15770. Knoxville LIVE on SPEED
by jwwrogers, 7/22/04 8:06 ET
SPEED Channel expands Knoxville Nationals live broadcast to 4 hours
Knoxville, Iowa- July 14, 2004 (Bruce Neimeth) The 44th Annual Knoxville Nationals, presented by the Midwest Ford Dealers, will be a 4-hour live show on SPEED Channel from 8 to midnight CDT on August 14th. This will give race fans throughout North America the opportunity to share in all of the excitement from the drop of the green flag for the “last chance” qualifying races to the Victory Lane celebration. The winner will receive a $125,000 check and trophy as the 2004 Knoxville Nationals Champion.
The 2003 broadcast of the Knoxville Nationals, a 3-hour show, received broad recognition by fans and the media as a major step forward by introducing the excitement of professional sprint car racing to the massive NASCAR, F1, IHRA and “motorhead” audience that is Speed Channel. Dave Argabright’s live interviews of 15 drivers gave viewers a look a at yesterday and today’s champions, the “new kids on the block”, the perennial “als- ran” - and the excitement of two drivers that “weren’t planning to be here” 10 days before – Erin Crocker and Kenny Jacobs – who grabbed headlines throughout the week.
Lingner Group Productions used their in-car camera technology from the Champ Car, 24-Hours of LeMans and Rolex 24-hours of Daytona broadcasts to put viewers in the cockpit of three different sprint cars all night. Multiple rotating cameras took viewers from the driver’s eyes to the steering wheel to that massive wall in turn one. Outside the cockpit the LGP cameras captured the hard and fast racing action all night, capped off with an exciting and emotional Victory Lane celebration by Danny Lasoski, the crew and Tony Stewart, his car owner .
According to Ralph Capitani, Director of Racing at Knoxville Raceway, “When we all looked back on last years broadcast to see how to make it better for 2004 the answers were pretty easy - more of the preliminary racing that took 100+ drivers and teams down to the top 24, more individual coverage of those 24 drivers, and more of the post-race stories while everything is fresh in the drivers memories.” He went on to say, “Everyone at SPEED Channel, Knoxville and Lingner also agreed that the broadcast team from 2003 would be back.”
Ralph Sheheen, veteran sportscaster covering everything from sprints to NASCAR will call the “play-by-play” with Brad Doty, former sprint car champion, providing the color and drivers-eye view from the booth. Dave Argabright, author, columnist and sportscaster from the Indy 500 to the bull rings of Indiana will be joined again in the infield by Tony Bokhoven, the voice of Knoxville Raceway since 1998.
In 2004, SPEED Channel is the exclusive U.S. cable home for many of the top motor sports series in the world. In addition, SPEED’s weekly programming schedule brings enthusiastic television to Prime Time Monday through Thursday. Now available in more than 66 million homes in North America, SPEED Channel is among the fastest growing sports cable networks in the country and the home to NASCAR TV. For more information visit SPEEDTV.com.
Knoxville Raceway, located in Central Iowa, with seating for 25,800 race fans, 52 corporate suites above the main grandstand and the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame & Museum located outside turn 2 enjoys over 250,000 visitors annually.
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