100 Days To Indy Sean Compton Interview Ep 53

Hey, thank you. Good to be here, guys. How are you today?

Yes, I know. It's our last couple of episodes, right? It's a long off-season, and then it's a long cold off-season, so we definitely share that perspective. So, we're excited to have you on here as well. Welcome to Turn Four. We just want to dive right in. Real quick first question: are you originally from the Indianapolis area?

Well, I was born in Indianapolis. I grew up in Connersville, between Indianapolis and Cincinnati, just east of Indianapolis about 50 miles. My grandfather was in the agri-business, owned grain elevators, and then my dad worked for him. So I had a family of Indy season ticket holders for many years. My uncle Mead, I think, saw 53 or 54 races over his lifetime. So I went to the race with him a handful of times. My first race was in 1985.

That was the spin and win with Danny Sullivan. Yeah, I was sitting in the Southwest Vista, pretty high up, and saw the spin. They were neck and neck. It was an incredible race. I saw the spin and the smoke, and I'm like, 'Oh my God.' I looked at my dad and said, 'They crashed number one and number two just crashed.' Then we looked down and there's no cars because when you see it on TV, it's clear that he made it through, but when you're watching in real time, it's so fast. You see the puff of smoke from the tires. So yeah, it was a perfect weather day, hot summer type day, and it was my first race experience. Then my second race was in 1992, which was the coldest, longest, most horrible day. I think the high temperature was 44. It was Al Unser Jr. who won, and it was a close race. But remember, everyone, what driver crashed in the pace lap? Guerrero crashed on the slab. So it was one of those races where you're like, 'Can we get this thing over with?' because it was the coldest race ever run.

Yeah, it was the only race that was just misery because you didn't pack for a cold day. You just weren't quite ready for it.

Yeah. The last couple years it's been super nice, 70s, 80s degrees. So to have that year, it was in the 50s, overcast, and the tires weren't warm. Roberto Guerrero spun on the pay slab. He was on hole two. It was so crazy. I was excited to go. My uncle was notorious for calling me at the 11th hour, literally 11 o'clock at night: 'Hey, you want to go to the race tomorrow?' Sure. So my uncle Mead, who was a very odd guy, wonderful human being, calls me at like 10:30, 11 o'clock at night Saturday night: 'Hey, I got an extra ticket. I got a bunch of tickets for the race tomorrow. You want to bring some friends?' I said, 'Uncle Mead, I'm not gonna find anyone at midnight to go with me.' So he invited his neighbors. I said, 'Where do you want me to meet you?' He said, 'Oh, just meet me at the gate.' I'm like, '400,000 people, you want me to meet you at the... I said, 'How about I just come to your house at 5 a.m.?' But it's good memories. What I love about the Indy 500, not for me selfishly, is everyone has that family story. It's grandparents, uncles, kids, brothers, sisters. It's a family component that makes it so special.

You know, my passion is I don't really follow the sport. I don't really follow any sport closely. What I love about the Indy league and what I love about the 500 is the tradition, the diversity. I mean, the drivers are you trying to figure out what accent that is: South America, Australian, British. It's just how worldly it is. Being from Indiana, you're very proud of that. That large diverse group coming together in the middle of really a cornfield, and it used to be a cornfield. So I think that's one of the things I love about it. And it's not tribal. You're not rooting for the Bengals versus... I grew up a Bengals fan and a Colts fan, so who do I like the most? It's not tribal. You're rooting for a bunch of the drivers, if not all of them. Sure, you'll have your favorites in your back pocket. A lot of us want to see Helio get the fifth one and be there to witness that, or see some rookie pull it out, or Carpenter, one of the Hoosiers, pull it out for the first time in a long time. So I'm excited that we get to tell that story on our new show. We came up with the show concept. I took my 18-year-old back in May to the Indy 500 for the first time because I wanted to see his reaction through the eyes of a teenager who had grown up seeing the race on TV, never experiencing it in person. I wanted to see his reaction. I went not as a fan to watch the race; I went to view the people. So we walked through the infield. I looked at the T, went over to that snake pit area to look at the teenagers that were there hanging out. I took a good glance at the people in the stands. The one thing I tell everyone who wants to be involved in the project, or that wanted to be involved, I said, 'You need to watch the pre-race because it is one moment in time that you have 350,000 people take their hats off for the 21-gun salute. They don't applaud at the end of Taps until the trumpeter does the salute after he plays the trumpet.' You also have a prayer, you have God Bless America or America the Beautiful, and then you have Back Home Again in Indiana. It's so emotional for people who are Americans. There is no politics. There's no protesting, no fighting. It's just a patriotic day where Americans come together. It's a special moment. To have that much respect shown by that many people in one group, you don't hear people saluting horns or yelling or screaming. You don't see people getting arrested. It's just a lot of people coming together for one event. I think it's very special, and I'm happy that we're gonna get to showcase that.

