DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
Dirt racing news, results, discussion, analytics. Sprint cars, late models, modifieds, you name it. From national series, to top local shows. Brought to you five days a week. Email the show at info@dirtrackr.com.
Why don't YOU want to talk about the racing? | Daily 8-14-2023
After more than 1000 videos created, I've got some thoughts today on dirt racing media, what moves the needle, why I make certain decisions, and the challenges faced by those who cover the sport. Let's go!
It's Monday, August 14th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.
Something I've been thinking about for a while, and an idea I keep coming back to as a potential daily show topic is the current state of dirt racing media and what I've learned doing these shows. This is a fairly broad topic, and I've got a bunch of different directions I can go, and want to go with this. Since we are in a bit of a lull here after the Knoxville Nationals, I figured this might be a good day to do it. We can talk about it and not really miss out on, or gloss over anything else happening right now. Right off the top, I am fully prepared for this show to bomb today and not get a lot of views, because I have no idea how interested my audience will be in this, but I think it's an interesting topic to explore. I've been thinking about this stuff a lot lately, especially because I continue to try and find ways to grow this channel and my own audience. DIRTRACKR as a whole is a profitable entity for me, but as is always the case with any business, you'd like it to be bigger and better and more profitable. The success and growth to this point has been incredible, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't want more. My goal for the end of the year is 25,000 subscribers on the YouTube channel, but as the goal posts move, it's hard to not eye what 50k subs, or 100k subs would be like. And for it to do that, it means creating content that regularly gets a lot of views. Just like the subscriber number, what actually constitutes a lot of views continues to look different in my mind. In the early days, a video with 10,000 views was almost unfathomable, but now I'm disappointed if I don't at least get there. What was once a goal, has now become the floor. And after uploading over 1000 videos to YouTube, I usually have a pretty good idea on what will land and what won't. I am still surprised sometimes by which topics seem to generate views, and which don't, but it's interesting to see things evolve and change as the sport and the media landscape do. The Kyle Larson stuff is a good example of that. Talking about him used to be a no-brainer for views. Now I'm wondering if it might be the opposite. But one big thing I've realized, especially lately, is how little my audience seems to care about me talking about the actual racing on the track. I consume a reasonable amount of sports content in general, and a lot of it revolves around plays and matchups and who's on right now and who isn't. What's happening on the field or court is dissected and analyzed in all sorts of ways, both in real time and in the aftermath. But for this corner of the motorsports world, those discussions don't move the needle. If you don't believe me, go look at what my most popular shows are all time. My most viewed YouTube video is about tire doping. Number two is sprint car team costs, three is cheating with smart watches, four is about Bloomquist and Hunt the Front series penalties, and five is the Chili Bowl boycott. You're going to scroll for a long time before you find a show that is strictly about the racing. It's a big reason why I didn't worry about not doing a Friday show this past week around the Knoxville Nationals, even though I had multiple comments and messages from people saying I should. You'd think big events like the Nationals or Chili Bowl or World or Dream would mean big views, but it's really not true. Breaking down what happened just doesn't equate to more viewership. A week ago Sunday I talked about the three wild finishes from that Saturday night. Less than 10,000 views on that show. Spectacular finishes in three marquee events, and yet fewer people than normal decided to tune in. I get asked pretty regularly why I don't mention certain races, or certain series, or how come I don't talk about more local racers, or lesser know racers, or lower divisions. And the answer is the audience. I don't decide what is interesting, you do. I could go dive into stock cars or modifieds, or regional midgets, or hornets, but less people would tune in. And I need more people tuning in to grow this thing, not less. 10 days ago I had a show where I did a bunch of stuff around a Super DIRTcar Series win for Tim Fuller, and had people admitting to me on Twitter they turned the show off when I started talking modifieds. And that episode's analytics show it to be true. So what do I do about that information, and how do I go forward knowing certain things make people tune out? It's a big reason why I've moved away from doing regular interview episodes. There are 67 DIRTRACKR conversations episodes, and only four have done more than 10,000 views. One is Kevin Rumley, one is Brad Sweet, and two are Joshua Joiner. Most of those 67 interviews have less than 2000 views. That's a lot of work to do to try and track down people for those, get things scheduled, hope they don't ghost you, spend an hour talking, and another hour in post-production for very few folks to tune in. And let's be clear, I'm not complaining about any of this. But when you see me make certain decisions on content, there are reasons and a lot of numbers to back up what my choices are.
As for the larger dirt racing media landscape, I would assume the same is true for other outlets and other creators when it comes to talking about the actual racing. The front page of dirtrackr.com is a collection of the day's top dirt racing headlines from all sorts of different places, including media sites and series. And I have tracking setup so I know in all of those links, what is getting clicked on and what isn't. From April 2022 to April 2023, there were 20,000 clicks on links at dirtrackr.com. And almost half of those clicks had nothing to do with series releases, or news items from series sites, or stories from outlets like Dirt on Dirt or Jeremy Elliott's site. In that time, nearly 3500 individual links were clicked on, but more than half only have a single click. And most of those with one click are those releases and stories from series and media sites. This industry is incredibly slow to move on any sort of progress, and it feels very much like the audience and what it wants has changed, but the industry forges ahead because things like press releases are what they've always done. Sports media as a whole is much more about video and podcasts and social media coverage these days then it is about a post game report. When was the last time you went to NFL.com to see a recap of what happened in the Chiefs game in written form?
I do think it's important to point out too, how few members of the quote unquote dirt racing media, are actually making a full time living to do so. Most of the creators you see out there every week are grinding it out because they love it, not because it's their job. Most are working on their own time, nights and weekends, to take photos or write stories or create videos or make podcasts. It's why most don't last very long. It's a lot of work for not very much reward. I think some series and team folks, and drivers could use a reminder of that. I know that in the past, DoD and Jeremy have caught hell for their content being behind a paywall, but doing so is about the only hope they have of generating enough revenue to stay afloat. Dirt on Dirt doesn't need that as much anymore as it's supported by FloRacing, and Flo has expanded out to more written and video content around the racing, to supplement their streaming stuff, which is great. It's added more to the pot and employed more writers and creators, which is a good thing. But understand that nobody is getting rich covering the sport, especially if they are independent.
I'm going to close out with this. The dirt racing media is disjointed and messy. It's a strange mix of old heads who want to return to the days of National Speed Sport News, young kids with no reputations who like the new tools and fast race cars, and the establishment who has all the power and wants to control the narrative. Those things are very often at odds with each other when they meet. But maybe with as messy and disjointed as the sport is, it's the only way it can be.
Hope you guys have a good Monday out there, we'll see you tomorrow.