On the subject of Ironman sponsorships:

How do you think marketing execs at Ford, Gatorade, etc will feel when they discover the Houston NBC affiliate didn’t air Kona coverage?

Will WTC care? They should. They just lost an audience of 4 million people.

What other major affiliates declined coverage?

Here in Montana we had no coverage due to the college football game
.

in central Iowa got only half of the race…tornadoes took the rest of the time.