For you Canadians.....since the Ad Agency for NCBA can't figure it out....I would hope you can promote Canadian Beef via Nascar. It appears you can reach a lot of folks North of the Border and probably South with your message.....Oh I forgot we have a Diet here in the states that we think will never become obsolete........... :roll: :roll:
I also forgot Canadian Beef is not as good as US Beef! :roll: That is what we are being told???? :roll:
I also forgot you Canadians have a ID System for Age and Source verifications?? :roll:
And some organizations in the US say your product is not safe???? :roll:
I guess all US Beef is safe....we can take the Packers and USDA word for it.............since we have this wonderful trace back system with all this data in 100+ private data warehouses and NCBA having figured out how to built thebest one??? :roll:
I am glad I feed my own Beef and when I go out I eat PORK!
Race to the Top
The bizarre phenomenon of NASCAR on TV
By Stephen Cole
July 4, 2005
Spectators watch driver Tony Stewart in action during the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series Pepsi 400 in Daytona Beach, Florida. Photo Ronald Martinez/Getty Images.
It's Father's Day and Fox-TV and Canada's Sportsnet are airing NASCAR's Batman Begins 400. Just now, racers are hopping into cars bearing Home Depot, Kellogg's and Viagra logos. After taped testimonials from the children of competing racers ("Dad, you're the best pit crew chief ever!"), Fox delivers the results of its "Who is the Sexiest NASCAR Driver?" poll. (After 16 million votes are cast, the winner is Dale Earnhardt Jr.) Then, the 200,000 fans at Michigan International Speedway are asked to stand. "Heavenly father," a voice rings out, "thank you for this beautiful day..."
During the U.S. anthem, Fox throws to an address for a military website, after which the public-address announcer shouts, "This weekend, moviegoers around the world are flocking to see Batman..." Moments later, a Caped Crusader waves the starting flag. A cheer fills the oval stadium. Cars rocket forward. And Fox commentator D.W. Waltrip lets out a holler: "Boogity-boogity-boogity, happy Father's Day, evrabod-ahh! Let's go race, boys!"
"Evrabod-ahh," you may be surprised to learn, includes a growing number of Canadians. In 1999, TSN averaged 163,000 viewers for 17 NASCAR competitions; so far over eight races broadcast in 2005, the Canadian network has averaged 319,000 spectators. (Sportsnet, which runs fewer races, draws lower audiences, usually in the low 100,000 range, although a recent race hit 200,000.) Those viewership numbers don't include the tens of thousands of Canadians who watch NASCAR on Fox, which means the real numbers are probably closer to 400,000. By comparison, the Toronto Blue Jays are averaging 280,000 of late, while an NBA championship game in June drew 213,000.
Whatever the true figures, NASCAR numbers could get bigger still, for just as Canadians are turning to NASCAR, NASCAR is reaching into Canada. Last year, NASCAR signed a deal with TSN to co-promote the sport. Many believe that Canada might soon even get its own NASCAR race. (TSN spokesperson Andrea Goldstein confirms that NASCAR "has made several visits to Canada inspecting different sites.")
When Canada gets a NASCAR race, predicts Norris McDonald, a 40-year racing observer for Open Road and the Toronto Star, "look out, because the big corporate sponsors will be fighting to get involved. NASCAR will be way, way bigger than it is now."
Way, way bigger would make NASCAR the biggest sport on Canadian summer television, knocking our dear old Canadian Football League off its always-teetering pedestal. (The 2004 CFL ratings were 438,000 for CBC games, and 311,000 for TSN matches.)
An hour of carny-style hucksterism followed by three hours of ranting and racing, the TV phenomenon of NASCAR — shorthand for the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing — has its origins in the backwoods of the American south. Legendary rum-runners like Junior Johnson and Fireball Roberts souped up cars to evade the police on back-country roads. In the 1940s, moonshiners began racing each other for fun Sunday afternoons on Florida beaches.
The sport's popularity built gradually until one televised race turned a southern pastime into a national phenomenon. "In 1979, CBS put a camera inside Cale Yarborough's car at the Daytona 500," McDonald remembers. "Lap to go, Yarborough was second, and as he passed the lead car, the camera spun around, with the audience inside the car. What a moment! Front page headlines next day in the States read, 'Country rides with Cale.'"
