Indy 500 History Questions?

[Game Bred]

Needing to know when reserved parking passes to park right up to the fence in turns 3 and 4 at Indianapolis. First year and last year...
Would like to know when Practice and Qualifying were first aired on local TV then national TV for the 500.
And also would like to know the event timeline for the infield scaffolding at the Indy 500.

Thanks

[buzz]

Needing to know when reserved parking passes to park right up to the fence in turns 3 and 4 at Indianapolis. First year and last year...
Would like to know when Practice and Qualifying were first aired on local TV then national TV for the 500.
And also would like to know the event timeline for the infield scaffolding at the Indy 500.

Thanks

Only one I know is that scaffolding ended after the 1960 tragedy.

My Dad told of building platforms on top of the truck in the 30's. They had to buy a paper on the way home to find out who won.

[indyrjc]

Needing to know when reserved parking passes to park right up to the fence in turns 3 and 4 at Indianapolis. First year and last year...
Would like to know when Practice and Qualifying were first aired on local TV then national TV for the 500.
And also would like to know the event timeline for the infield scaffolding at the Indy 500.

Thanks

I was not aware of any "up to the fence" passes ever being issued. Last year (2013) was the first that any kind of parking pass was ever needed for the infield as far as I know. I know back in the 1960s/70s/80s there was always a mad dash to get up next to the fence (or as close behind the bleachers in some cases) in just about every infield turn as soon as the gun went off to open the gates in the morning. Somebody stalled or ran out of gas one year in one of the tunnels and the cars behind just pushed the car up the other side and out of the way one year as I remember it. And there were collisions in the tunnels after the gun more than once. But I don't remember any infield passes for the turns. Maybe someone else remembers otherwise.

Time Trials were being televisied by WFBM locally (and fed to other stations within Indiana) by the early 1960s. It may have actually started a few years before that. The coverage ran for one hour from 4:30-5:30PM on all four qualifying days. IMS always kept the last 30 minutes of each Time Trial day off of the air. Nationally ABC covered Time Trials on a time delay basis (like the next Saturday I believe) starting in 1961. At least I think that was the year. Again, someone here at TF may know more about this. As for the race itself ABC ran an edited version of the race on its Wide World of Sports Show (a week or two later) starting in 1965. They went to same day tape delayed coverage in 1971 and to live coverage starting with the 1986 500.

As for scaffolds and the like versions of homebuilt stands on cars etc. were used from the very start of racing at the 500. This practice really took off after WWII with infield crowds so large that some fans built their own versions of mini-stands and scaffolds every year on trucks or the ground and actually sold seats and took reservations each year. Some of these entrepreneurs were some of the same people that were racing into the infield every morning to get the prime spots in order to set up their seats. The practice was ended after the 1960 500 one of the bigger setups collapsed.

[buzz]

First live broadcast was 1949. I was a small boy. We didn't own a TV but I stood on the sidewalk in front of a hardware store in Martinsville and watched it on a tv in the store window.

BTW if you watch the movie Big Wheel with Mickey Rooney, you'll see the TV camera on a truck when the winner wheels into Victory Lane at the end.

[Frank Capua]

Parking up to the fence began pretty early...



As for what ended the use of scaffolding...

[Game Bred]

Thanks everyone for the quick response. I had a few facts confused in my head.

[Game Bred]

First live broadcast was 1949. I was a small boy. We didn't own a TV but I stood on the sidewalk in front of a hardware store in Martinsville and watched it on a tv in the store window.

BTW if you watch the movie Big Wheel with Mickey Rooney, you'll see the TV camera on a truck when the winner wheels into Victory Lane at the end.

That was a live broadcast of qualifying in 49? I would never had guessed it started that early.

[readgols]

The race was broadcast live in 1949 and 1950. Wilbur Shaw was not happy about it. Hulman ended the broadcasts after the rain-shortened 1950 race.

[Indyknut]

Were people just stupid back then?

[Doctorindy]

As far as nationally, from the best I can recall, 1993 was the first year ESPN carried "Live Daily Reports" during practice. It was a 30 minute show at the end of the session (the final 30 mins, live). They did those in some form or another through 2006. Some years it was 30 mins, some were an hour, some were as long as 2 hours. Then they started cutting back in the early 00's and did "RPM2Night at Indy" or "SportsCenter at Indy" which was basically a 30-minute, dumbed down version of the same thing. They got rid of the Live Daily show in 2007, and used the budget instead to upgrade to an HD truck for the production team.

ABC started showing coverage of Time Trials on Wide World of Sports in 1961. To use the word "showing" is probably generous, as it was probably nothing more than a 15-20 minute "report." It seems it continued in that fashion through the 70s. By the early 80s, they were starting to come on for live broadcasts here and there. But it seems that they were typically mid-day, so very little action was actually shown live as it was happening. Most of the broadcast was "here's so-and-so's run from earlier today."

ESPN started carrying Time Trials too in 1987. Spattered coverage of Days 2, 3, and 4, mixed in with ABC's. By the 90s, and especially after ABC acquired controlling interest in ESPN, they started doing nearly open-to-close coverage over ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2.

[milliesdad]

Were people just stupid back then?

Still just as stupid.

You can't fix stupid. The only way to cure it is bleach in the gene pool.

[Sleepcheap]

Still just as stupid.

You can't fix stupid. The only way to cure it is bleach in the gene pool.

Yeah, if scaffolding was still allowed, there'd be scaffolding.