NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

In the first of what will be a series of columns, NHRA Vice President of Public Relations & Communications Terry Blount discusses the successes of NHRA's 2016 initiatives, including television, diversity, and competition

NHRA started this season with a slogan and a plan. As we hit the halfway point of 2016, the slogan is true and the plan is working.
 
Shifting Gears into a New Era was our way of telling NHRA fans, and potential NHRA fans, that the 2016 season was in many ways a new beginning for our sport. We were making dramatic changes and new NHRA president Peter Clifford developed a strategic initiatives plan to implement those changes.
 
Of course, there always are skeptics. That’s the world we live in. Rightfully so, people said, “prove it.”
 
We have.
 
As we approach the July 4th holiday weekend, NHRA is growing, surging, expanding and gaining ground in almost every metric you could ask.
 
Let’s start with television. NHRA is seeing historic increases in TV viewers through our new partnership with FOX Sports.
 
Our total viewers through the first 12 events, including qualifying shows and re-airs, is 19.1 million. That’s a 72 percent increase over total viewers from one year ago.
 
Allow me to put that in perspective. In the modern TV era when most homes have hundreds of channels, viewership gains usually come in tiny increments. A 10-percent gain would be a high-five moment. A 70-percent gain is truly incredible.
 
NHRA already had three Mello Yello Drag Racing Series events this season where the viewers of the finals on Sunday were more than a million - 1.292 million in Las Vegas, 1.367 million in Atlanta and 1.068 in Englishtown, N.J. The Atlanta rating was the highest for a single day of NHRA coverage in the modern TV era.
 
NHRA viewership also is up 83 percent in the 18-49 demo. These are remarkable numbers, showing we not only are gaining viewers, we also are skewing much younger.
 
More live coverage has helped (17 of 24 events have live coverage this year). And the increased hours of coverage on FOX Sports (more than 500 hours this season compared to only 125 hours a year ago with ESPN) is making a difference, along with much better timeslots, often in prime time.
 
The truth is we’re just getting started. NHRA has four FOX network shows later this summer – the Western Swing (Denver, Sonoma and Seattle) along with the U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis on Labor Day weekend. All those events will be live on the FOX national broadcast network, something that never has happened in the 65-year history of NHRA.
 
Along with our impressive TV numbers, we’ve had three sellout crowds this season on Saturday qualifying days: Charlotte on April 23, Atlanta on May 14 and Epping, N.H. on June 4.
 
These positive moves forward are the result of many changes that are too numerous to list in one column, but two things stand out:
 

• Our new in-house TV production team has emphasized personal features on our drivers that tell fans who these men and women are and why you will like them, along with a variety of behind the scenes stories on how the sport works to help new fans understand and enjoy what they’re watching. 
   
• In addition, our new production “content factory” has enabled these stories to be posted on digital/social media platforms, expanding the reach of NHRA.
   
• On-track competition this season that has wowed everyone.

 
The first half of 2016 has been The Year of the Women. We’ve had five female winners (Brittany Force, Leah Pritchett, Alexis DeJoria, Courtney Force and Angelle Sampey) and at least one female winner at six events.
 
Pritchett and Brittany Force battled in the first all-female Top Fuel final in 32 years and only the second one in history, with Pritchett earning a close victory in Phoenix. Brittany has won twice this season and Sampey won for the first time in nine years, a three-time Pro Stock Motorcycle champion who proved she still has what it takes to get the job done.
 
Our fans also witnessed the closest Top Fuel final-round finish in NHRA history at Atlanta when Doug Kalitta edged J.R. Todd by less than one ten-thousandth of a second at 323 mph, about 4-tenths of an inch. The video of that finish went viral and trended No. 1 on Facebook for 48 hours.
 
There are many other things that have gone exceptionally well for us this season, and we still have significant parts of the overall plan to unveil. I’ll be listing some of those in future columns on NHRA.com.
 
For now, we want to let all our fans know we truly are Shifting Gears into a New Era while taking NHRA to new heights.
 
Terry Blount
NHRA Vice President of Public Relations & Communications