Running Numbers

Fox's Daytona 500 coverage, which stretched to about seven hours thanks to pothole problems in the track, was tedious for viewers. But not for sponsors. The driver interviews during all the down time, says research firm Joyce Julius & Associates, helped boost total onscreen time for recognizable sponsor logos by 55% over last year while on-air sponsor mentions rose 64%. This should help conspiracy theorists explain why it took so long to fix that pothole. …