No heart monitoring for NASCAR wives

-- Broadcasting & Cable, 4/2/2001

After briefly floating the idea, TNT killed a plan to hook up the wives of NASCAR drivers to heart monitors to gauge reactions as their husbands zoom around the track.

TNT General Manager Steve Koonin last week told reporters the network was pursuing the idea to enhance its NASCAR coverage. He denied the obvious implication: that the network wanted to capture wives' reactions as their husbands, say, slammed into a wall at 180 mph or crashed into another car and caught fire. "I take offense to that," Koonin told reporters.

But after being challenged by reporters, TNT executives backtracked and started making calls to say the plan had been scrapped. "The idea was part of an internal brainstorming session. ... It will not happen," said a spokesman.