What is the most pressing issue regarding the present and future success of Standardbred racing? Some will argue, and often do, that integrity is job number one and that anything short of rounding up every cheater and their associates is a necessity for future survival. Others will look at the horrible takeout imposed on bettors that makes the sport un-wagerable in certain locales, rendering each race meaningless for those who expect to win at placing bets. There are those with personal agendas and gripes about pretty much what anyone is trying to achieve, whether it be for the global good or purely self-interest. What's rare in these days is that anyone recognizes what the general public is looking for to help deal with the rigors of life. The idea of sport as entertainment appears to have been lost on those trying to push their own views on what needs to be corrected. Recently Northfield Park and The Meadows have taken steps to improve on the video quality of its signals. The modifications didn't come with a unified pledge for 100 percent racing integrity or the lowering of takeout. They came with the understanding that essentially all this industry has left, with the absence of live on-track attendance, is the character and quality of its video production. There are hundreds of screens to choose from, with broadcasts of sporting events competing for an extra pair of eyes. How relevant this sport is now, and in the future, may well depend solely on what our races look like on the screen. Northfield's new high-definition signal is an improvement on what I already considered one of the best visual products harness racing has produced. The Meadows has been offering new angles to give a better close-up of the horses before going to post. This may be meaningless to some but to me it gives a truer sense to the viewer of the power and beauty of our racehorses. The major problem harness racing has had over the years is that while it has obsessed over integrity, it has continued to lose ground to other sports when it comes to adjusting the character and quality of the games themselves. From a positive standpoint many racetracks have improved their off-track product, incorporating trainers and drivers throughout the program to offer insight. Not too long ago few of the actual players in the game were ever seen until after a race had concluded. Offering any form of information to players in advance of a race is a net positive. How the public chooses to utilize this information is irrelevant to its absolute benefit to the image of our sport. Still, it is impossible to watch a complete racing program these days without wondering whether an audience of non-racing fans would find anything compelling in approximately four hours of programming with less than 25 minutes of actual action footage. Where's the entertainment? While others in the gambling field have recognized that time is money and looked to benefit from the equation, harness racing has spent too much time allowing inaction on and off the racetrack. The advent of proposition bets has filled in the gaps for those wagering on sports that want to be entertained in some ways before the game ends in two or three hours. There is recognition that keeping one's interest is paramount to both the betting houses and its customers. How do we get people to pay attention to our sport and keep them interested? The answer lies somewhere within our daily product. Now, the difficult part . . . How to change any of it without stepping on the toes of people within the industry that are more than happy with how things are working for them in current time. In essence the business partnership that harness racing has become finds itself in a constant battle for superiority with disregard for long-term prosperity. Kicking out the cheaters or lowering takeout are not new ideas and neither will lead to future relevance. Revising a product that once had a solid base needs racing to look like racing again. It's hard to believe that more than 45 years has passed since The Meadowlands first opened and managed to get over the biggest concern its backers had at the time. That being the potential for 10 horses in a race to go around the track for three-quarters-of-a-mile in single file and only "race" the final quarter. That would have been a nightmare then, but we seem to be getting closer and closer to it these days. ► Sign up for our FREE DRF Harness Digest Newsletter Worse than The Meadowlands is what has happened regularly at Yonkers. Over the same 45-year period the track has gone from a time where eight horses were within four lengths of each other at the halfway point to the present where few races ever see horses that close at the three-quarter pole. The easiest argument for those willing to play devil's advocate is that the horses have changed and so too has our product. I can agree that the equipment has changed, but the horses are only part of the issue today. Trainer Tom Fanning pointed it out to me the other day: "I think the reason my horses hold up better at Yonkers is because they don't have to go all-out all the time," Fanning said. "At The Meadowlands they have to go fast all four quarters." Fanning is one of many trainers that have benefitted from the racing style at Yonkers over the last few years. With purses at an industry high, Yonkers horsemen are always thinking long-term when it comes to racing and therefore do what's best for the horse and the owner. Left out of the equation unfortunately are those people that once watched and wagered on these races but now find very little of it to be interested in. Perhaps the lack of a live audience has helped insulate horsemen from the reality of the show they are putting on. The reality is that the public has more choices than ever to find a source of entertainment. We should be spending less time fighting within over what passes as anyone's definition of integrity. It's time to try to advance the sport in a meaningful way and that should include all parties getting together just to "discuss" ways to improve the visual content in order to compete in the future.