This was the era of Burt Reynolds's Smokey and the Bandit, a road-race movie that became a drive-in movie record breaker. Corporate America sensed something was happening and sponsorship helped the sport attract new demographics. In 1985, Procter & Gamble launched its Tide race team, in an effort to attract women to the sport. At the same time, NASCAR began moving weekend summer race sites from the south to more populated areas in the north, Midwest and California. By the '90s, NASCAR began selling every summer weekend as a 4th of July TV event celebration, complete with prayer, patriotism and name-brand corporate patronage. By the end of the decade, stock-car racing had passed baseball and basketball as an American spectator sport.
More brands per square inch than Times Square: Casey Atwood stands near his sponsor's logos before the Protection One 400 in Kansas City, Kansas. Photo Jonathan Ferrey/Allsport.
By 2009, McDonald figures, NASCAR will be fully revved in Canada, taking better advantage of a full weekend of racing on TSN and Sportsnet, while providing specialty channels with 24-7 NASCAR lifestyle programming — shows on NASCAR women, NASCAR kids, NASCAR food, NASCAR prayer, NASCAR consumer gear and, oh yes, more NASCAR racing. (The CRTC-approved specialty channels exist, but only provide a limited amount of race coverage.)
Perhaps by then, NASCAR will also be a presence in shopping malls like it is in the States, with retail outlets selling NASCAR caps, underwear, kiddy toys and $300 Dale Earnhardt Jr. Bud King of Beer leather jackets.
Impossible, you say. NASCAR is too American, too pushy with its TV-corporate sponsorships. Perhaps. But if you personally aren't vulnerable to NASCAR's bald promotional stunts, perhaps someone younger in your family is. And that's where the Caped Crusader comes in.
"NASCAR is brilliant in the way it uses TV and corporate sponsors to promote," says McDonald. "For years it's been called the fastest-growing sport in America. Well, I don't know how it can get any bigger. It's the second-biggest sport in America after NFL football, with an audience of 75 million. Where can it go? Well, it's expanding north — into Washington State, into Canada... and you see the Batman and Disney cross-promotions, all the stuff they're doing on TV, they're going after kids."
Sure enough. The Batman Begins 400 pre-race broadcast spends much of its time reaching beyond the "NASCAR dad" fan base. After the sexy driver poll results are examined, racer Carl Edwards is interviewed about being named one of People magazine's 50 Hottest Bachelors — all teenage girl stuff. Next up, a packaged item has driver Tony Stewart helping build a park for underprivileged children, afterwards tooling a Hispanic kid around in his car to Outkast's hit song Hey Ya.
The big draw for kids, of course, comes when Batman emerges from the Batmobile to growl, "Gentlemen, start your engines."
Holy cross-promotion! Batman gives the signal to start the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series Batman Begins 400 in Brooklyn, Michigan. Photo Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images.
Batman waves a green flag to start the race, but for the Fox broadcast team, it's as if someone waved a Dixie pennant, as commentators D.W. "Boogity- Boogity" Waltrip and Larry McReynolds begin to out-Southern Foghorn Leghorn. "As they say down in Birmingham, 'That's a nice 'un,'" D.W. says of an early pass. Later, McReynolds comments on one driver's ability to swing low around the oval track with a phrase that could only be a compliment in NASCAR: "Greg Biffle is a real bottom-sucker!"
While Waltrip and McReynolds hoot and holler, Fox cameras put us in a variety of driver seats. There are cameras in cars and drivers are miked — videogame arcade rushes are frequent. Watching guys race around an oval in cars decorated with supermarket name brands for two-and-a-half hours would suggest that the phenomenal success of NASCAR is more than just a sports story.
Like Americans, a lot of Canadians like to drive, and we race each other to work every day on freeways not dissimilar to the Michigan International Speedway. No other sport connects with the 9-to-5 tides of work life like NASCAR, which is one reason NASCAR now enjoys a bigger audience than baseball in the United States. That's why it could soon be bigger than our perpetually endangered sporting species, the CFL.
NASCAR is an endorsement of blue-collar living, a celebration of gas-guzzling, drive-everywhere, hang-out-at-the-mall suburban life. And no other sport offers more rebel attitude than NASCAR. As the Batman Begins 400 plays out, with bottom-sucker Greg Biffle high-tailing it past a fast-closing posse to win, it's sometimes possible to envision the sport's southern origins.
At the same time, modern NASCAR is where corporate pens hit the chequebook. And one wonders what Canadian ratings for the sport would be like if there were a Tim Hortons 400 outside Hamilton or a Labatt's 500 somewhere between the cities of Calgary and Edmonton.
For decades, our national sports press has fretted about other sporting franchises — the Raptors, Grizzlies, Expos, Blue Jays, or maybe an incoming NFL team — killing the CFL. So far, the league has withstood all those challenges. It would be ironic if a Boogity Man no one saw coming — a blue-collar, back-of-the-sports-pages activity like NASCAR — finally did the trick.
