MTV Lawsuit
In 1991, Gaylord Entertainment (owners of The Nashville Network) and an independent production company, Group Five Sports, signed an agreement where the ASA would add live race broadcasts to their schedule.
The first such live ASA AC-Delco Challenge Series race was held in June 1991 at Nashville Speedway USA. The race featured visiting NASCAR star Darrell Waltrip (who won the ASA's first Challenge of Champions race in 1972) defeating ASA regular Bob Senneker in a furious finish. The exposure led eventually to national television coverage for the entire season by TNN and Group Five doing the production (even though TNN had owned another production company in 1994).
In 1999, CBS (which purchased TNN in 1997) officials announced the purchase of 25% of the American Speed Association from owner Rex Robbins in exchange for live television rights to the entire ASA ACDelco Series schedule for five years. CBS did this move after losing coverage of NASCAR races, and the network chose to market the ASA on its CBS Cable family of networks (TNN and CMT).
When Viacom took over TNN in 2000, CBS Cable operations were shut down as TNN's Charlotte (located at the Lowe's Motor Speedway Industrial Park) and Nashville (located near the present Opry Mills mall) offices were closed and the signals transferred to MTV Networks for the creation of a channel which would eventually be called Spike TV. At the time, MTV Networks honored its remaining motorsports contracts signed by CBS motorsports officials.
In August 2001, MTV ended its association with ASA and the World of Outlaws (which also had a TNN contract signed by CBS management) by announcing they would tape delay the popular sprint car Knoxville Nationals, and also tape delay the two remaining ASA ACDelco Series races — one on Labor Day weekend at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds, and the "Night Before F1" ASA 200-lap race at Indianapolis Raceway Park. Lucas Oil Raceway is famous for hosting major races on the night before the Indianapolis Motor Speedway's major races.
The ASA filed a lawsuit in Madison County, Indiana court in an attempt to stop the tape delays, but dropped the lawsuit after MTV agreed to air just one of the two races in the lawsuit live. MTV terminated the five-year CBS contract after less than 20 months.
Brian Robbins, the son of the ASA founder Rex Robbins, blasted MTV, saying, "It appears new (MTV) management does not have the same vision for the partnership as we had with TNN (CBS Cable) at the time we made the agreement."
Read more about this topic: American Speed Association