RE: Really focus question: Whats the point of Championship Series
>Without the manufacturers you would have no TV, and nobody
>in America would even know what rallying is.
That's soooooooooooooo true!!!!!!
Why prior to the last3 years there never _was_ rally in North America, there couldn't have been!!!!!!
After all, there is no other means of mass communication, not in the land of functional illiterates, and living where you do I can see how you would believe that (State Dept of Education in Mass reported in 1997 that 51% of the states Adult population to be _functionally_ illitereate, and if one subtracts the amount of students in the Greater Boston, Slumberville, Mudfud, Cambridge area, that make foe an even more frightening figure.)
But, there's just one little thing I'm not clear on Morgan, maybe you could explain this to me: how did we communicate the exsistance of this before the paltry 20 minute "Saturday morning 30 minute Smurf cartoon filled with Smurf commercials" type thing which is pushed as race "reporting"?
How did we formerly have 90 car entries at STPR prior?
Are you saying
>that you are so rich that you don't need any sponsorship
>help?!
No, that's more of a NE phenomenon.
You won't even get a penny if sponsors don't even
>know what they are giving money to. Without spectators and
>TV coverage, we would have nothing.
Well Morgan, it doesen't seem like WE, that being the vast majority of the current of past membership have yet recieved anything.
It takes money to play
>and if you don't have it, you have to find someone to give
>it to you,
Yeah, like work is like so passe.
and they are going to want a return on their
>investment,ie. viewers.
Exactly, so when you have cheerleaders yapping for years about how wonderful this TV stuff is and they say stuff like what you are saying without thinking about following thru with your statement, it sounds like a bunch of PR hype from an optimistic observer at best or self serving crap at worse.
Scenario: Me explaining to potential sponsor why they should give a sheeeeeeeut about National TV coverage "Uh, like, you have to understand that since the manufacturer council teams pay for the bulk of the TV coverage it is only natural that they should recieve the bulk of the coverage*, so please give me a pick/up truck load of Zlotys, say $250,000 check made out to PloStrive and I'll buy a used Evo and even if I finsish in the top 10, the car with your stickers will never been seen, OK?"
Potential sponsor " Say that sound great! No chance of TV coverage, I can understand that! Here you are!!!!!!"
"Thanks Dad"
You can't expect it all to work over
>night, it is going to take time.
Well Morgan, how long?
There has been a trend and some of us who are pretty good at sighting along trend lines and watching the direction they are headed, since we have been around and lived thru 3 or 4 prior "we're just on the edge of the big breakthru in to mainstream popularity" hype crap eras
think this current Hype Crap Era sound and smells just as foolishly optimistic and fishy as the previous 3.
You should support the
>direction the sport is going.
Support the increasing fragmentation of the series?
Support the trend toward never ending escalation of costs?
Support the commodifying of every aspect of the 'Sport'?
At some point down the line,
>Club Rally will be what Pro Rally is/was and Pro Rally will
>be what it is supposed to be, PROFESSIONAL, which means
>money-people getting paid to do it. Haven't you noticed how
>much more popular and exciting to watch the sport has become
>since the manufacturers got involved. Personally, I think it
>would be nice if Pro Rally became an international series,
>maybe more people will be able to make a living(or break
>even) from it. It will provide rally prep shops, PR people,
>photographers, writers,organizers, etc. with more paying
>work. It all works fairly well in Europe.
All of Euope, and the whole rest of the world _works_ on foundation of Motorclubs first, and 95% of _all_ the effort is sorta like what you see there at Vinnies prior to events, stacks and stacks of friends rushing around helping out.
In case you don't know, even the fancy WRC teams are all built on a foundation of young enthusiastic guys working for pretty crappy wages(relatively speaking related to the sums being spent for components, and development) although they can do good by banking their Per Diem.
If you don't like
>it, Club rally is right up your alley
Eeerily enough Club looks like it costs what nationals cost previous to all this hypped up BS, but with no advantages in terms of the vaunted "marketability".
*Near direct quote from the guy "who has the licks to get the job done", who oddly enough still has FAILED UTTERLY to even ring a series sponsor aboard in HOW MANY YEARS????!!!
Morgan, that should be proof enough of the error and incompetence that is behind the current push.
See, even without TV, we used to have a series sponsorship, and we didn\t have to pay for the stupid moronic stickers which we are forced to give space on our cars to.
And there were contingency prizes down to divisional level.
$400 when entry was $75 was OK by me. For any car of the brand, not just the latest.
Oh, I keep alluding to what we did prior to TV and im keep forgetting.
We read.
And we looked at Photographs.
John Vanlandingham
JohnLane.