Stephen Cole writes about television for CBC.ca.
I also forgot Canadian Beef is not as good as US Beef! :roll: That is what we are being told???? :roll:
I also forgot you Canadians have a ID System for Age and Source verifications?? :roll:
And some organizations in the US say your product is not safe???? :roll:
I guess all US Beef is safe....we can take the Packers and USDA word for it.............since we have this wonderful trace back system with all this data in 100+ private data warehouses and NCBA having figured out how to built thebest one??? :roll:
I am glad I feed my own Beef and when I go out I eat PORK!
Race to the Top
The bizarre phenomenon of NASCAR on TV
By Stephen Cole
July 4, 2005
Spectators watch driver Tony Stewart in action during the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series Pepsi 400 in Daytona Beach, Florida. Photo Ronald Martinez/Getty Images.
It's Father's Day and Fox-TV and Canada's Sportsnet are airing NASCAR's Batman Begins 400. Just now, racers are hopping into cars bearing Home Depot, Kellogg's and Viagra logos. After taped testimonials from the children of competing racers ("Dad, you're the best pit crew chief ever!"), Fox delivers the results of its "Who is the Sexiest NASCAR Driver?" poll. (After 16 million votes are cast, the winner is Dale Earnhardt Jr.) Then, the 200,000 fans at Michigan International Speedway are asked to stand. "Heavenly father," a voice rings out, "thank you for this beautiful day..."
During the U.S. anthem, Fox throws to an address for a military website, after which the public-address announcer shouts, "This weekend, moviegoers around the world are flocking to see Batman..." Moments later, a Caped Crusader waves the starting flag. A cheer fills the oval stadium. Cars rocket forward. And Fox commentator D.W. Waltrip lets out a holler: "Boogity-boogity-boogity, happy Father's Day, evrabod-ahh! Let's go race, boys!"
"Evrabod-ahh," you may be surprised to learn, includes a growing number of Canadians. In 1999, TSN averaged 163,000 viewers for 17 NASCAR competitions; so far over eight races broadcast in 2005, the Canadian network has averaged 319,000 spectators. (Sportsnet, which runs fewer races, draws lower audiences, usually in the low 100,000 range, although a recent race hit 200,000.) Those viewership numbers don't include the tens of thousands of Canadians who watch NASCAR on Fox, which means the real numbers are probably closer to 400,000. By comparison, the Toronto Blue Jays are averaging 280,000 of late, while an NBA championship game in June drew 213,000.
Whatever the true figures, NASCAR numbers could get bigger still, for just as Canadians are turning to NASCAR, NASCAR is reaching into Canada. Last year, NASCAR signed a deal with TSN to co-promote the sport. Many believe that Canada might soon even get its own NASCAR race. (TSN spokesperson Andrea Goldstein confirms that NASCAR "has made several visits to Canada inspecting different sites.")
When Canada gets a NASCAR race, predicts Norris McDonald, a 40-year racing observer for Open Road and the Toronto Star, "look out, because the big corporate sponsors will be fighting to get involved. NASCAR will be way, way bigger than it is now."
Way, way bigger would make NASCAR the biggest sport on Canadian summer television, knocking our dear old Canadian Football League off its always-teetering pedestal. (The 2004 CFL ratings were 438,000 for CBC games, and 311,000 for TSN matches.)
An hour of carny-style hucksterism followed by three hours of ranting and racing, the TV phenomenon of NASCAR — shorthand for the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing — has its origins in the backwoods of the American south. Legendary rum-runners like Junior Johnson and Fireball Roberts souped up cars to evade the police on back-country roads. In the 1940s, moonshiners began racing each other for fun Sunday afternoons on Florida beaches.
The sport's popularity built gradually until one televised race turned a southern pastime into a national phenomenon. "In 1979, CBS put a camera inside Cale Yarborough's car at the Daytona 500," McDonald remembers. "Lap to go, Yarborough was second, and as he passed the lead car, the camera spun around, with the audience inside the car. What a moment! Front page headlines next day in the States read, 'Country rides with Cale.'"
This was the era of Burt Reynolds's Smokey and the Bandit, a road-race movie that became a drive-in movie record breaker. Corporate America sensed something was happening and sponsorship helped the sport attract new demographics. In 1985, Procter & Gamble launched its Tide race team, in an effort to attract women to the sport. At the same time, NASCAR began moving weekend summer race sites from the south to more populated areas in the north, Midwest and California. By the '90s, NASCAR began selling every summer weekend as a 4th of July TV event celebration, complete with prayer, patriotism and name-brand corporate patronage. By the end of the decade, stock-car racing had passed baseball and basketball as an American spectator sport.
