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V8man - I disagree that Tony Cochrane/AVESCO don't have a duty to Australian motorsport. It certainly is not his job to look after it, but declaring war on other categories, with the aim of weakening them, like what we saw with TOCA and lately PROCAR, is just not on. He needs to realise without Australian motorsport, there is no V8Supercars (realising the importance of permanent circuits is a good start)
For all the good things AVESCO has done, the bad things clearly outweigh. While the V8s look strong, and PROCAR is getting there, after that Australian motorsport from my point of view is not in an extremely healthy state. There are a number of tracks around AUstralia rumoured to be going within the next 5-10 years, yet i haven't heard of many plans to replace them. Whether this is directly the result of AVESCO's push for street circuits and overseas races, who knows, but it has certainly played a part.
Channel 7 were as committed to the Bathurst 1000 in 1996-1998 as they had ever been. As for the championship, can you blame them for the time-slots it got? They had ratings gold with the AFL, while the V8s at the time rated not so well, except for Bathurst. Channel 10 though at the time had plenty of space in their sports line-up, they didn't have league or AFL, had just finished with the basketball, and could afford to take a risk with AVESCO. How could channel 7 have justified culling thier AFL coverage at the time, for a punt on an increase in ratings with what AVESCO had thought of doing? As we have seen in the last few years, motorsport programming on TEN has dropped with the arrivial of AFL, how long before the V8 coverage goes the same way?
With regards to Bathurst, AVESCO had no intention of the Bathurst 1000 staying the way it was. Irrespective of the watertight deal the ARDC had with 7, AVESCO had the ultimate aim of making it a round of the championship, something the ARDC had sworn they would never get involved in again. All the negotiations that went on at the time were a joke, they were never going to get anywhere. AVESCO/IMG started thier own race and therefore their own history to do with it whatever they want. The fact that it is Ford and Holden in the race doesn't matter, the first Ford/Holden only Bathurst was in 1995, and it was only between 1974 - 1978 that the ourtight class was contested solely by Holden and Ford V8s.
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