 4:35-7:50pm | 15.2 | 25,222 |
"Sunday Night Football": Steelers-Saints | 10/31 | NBC | 8:31-11:21pm | 10.7 | 18,106 |
World Series: Giants-Rangers: Game Four | 10/31 | Fox | 8:18-11:32pm | 9.0 | 15,537 |
"NFL on CBS": (single) | 10/31 | CBS | 1:00-4:05pm | 8.6 | 13,963 |
"NFL on Fox": (regional) | 10/31 | Fox | 1:03-4:35pm | 8.2 | 13,127 |
World Series: Giants-Rangers: Game Three | 10/30 | Fox | 6:54-9:52pm | 6.7 | 11,460 |
NCAA Football: (regional) | 10/30 | ABC | 8:06-11:46pm | 4.7 | 7,645 |
"Football Night in America" | 10/31 | NBC | 7:30-8:15pm | 4.2 | 6,828 |
NCAA Football: Georgia-Florida | 10/30 | CBS | 3:30-7:31pm | 3.3 | 5,477 |
NCAA Football: (regional) | 10/30 | ABC | 3:30-6:59pm | 3.3 | 5,154 |
"Fox NFL Sunday" | 10/31 | Fox | 12:00-1:00pm | 2.6 | n/a |
"The NFL Today" | 10/31 | CBS | 12:00-1:00pm | 2.2 | n/a |
NCAA Football: Tulsa-Notre Dame | 10/30 | NBC | 2:30-6:30pm | 1.6 | 2,288 |
PGA Tour Special: Best of 2010 | 10/31 | CBS | 5:00-6:00pm | 1.0 | 1,487 |
ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating (taped) | 10/31 | NBC | 4:00-6:00pm | 0.8 | 1,157 |
"College Football Today" | 10/30 | CBS | 3:00-3:30pm | 0.8 | n/a |
"College Football Countdown" | 10/30 | ABC | 3:00-3:30pm | 0.6 | n/a |
"College Football 2010 Special" | 10/30 | CBS | 2:30-3:00pm | 0.5 | n/a |
World of Adventure (taped) | 10/31 | NBC | 3:00-4:00pm | 0.3 | n/a |
Additionally, the NASCAR race broadcast on ESPN that afternoon garnered a 3.1 rating and had 5.18 million viewers.
Personal opinion? While certainly not a rally only program (Parkour anyone?? come on...), Pastrana's run up Mt. Washington was the advertised highlight of the show and the one upon which the most focus was placed and was outviewed by 266% by figure skating and was the lowest rated sports broadcast of the weekend--not good, especially if you are already paying the network just to broadcast to begin with.
How does it compare to other recent "offroad" broadcasts? The most recent network broadcast of a LOORRS race in May garnered a 0.5 rating and the previous four shortcourse offroad broadcasts on CBS, NBC and ABC all getting either a 0.4 or 0.5 rating with only a TORC event back in mid '09 grabbing a 0.7 rating on ABC and diverging from the trend. If this were an apples to apples comparison you could likely draw some conclusions--unfortunately it is not. None of those shortcourse broadcasts had to go up against competition like the NFL and those broadcasts were also solely devoted to the offroad motorsport of choice, unlike the World of Adventure Sport, which only concentrated on Pastrana's run but ran other segments as well--splitting its target viewership.
So was it a good result?? No, anytime you are outdrawn by some sad sack skating exhibition its not a good thing...but given the lack of promotion, niche of a niche of a niche motorsport focus (offroad>rally>hillclimb) and substantial competition, the results are not surprising. It will be more interesting to me to see if the ratings climb even marginally (is a 0.4 too much to ask?) when the World of Adventure Sports broadcasts (in whatever form it ends up taking) the head to head racing of RallyCross that has taken place in New Jersey. We will see...
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