Roller Derby research/Five Strides TODO

Excerpts from Five Strides on the Banked Track that need further research:

• pp. 17-20, 207-211: IRDL rules
  • Figure out what to do with this.

• p. 6: Variety has declared that the Derby is "the fastest-growing entertainment attraction in the country," and then tried to explain what that attraction could be: "It is neither sport nor show biz, but a new television art form with elements of both. It is cathartic, dramatically structured, fast-paced and classic as a John Wayne movie."
  • Find the original source for this.

• pp. 6-7: At the heart of the whole enterprise are the Bay Bombers. The Bombers, in brown and orange, are the home team for virtually every Derby fan in America. For twenty weeks of the year, these heroes play various villainous opponents in San Francisco and Oakland, in San Jose, Sacramento, Fresno, and other towns in northern California. Every week that they are playing in the Bay Area, the Sunday night game at Kezar Pavilion, an old arena hard by Haight-Ashbury, is videotaped and sent out to the 124 or so TV stations all over America that run the Derby games. The stations schedule the tapes at their own leisure. The Derby comes on mostly over the weekend, usually in the afternoon, but there are many exceptions. In St. Louis, the Derby appears at 10:00 A.M. Sunday morning, in New york at 10:30 A.M. Sunday, in Denver at midnight Monday. Nevertheless, whenever and wherever the Derby is scheduled, it invariably outrates the opposition on the other channels at that time. It beats all competition in about eighty percent of the cities where it is shown. When measured against such "respectable" sports as hockey, golf, bowling, skiing, track, and baseball, the Derby always has higher ratings. It duels basketball and football pretty evenly. The Derby always does better than news and talk shows and most movies. What secrets of this land Roller Derby can reveal! In Albuquerque, Roller Derby just edges Meet the Press; in Charleston, South Carolina, Roller Derby nearly triples the rating of Meet the Press. Every week at least three million persons in the United States see a Derby game on television. Slightly more than half of these people are women, a statistic no other sport can claim.
  • Topics covered here: The focus on the Bay Bombers as America's heroic "home team" and portrayal of opponents as villains; c.1971 season length; TV schedule, competition, and audience demographics.

• p. 10: ...virtually everybody who comes to the Derby roots for the Bombers. They are America's Home Team, as perhaps the Yankees or Notre Dame once were, as nobody else really is anymore.
  • Further ref for Bay Bombers focus.