A “watch party” was held at Time Out in Forney on Thursday, July 26th to bring the Diesel TV experience to locals. Choppers and Mud Racer trucks were parked outside, while inside a crowd gathered to watch the third episode of Diesel TV on the Fox Sports Net channel with the show's host, Forney resident Don Ellison.
A “watch party” was held at Time Out in Forney on Thursday, July 26th to bring the Diesel TV experience to locals. Choppers and Mud Racer trucks were parked outside, while inside a crowd gathered to watch the third episode of Diesel TV on the Fox Sports Net channel with the show's host, Forney resident Don Ellison.
Don Ellison is known as “Big Don” to his friends and Diesel TV viewers. Though he is the host of Diesel TV, which takes a look inside the crazy world of diesel motor sports, he and his friend Randy Cole are also the creators of the show. Ellison and Cole are racers and during one conversation they talked about putting their love of all types of motor sports on TV. Ellison said, “96 days later we filmed a pilot for Diesel TV.” Ellison and Cole produced the pilot and eventually Fox picked up the show.
Ellison is also a race announcer on and off television. The 45-year-old said he is really enjoying traveling across the nation to film the show. The episode showing on Thursday was number 3 of 20 episodes planned for this year. Ellison told inForney.com, “We're racers that figured out how to get our stuff on TV. It's what we want to do.” He and Cole thought that they could expect anywhere from one million to five million viewers for their show, but they were shocked when they got the ratings numbers for the first two episodes. 72 million households tuned in to watch Diesel TV, which means over 100 million people watched the program.
The show covers a variety of racing including drag racing, mud racing, sled pulls, burnout contests, and anything that Big Don Ellison and Randy Cole deem to be entertaining. They filmed the Texas Diesel Nationals in Ennis in April and have plans to film again in Ennis at the NHRDA World Finals in October. Cole is the President of the National Hot Rod Diesel Association (NHRDA). Ellison said, “14 percent of all diesel trucks are sold in Texas. That means Texans enjoy driving diesels. Diesel TV is a high performance gear-head show that is basically set in your driveway.” He is hoping that his fellow Forney residents will tune in to Diesel TV and he hopes to have other watch parties here in town.
Diesel TV is shown locally on Fox Sports Net Southwest and nationally on the Fox Sports Net channels. You can catch the show on Thursdays at 4 p.m. and each episode is shown on repeat about eight times. You can also catch up with the episodes you missed by going to www.dieseltv.com.
You can see more from Big Don Ellison on his Race Talk website here.
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