......and they are sort of encouraging. A .4 national household rating is a significant improvement on last years season opener at St Petersburg.
It's hard to argue that those numbers aren't encouraging although there is still a long way to go before a race on Versus can match the numbers that any race on ABC can achieve. But this is a solid start and the addition of DirecTV's subsciber base should only see this increase as the season progresses.
VERSUS' live coverage of the Sao Paulo Indy 300 on March 14 garnered a 0.4 national household rating, the third-highest rated IZOD IndyCar Series race on the fast-growing sports cable network.The fact that the season opener was of such high quality and excitement good can only help too.The race peaked at a 0.6 household rating between 2:15 -2:30 p.m. (EDT) and averaged 411,000 viewers, up 30 percent from the 2009 season average (315,000) and up 76 percent from the 2009 season-opening race (233,000).
The Tv ratings were okay. .4 is still not good, but at least they improved. And considering it was an street race in Brazil, that's impressive. Plus, Brazilian TV ratings were equal to F1, but of course, most sponsors (Target, Izod, National Guard, ABC Warehouse, ect.) care about.
And, it was a NASCAR off weekend. Of course, Indycar should race EVERY off weekend. And it was good that the race was exciting, since some NASCAR people watched, maybe they'll stick around. The only thing was some of the coverage wasn't so positive from the NASCAR writers, but then agian, many of them simply recite NASCAR PR.