More brands per square inch than Times Square: Casey Atwood stands near his sponsor's logos before the Protection One 400 in Kansas City, Kansas. Photo Jonathan Ferrey/Allsport.
By 2009, McDonald figures, NASCAR will be fully revved in Canada, taking better advantage of a full weekend of racing on TSN and Sportsnet, while providing specialty channels with 24-7 NASCAR lifestyle programming — shows on NASCAR women, NASCAR kids, NASCAR food, NASCAR prayer, NASCAR consumer gear and, oh yes, more NASCAR racing. (The CRTC-approved specialty channels exist, but only provide a limited amount of race coverage.)
Perhaps by then, NASCAR will also be a presence in shopping malls like it is in the States, with retail outlets selling NASCAR caps, underwear, kiddy toys and $300 Dale Earnhardt Jr. Bud King of Beer leather jackets.
Impossible, you say. NASCAR is too American, too pushy with its TV-corporate sponsorships. Perhaps. But if you personally aren't vulnerable to NASCAR's bald promotional stunts, perhaps someone younger in your family is. And that's where the Caped Crusader comes in.
"NASCAR is brilliant in the way it uses TV and corporate sponsors to promote," says McDonald. "For years it's been called the fastest-growing sport in America. Well, I don't know how it can get any bigger. It's the second-biggest sport in America after NFL football, with an audience of 75 million. Where can it go? Well, it's expanding north — into Washington State, into Canada... and you see the Batman and Disney cross-promotions, all the stuff they're doing on TV, they're going after kids."
Sure enough. The Batman Begins 400 pre-race broadcast spends much of its time reaching beyond the "NASCAR dad" fan base. After the sexy driver poll results are examined, racer Carl Edwards is interviewed about being named one of People magazine's 50 Hottest Bachelors — all teenage girl stuff. Next up, a packaged item has driver Tony Stewart helping build a park for underprivileged children, afterwards tooling a Hispanic kid around in his car to Outkast's hit song Hey Ya.
The big draw for kids, of course, comes when Batman emerges from the Batmobile to growl, "Gentlemen, start your engines."
Holy cross-promotion! Batman gives the signal to start the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series Batman Begins 400 in Brooklyn, Michigan. Photo Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images.
Batman waves a green flag to start the race, but for the Fox broadcast team, it's as if someone waved a Dixie pennant, as commentators D.W. "Boogity- Boogity" Waltrip and Larry McReynolds begin to out-Southern Foghorn Leghorn. "As they say down in Birmingham, 'That's a nice 'un,'" D.W. says of an early pass. Later, McReynolds comments on one driver's ability to swing low around the oval track with a phrase that could only be a compliment in NASCAR: "Greg Biffle is a real bottom-sucker!"
While Waltrip and McReynolds hoot and holler, Fox cameras put us in a variety of driver seats. There are cameras in cars and drivers are miked — videogame arcade rushes are frequent. Watching guys race around an oval in cars decorated with supermarket name brands for two-and-a-half hours would suggest that the phenomenal success of NASCAR is more than just a sports story.
Like Americans, a lot of Canadians like to drive, and we race each other to work every day on freeways not dissimilar to the Michigan International Speedway. No other sport connects with the 9-to-5 tides of work life like NASCAR, which is one reason NASCAR now enjoys a bigger audience than baseball in the United States. That's why it could soon be bigger than our perpetually endangered sporting species, the CFL.
NASCAR is an endorsement of blue-collar living, a celebration of gas-guzzling, drive-everywhere, hang-out-at-the-mall suburban life. And no other sport offers more rebel attitude than NASCAR. As the Batman Begins 400 plays out, with bottom-sucker Greg Biffle high-tailing it past a fast-closing posse to win, it's sometimes possible to envision the sport's southern origins.
At the same time, modern NASCAR is where corporate pens hit the chequebook. And one wonders what Canadian ratings for the sport would be like if there were a Tim Hortons 400 outside Hamilton or a Labatt's 500 somewhere between the cities of Calgary and Edmonton.
For decades, our national sports press has fretted about other sporting franchises — the Raptors, Grizzlies, Expos, Blue Jays, or maybe an incoming NFL team — killing the CFL. So far, the league has withstood all those challenges. It would be ironic if a Boogity Man no one saw coming — a blue-collar, back-of-the-sports-pages activity like NASCAR — finally did the trick.
Stephen Cole writes about television for CBC.ca.
