You are right, Speedvision's coverage of the race stunk. One lap of race and then commercial, commercial, commercial. And then what, other than the neat ZX-9 Kawasaki commercial of the dude shocking himself the others were mostly cruiser commercials. (The FZ1 was pretty good and the Honda dirt bikes OK, but paaaleeease, no cruiser commercials during AMA Superbike!). Interestingly, I watched the WSB races immediately following and it didn't seem like there were that many commercials!
As for the Scott Russell debacle, it was horrendous, almost shameful carnage. Scott had some kind of problem with his bike and was feigning (and turning a bit right) to get off the track. I don't know who hit him but it was an explosion of bike parts, fiberglass or CF, and bodies strune all over. At first we didn't know it was Russell, but the rider just wasn't moving at all. It was terrible, just terrible.
It happened so fast I still cannot reply it in my mind. I think someone tagged Scott from behind as the rider was launching forward. Then the rider who clipped Scott was going down. Immediately after someone just absolutely t-boned him and his bike. It just just exploded into a pile of bike parts and bodies. No one was getting up quickly. It was sickening and a pall upon the pretigous Arai 200 race.
DaveK