In 1949, when the first television station in Indianapolis was about to go on the air, R.K. Shull, the venerated television columnist for the Indianapolis Times and Indianapolis News, said, "Channel 6 has laid plans for the biggest possible attention-grabbing debut a TV station could make in Indianapolis . . . live coverage of the Indianapolis 500-mile race." Only three cameras covered the entire track, but the audience at the time was not very discriminating. Before networks had full-time programming, casts and crews experimented with the new medium in full view of the audience. Even after...