I’m sorry about the time between columns here, but I had a sudden and entirely unexpected reaction to a thyroid medication I have been taking since 2011. My heart began to beat erratically, and the ER doctor told me that if I hadn’t come in, I probably wouldn’t have lived through the night. Scary stuff! I’m still a bit weak in the knees, but I’m getting better by the day.
As racers are getting their machines ready for the upcoming season, I’m getting ready for 2019 myself. If you are a promoter, or maybe a fan who can talk to a promoter, I am working to expand my live streaming of racing events and talk shows on my Roku channel and our viewing webpage.
I’ve been doing it at Crystal Motor Speedway since 2002, and as time goes by, the process is getting easier and better. We’ve managed to get past the constant browser wars that causing us to make changes to how we were streaming, and it has become stable.
The nice thing about this is that there is no charge from me to do this. All the track needs to do is have a decent computer, a camera, a decent Internet upload connection, a couple of other small items that cost less than $100, and a crew to shoot the video.
Track events can be done live as I have done at Crystal or they could be recorded and recorded the same night, and then posted up as a VOD (Video on Demand) on Sunday or Monday. It could be played as a video or a radio broadcast. We have free software, and the control room can be anywhere where someone can monitor it. I lived in San Francisco one summer, but I still was controlling the broadcast at CMS.
Promoters can actively recruit sponsors for their video programming that can be run during downtime and get to keep the revenue. Tracks would be encouraged to have a live talk show, either video or radio, during the week. Everything can be archived be watched VOD at any time.
The biggest question I get about this is why am I doing it at no cost to the promoters and tracks? When I first started doing this, my son had joined the World’s Greatest Air Force and was sent to the Middle East. He wanted to be able to watch the races, so I started looking for a way to do it for him and his friends. What came out of that was ‘Races On The Web,’ or ROTW.
If you know of a track that might be interested in at least talking to me about this, have them drop me an email at bmoc66@gmail.com with ‘ROTW’ in the subject line.
Thanks for reading and I’ll talk to ya next week!
Verwayne
