Truck Racing Video

10. August 2006It’s only a few days since we published the D:SF TV report about the 21st Truck Grand Prix at the Nürburgring (courtesy of the ADAC Mittelrhein and the D:SF) as a streaming video on www.truckracing.de / www.truckrace.info, and after only 3 hours more than 150 viewers had watched our three-part-video. Meanwhile the number of viewers runs into thousands. And that’s not the only indication that the fans “hunger” for moving images of truck racing, because the audience share of D:SF, when broadcasting the original film on Sunday night already, surpassed all expectations.
With an average of 170,000 viewers (including the time for commercial breaks) and reaching an audience of more than 300,000 at times, the truck racing report was even much more favoured by motor sport fans than the report about the DTM at the Norisring that followed thereafter. Probably nobody at D:SF would have expected this, but perhaps it sparked the Munich TV station’s interest in truck racing. After all, the Truck Grand Prix at the Nürburgring is not the only event of the European Truck Racing series.
For years, the interest of the media – and especially the TV stations – in truck racing was almost nil in Germany. But since 2005 EUROSPORT broadcasts a half hour report about all the races – with the highest audience share in Germany, and, in addition, since the beginning of this season the new Print EUROSPORT AutoMagazin publishes 4-page reports regularly. Now there was the 1 hour D:SF report – already on the Sunday following the races and at prime time – and also the public service TV stations took note of truck racing on the occasion of the Truck Grand Prix. Furthermore, “Kabel1” will broadcast a portray of the currently leading pilot of the European Championship, Jochen Hahn. For days the team from Swabia was followed about by a camera crew – the event at the Nürburgring being the highlight. This report will be aired on Monday, August 14, (17:45 hrs) at “Abenteuer Leben – Täglich Wissen”.
It is to be hoped that the media boom with regard to truck racing will last for some time, because that would be like the German proverb of “the cat biting its own tail”: If truck racing is a topic for the media, then sponsors, economy and industry will be more interested; and if they are more committed to truck racing, then the media will more often report about the racing events.