Oversaturation equals declining interest

By DAVID GREEN

An off weekend for the Cup Series might be a slow time for fans and for the media covering motor sports, but you sure couldn't tell it judging by the activity on TR.com yesterday and today. There's plenty of news and a good bit of interactivity from visitors to the Web site.

Picking one subject to develop into a post is tough, so I won't try that. Instead, let's talk about off weekends -- or, more specifically, the dearth of them.

I'm on record as one who believes there are too many races.

Sure, there were once as many as 48 races a year on the old Grand National tour. But most of them were short races on short tracks and the cost of running those 48 races was microscopic compared to the cost of competing in one event nowadays. Most of them were in a pretty concentrated geographic area, so travel was less of a problem with regard to economic and physical/emotional costs. And very, very few of the races were televised, so the product really needed to be distributed to the masses in person.

Now, I think the excess number of races is a contributor to the declining interest in the sport, if measurements of TV ratings and attendance mean what I think they mean.

I also think most of the races on the schedule are too long, which contributes to the oversaturation of fans and competitors alike.

I know some fans have an insatiable appetite and "too many races" or "races that are too long" are concepts that don't compute for them. That's their prerogative, and I don't mean to change anybody's mind -- I'm merely offering my thoughts.

However, I believe that the ones with insatiable appetites are more likely to pay attention to fewer and shorter races than those who have been overly stimulated are going to watch more races for longer periods of time.

If my logic and my arithmetic are correct, fewer and shorter races would yield a net gain in fan interest.