Yeah, better fact check me. I'm in the news business too, so you got to fact check.

After your son's first experience this past year, is he hooked? Do you think?

Yeah, well, I'm excited about the series that we're airing on CW, 100 Days to Indy, with our Vice partnership because it's going to showcase the drivers. It'll be interesting to see people that watch it, how that translates to the races and the big race. If you see any drivers kind of emerge because they all have very interesting personalities. You've got to be wicked smart, or I take that back, you don't have to be wicked smart, you have to have amazing instincts to be a race car driver. It's like quarterbacks: the better the instincts, the better you're gonna be. Hockey, the better the instincts, the better you're going to be. There are certain sports where your instincts have to be so spot on. Driving a car at 235 miles an hour, three inches from your next driver at the same speed, for 500 miles, requires really good skill and amazing instincts. So all these guys have interesting personalities, and ladies, and I think that we're going to be able to showcase that. I'm pumped about that because you're going to see, no pun intended, under the hood of what these personalities are like and who they are, not just someone mentioned on race day in the pole position.

Indy had a lot of opportunities for things. They're smart, they're very strategic. You don't just pick anything just to get the exposure. Every decision is made with a certain level of precision and what we want to accomplish. They were looking to do something in this realm, but they wanted to have the right partner. I know they were talking to some other folks, and then I got in the mix with them. The difference between the other folks and me is I had just been there. If you want to do any program or product, you have the upper hand when you have the passion for it. The Vice folks had some history and some knowledge, the producers who are really good producers that are part of this project. I, of course, had the passion for it, plus we have the distribution. We were buying the CW Network when we started talking to them, and now we own it. It's a perfect outlet for them because it's available in all homes. If you don't have cable, you get over-the-air television, and that's where the broadcast component comes in. Vice also is a great partner because they're good producers, demo-friendly, and they have international distribution. This will be seen worldwide. It won't just be here first with the domestic airing on CW, but it'll air worldwide as well. That's what made Indy say, 'Hey, we're in.' I got to know Mark Miles through a mutual friend of ours. I just reached out and said, 'Hey, we're interested in doing this,' and they were so great to work with. It was almost like the perfect marriage of the three partners in this deal.

I don't know the details of that. The Indy league, I will tell you that I got the benefit of being in the driver meeting. I wish I'd been there in person because Will Power was gonna give me some laps in the pace car, but I was just too busy here in Chicago, so I couldn't go down. But I did a Zoom with them, and the excitement for it... Look, it's a sport that there's a lot of sports out there, a lot of competition for eyeballs and butts in seats. At the end of the day, they could tell that we're not looking to sensationalize their sport. We just want to expose it, give them the proper exposure, and let the world get to know the Indy Racing League. For me, it's about generating interest and ad dollars for my business and for them. They have a business to operate, but when you can mix that with the passion, it makes it so much better.

