Conway Corp. premieres Mud Truck TV

Brian Austin, the man behind Conway's Y-107 radio station, now has a racing-themed TV show broadcast on Conway Corp. cable channel 22 at noon on Fridays.

Austin and his wife, Lisa, host the show, Mud Truck TV. As the title implies, the show's focus is on trucks driving through mud, quickly.

Austin said the show first aired in December 2006 on White County TV station MyTown TV. It's seen in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Kansas, Austin said, "and of course now it's coming back to Arkansas."

Most of the shows center on mud drag racing, with classes for everything from stock trucks and jeeps to spindly, mid-engined unlimited-class mud dragsters with supercharged, alcohol-fueled 1,000-horsepower engines and paddle tires.

But the scope of the show includes "all off-road racing throughout America," and rock crawling, hill climbs or the occasional rally wouldn't be out of the question, Austin said. The show has also featured interviews with celebrities including Wee Man and the producers of several nationally-broadcast television shows.

The first episode broadcast on Conway Corp. cable aired at noon Friday, featuring an evening of mud drag racing held last month at the Lee County Mud Motorsports Complex in Sanford, NC. A racer named Porky Sellers beat his own world record time at this event, powering through or sailing over 272 feet of soupy, lumpy mud in 4.396 seconds.

Also in the first episode a tenacious young racer barely tall enough to see over the dash of his tiny Suzuki Samurai 4x4 labored through the doors-deep bog, grinding almost to a stop several times but finally finishing the run to much applause from a wildly cheering crowd.

"This show's been real successful everywhere it's been broadcast, and it's a pleasure to bring it back to my hometown audience," Austin said.

For more information, visit www.mudtrucktv.net