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the Speed Channel
Strong early #s for NASCAR-w/o-races network
By Gabriel Spitzer
If you want to get a feel for Fox’s programming strategy for its newest member, Speed Channel, put in your ear plugs and flick on the tube.
Call it making noise.
Monday through Friday, the 24-hour cable network dedicated to all things speedy will rebroadcast old Daytona 500 races, going all the way back to 1979. Some of the races will get four or five airings.
The Speed Channel, heir to Speedvision, was relaunched on Feb. 11 under Fox ownership. The network is broadcasting just about every NASCAR-related program it can find.
It's working, certainly as a get-acquainted strategy. The key will be whether it continues to work over time.
Just how many speed junkies are out there, anyhow, and will they necessarily tune into the Speed Channel in sufficient numbers?
The network has a tricky strategy to pull off, providing heavy coverage of NASCAR without broadcasting the actual races, which will continue to air on Fox.
"The ratings have been great," says Richy Glassberg, head of sales for the Speed Channel, of the first several weeks.
The Speed Channel has not released ratings for the first full month of its new-look launch. But in its first week, the network generated a 0.3 primetime rating, its highest one-week rating since Speedvision launched in 1996. Its ratings from 7 p.m. to midnight showed a 74 percent improvement over the same week in 2001.
According to Glassberg, Speed Channel’s Monday evening program "NASCAR Inside Winston Cup" has beaten ESPN2’s "RPM 2Night" in head-to-head competition every week for the Speed Channel’s first three weeks of existence—even though ESPN2 reaches about 30 million more homes than the Speed Channel.
"Those are great numbers. That is happening all over the schedule," says Glassberg.
The Speed Channel is now in about 50 million homes nationwide. The network’s goal is to be in 70 million to 80 million homes in the near future.
Household penetration may indeed be the key to the network’s long-term success.
"It really comes down to how many subscribers you get, and how easy it is for the viewers to find the product," says Hadrian Shaw, a sports analyst for Paul Kagan Associates.
"As far as getting 70 or 80 million subscribers, it seems like it would take two or three years for that to happen. Sometimes you wonder when companies throw that out there, but this looks like it’s a pretty reasonable goal."
From 2000 to 2001, the Speed Channel’s household penetration grew by 55 percent, from 30 million households to 46.5 million. It hit the 50 million mark by early February 2002, and it may get another boost now that it has begun broadcasting under Fox.
By way of comparison, another Fox cable network, FX, went from 45.1 million households in 1999 to 74.5 million in 2001.
ESPN2, a more mature but comparable network to the Speed Channel, has shown more modest growth, posting an average annual gain of 9.8 percent since between 1998 and 2001. ESPN2 was in about 82 million households by last year.
The network has not yet released its demo ratings, but Glassberg says that the network’s young male skew has not been diluted as the audience has grown.
"When you’re that strong in the male demos, we were a little worried that we’d become kind of like everybody else.
"But we’re still so strong in these great demos. We’ve always had such great upscale stuff, it’s just that people didn’t realize it. We’re very strong in the male demos, in professional and in managerial," Glassberg says.
He says that Speed Channel has held on to most of Speedvision’s old advertisers, and has added about 20 new ones, including Budweiser and Prudential. He also says about a dozen of the deals are for cross-platform packages, many shared with the Fox Cable Sports sales unit for time on FX and Fox Sports Net.
The question all along has been whether a network all about NASCAR, but without any actual NASCAR races, would pull in the fans.
Observers are mixed on Speed Channel’s chances.
"It’s a smart thing to refocus the channel on NASCAR," says Matthew Bortz, managing director of the Bortz Media & Sports Group, a Denver-based consulting firm.
"Currently, NASCAR is so much more popular in the United States than some of the open-wheel stuff they’ve been showing in the past. I think it remains to be seen, ultimately, whether this ends up being the NASCAR channel, or all things racing with an emphasis on NASCAR."
Others think the network's carriage goals are a bit optimistic.
"With their lineup now, 70 to 80 million is pretty ambitious. I don’t think they’re going to get to 70 to 80 million with just reruns and live CART and Formula 1 stuff," says Mike McCarthy, editor of MotorSportsTV.com, an independent racing news web site.
McCarthy says the reaction from fans has been quite positive, but that for the Speed Channel to grow it will need to borrow some programming from its Fox siblings.
"About the only thing that will do that is live NASCAR racing. Look at FX; they struggled for a long time, and when did they start getting big numbers? When they added live NASCAR."
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CABLE NETWORK HOUSEHOLD PENETRATION (In Millions) |
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| 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | |
| Speedvision | 14.7 | 22 | 30 | 46.5 |
| ESPN | 75.5 | 77.1 | 80 | 85.6 |
| ESPN2 | 61.9 | 67.2 | 73.5 | 81.9 |
| FX | 37.6 | 45.1 | 56.1 | 74.5 |
| TBS | 76.2 | 78.6 | 81 | 86.5 |
| CNN | 75.4 | 77.4 | 79.7 | 85.1 |
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Source: Kagan World Media Analysis of
data provided by networks |
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March 12, 2002 © 2002 Media Life
-Gabriel Spitzer is a staff writer for Media Life.
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