Yes, so the first season, assuming everything goes well, it'll be six. Then we're also, Nexstar our company through NewsNation, a little film division that we created. The other thing that fascinates me is the build-up to the track. So what we're doing is producing a one-hour documentary that'll air either on the CW or on NewsNation right before the race. I'm just fascinated that there are concessions, there are toilets that work eight hours a year. There are concessions that are closed for 364 days of the year. I said, 'Guys, the mailing of 150,000 season tickets that go out in the blue envelopes in February, you just drop those in the mailbox? Trucks come in a caravan and pick up all that mail.' I'm fascinated by what it takes to put on the world's largest one-day event. So we're doing a documentary on that to be shoulder programming to the CW series. It's like the lead-up to the Indy 500 and what really takes place to make it all ready. We're taping this right before Christmas, we're getting a snowstorm in the next 72 hours, 48 hours. Imagine seeing the track covered in snow. The track doesn't have any potholes because they never put salt on it and they never shovel it. So if there's a foot of snow on the ground, it's on the track until it melts naturally. So I'm fascinated by that, so we're gonna do shoulder programming with that.

The Vice folks are all over that. I don't get overly involved. I know that yes, they're gonna start filming shortly. They've been interviewing a lot of the drivers to kind of get their rhythm down and their schedules, getting to know them because they're going to start following a lot of them. The nice thing is each episode is an hour, so it's going to be 44 minutes in run time. It's not a half hour, which is probably a little too short when you only have six episodes. I think it's timed out right. So yeah, they'll start filming. It's basically following the drivers to the Indy, and the last episode airs right after the race. So you'll have a week later the big day.

I'm out on CW right now. Yes, yes. It works most likely a Thursday night, but I have seen the schedule. The head of scheduling and programming will probably shoot me if I gave you the actual dates because he probably hasn't released it yet, so I don't want to step on his toes and make an enemy there. But it'll start in April, late April.

Yeah, it's a really quick production turnaround. Very quick production turnaround.

I don't know how that's written. Normally it's a partnership where we give creative notes, Vice will make some tweaks on that. Indy's very involved. It's their franchise. I don't know how... I think really in my history, and I think Mark Miles's history, he just hired good producers to produce. You bet on them. You get the best people, and Morgan Hurt and Vice is really good, and Patrick that he's got. So I think we let them do it, and there's not going to be much time for edits, so we'll probably all kind of agree on a format and they'll be off to the races.

Everyone listening to this has access to the CW if you've got a television set. The CW is the fifth network. It's a broadcast network. In Middle America, it's on what used to be 30 years ago independent stations, and now it's its own network on those stations. In New York, LA, Chicago, I don't know LA, it's KTLA Channel 5, the biggest station in the market. So CW has a tremendous reach. You don't have to have a subscription to get it. It's much like when you watch football, unless it's the Thursday night game with Amazon which you have to pay a premium for, football is available for free over the air. Many NBA games are. The Indy 500 is available on ABC. So the CW is a broadcast network that's available in all the homes. You can find your local affiliate just by Googling it. Google your hometown and type in 'CW Network' and you'll see which over-the-air television station it is if you don't know already.

No, it's US-based. All international distribution Vice would be handling. I'm sure they've got Canadian reach. I'm sure they've got a lot of reach over in Europe. So it will be available around the world on Vice's reach. Now, the CW also has an app, cw.com, and we'll make the episodes available on there just like they are on the air. So if you miss the broadcast, whatever night, I'm guessing Thursday night, but if you miss that and you realize it's Saturday morning and you've got time to watch it, you can go to the app and watch it there. So if you didn't DVR it, you can catch it on the CW app.

I'm sorry. I'm old school, so I would love to see Graham Rahal win. His dad and... I love any of the guys. Love the guys from Indiana. You had two or three drivers from Indiana in there. I'm mixed about whether I want to see Helio win a fifth one or not. There's something to be said about having all these guys who have four. I couldn't believe someone would pass Mears and AJ Foyt, but I think that would be great too. I was there in 2005 when Danica was leading, which was really cool to be there to see the first woman lead a lap at the Indianapolis 500. So I gotta be honest, I root for all of them. That's another reason why I love it. You don't really feel like you're losing. Your team's not losing. I went to the Super Bowl and watched the Bengals lose, and I had the greatest weekend ever until the Bengals lost, and then I wanted to go home and I was crying. That's the thing: you leave the track and you just feel good. You love seeing those tulips in the wreath wrapped around the driver at the end, no matter who it is.

Well, thank you guys. It was nice seeing you.