[LM24] It wasn't always easy to follow/be a fan of Le Mans...

[chernaudi]

I copied this from my Tired of Racing thread, and it's actually about improvements in being able to follow stuff like Le Mans that I've witnessed over the years.

A positive post here for once. Today, we're actually kinda spoiled for coverage of races like Le Mans and what not with the races being on networks that at least some basic cable/satellite packages have, online forums and sites like DSC and SC365, and social media.

I may be only 30 years old, but I can remember that about 20 years ago it wasn't easy for someone to follow international road racing, or even regional series, even in North America. You had to hope that the races would show up on TV, catch one of the highlights shows like Raceday on what was then TNN or RPM2Night on ESPN2, or catch results in your local news paper or racing news magazines. I only knew what happened at Le Mans from 1998-2005 because of catching highlights shows on Speedvision/Speed Channel, from Car and Driver or Motor Trend magazine, the next ALMS race that showed up on TV, or, as in 2005, I got the Le Mans results from watching the NASCAR race at Michigan that weekend.

Once I got the internet and started to be able to watch the races on satellite TV (I had to con my grandma into letting me watch the races if I couldn't watch them at my father's house on weekends), that opened things up. Granted, there's negatives, such as people trolling you just to be annoying and stuff like that, but would we rather go back into what I consider the dark ages of sometimes having to be lucky to get race results and such?