NASCAR on television and radio
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This page is an overview of coverage of NASCAR racing on television and radio.
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[edit] Early years
The first known telecast of a NASCAR race was the 1960 Daytona 500, parts of which was presented as part of CBS Sports Spectacular, with announcer Bud Palmer.[1]
In the ensuing years, but before 1979, there were two main sources of NASCAR telecasts:
- ABC's Wide World of Sports, the famous sports anthology program, provided coverage of select NASCAR Winston Cup Series races in the 1970s. In 1971, it presented a 200-lap race at Greenville-Pickens Speedway in its entirety, the first such broadcast of a NASCAR race. Throughout the 1970s, ABC presented portions of the Daytona 500, Southern 500, and other important races.
- Car & Track, a weekly auto racing show hosted by Bud Lindeman, recapped all of NASCAR's top-series races in the 1960s and '70s in a weekly 30-minute syndicated show. (Today, the show has been repackaged, renamed Back in the Day, and airs on the SPEED Channel with host Dale Earnhardt, Jr.)
[edit] 1979 Daytona 500: The breakthrough
CBS Sports President Neal Pilson and motorsports editor Ken Squier believed that America would watch an entire stock car race live on television. On February 15, 1979, CBS presented the first flag-to-flag coverage of the Daytona 500. Richard Petty won NASCAR's crown-jewel race for the sixth time, but the big story was the post-race fight on the track's infield between Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison, who crashed together on the final lap. The race drew incredible ratings, in part due to the compelling action both on and off the track, and in part because a major snowstorm on the East Coast kept millions of viewers indoors.
As time passed, more Winston Cup races ended up on TV. ESPN broadcast its first live race in 1981, from North Carolina Speedway,[1] and TNN followed in 1991. All Cup races were nationally televised; networks struck individual deals with track owners, and multiple channels carried racing action. By 2000, the last year of this arrangement, six networks televised at least one Cup series race: CBS, ABC, ESPN, TNN, TBS, and NBC. Also, a growing number of races in the Busch Series and Craftsman Truck Series were made available for broadcast, and some track owners even threw in support races in lesser series.
NASCAR wanted to capitalize on its increased popularity even more, so they decided that future deals would be centralized; that is, the networks would negotiate directly with NASCAR for a regular schedule of telecasts.
[edit] 2001-06: First central TV deal
That deal was struck on December 15, 1999. Fox Sports, FX, NBC and TNT agreed to pay $2.4 billion for a new six-year package, covering the Winston (now NEXTEL) Cup Series and Busch Series schedules.
- Fox and FX would televise race 1 through 16 of the 2001, 2003, and 2005 seasons and race 2 through 17 of the 2002, 2004, and 2006 seasons. Fox would air the Daytona 500 in the odd-numbered years. All Busch Series races during that part of the season would also be on Fox/FX.
- NBC and TNT would televise the final 17 races of the even-numbered years as well as the Daytona 500 and the last 18 races of the odd-numbered years, as well as all Busch Series races held in that time of the year.
ESPN retained the rights to the Craftsman Truck Series through 2002 under a separate contract. Beginning in 2003, SPEED Channel became the exclusive broadcast home of that series.
[edit] Reaction to changes
The centralized TV deal is causing consternation among many longtime NASCAR fans. The biggest criticisms include an increase in commercial breaks, emphasis on the more popular drivers and teams to the exclusion of others, and the de-emphasis of actual racing coverage in exchange for more fluff and hype.
See NASCAR on Fox#Criticisms for more information on this topic as it specifically relates to the Fox coverage.
[edit] 2007-14: ABC & ESPN replace NBC
Late in 2005, NBC announced that they no longer wanted to carry NASCAR races on their schedule. ABC/ESPN took the opportunity to regain the series. On December 12, 2005, NASCAR announced its next TV contract: eight years, $4.8 billion with Fox/SPEED Channel, ABC/ESPN, and TNT.[2] This time, the deal bundles the CTS in with the NEXTEL Cup and Busch series. Here's how this deal will work:
- Fox will show the first 13 Cup races along with the Budweiser Shootout every year, including the Daytona 500. The package runs through the first weekend in June and the race at Dover International Speedway.
- TNT, which split from former partner NBC, then picks up the coverage, with the next six telecasts, which covers the following tracks: Pocono, Michigan, Sonoma, Loudon, Daytona (Pepsi 400), and Chicagoland. The Pepsi 400 will be presented with limited commercial interruptions.[3]
- ESPN would then televise the rest of the late summer schedule. The ten races for the Chase for the Nextel Cup will be on ABC under the new Disney brand "ESPN on ABC". The Allstate 400 will begin the package on July 29, 2007.
- SPEED Channel will carry the Gatorade Duel at Daytona, just before the Daytona 500, and the NASCAR NEXTEL All-Star Challenge at Lowe's Motor Speedway in May.
- ESPN2 and ABC will carry all Busch Series races during this time. The plan for 2007 is to have six Busch races on ABC, with the other 29 on ESPN2.[4] ESPN's return to NASCAR television took place at the Orbitz 300 on February 17, 2007. Kevin Harvick was the first driver to celebrate a victory on an ESPN-branded network since Jerry Nadeau won the Atlanta Winston Cup season finale on ESPN in 2000. Although the race was shown on ESPN2, it included ESPN graphics and sponsor mentions.
- SPEED will move two of its Craftsman Truck Series races to Fox; in 2007, they are the Kroger 250 at Martinsville on March 31 and the City of Mansfield 250 at Mansfield Motorsports Speedway on May 26.[5]
- The Bud Pole qualifying sessions for Cup racing will be shown on SPEED, ESPN & ESPN2 with the exception of Daytona 500 qualifying, which will be shown on FOX.
- On the pay-per-view front, DirecTV did premiere NASCAR Hot Pass at the 2007 Daytona 500. The package consists of five channels, each dedicated to a particular driver with booth announcers and team communications among the driver, crew chief, and spotter.[6]
[edit] Broadcasters
The broadcast teams for each package are as follows:
- Fox will retain most of the same announcers that have worked for the network since 2001: Mike Joy, Larry McReynolds, and Darrell Waltrip in the booth, pit reporters Steve Byrnes, Dick Berggren, and Matt Yocum; and prerace hosts Chris Myers and Jeff Hammond. Krista Voda moves up from Speed, and will replace Jeanne Zelasko as the fourth pit reporter, working all races. (That change was necessary because Major League Baseball on FOX, on which Zelasko also works, will now last the entire season with the new MLB contract.)
- The ESPN/ABC team: Dr. Jerry Punch, Rusty Wallace, and Andy Petree in the booth; Allen Bestwick, Dave Burns, Jamie Little, and Mike Massaro in the pits, with Brent Musburger and Chris Fowler sharing duties as the as prerace host. Coordinating producer Neil Goldberg returns to ESPN after six years at Fox.
- TNT will keep Bill Weber as lap-by-lap announcer and Wally Dallenbach as analyst. After some speculation, Kyle Petty was revealed as the second analyst for the network's coverage on February 7, 2007.[7] He will continue as an active NASCAR driver. Benny Parsons, who was an NBC/TNT analyst, died on January 16, 2007 and it is unclear if he would have returned to the booth in any event, as he had reportedly talked about retirement after 2006. The pit reporters will be Yocum, Marty Snider, Ralph Sheheen, and Lindsey Czarniak. McReynolds, a booth analyst for Fox, will be the pre-race analyst. Weber is also expected to be the pre-race host, but that has still not been officially announced.[8]
NBC and FX will no longer carry NASCAR. NBC's departure is probably no surprise, given that it is paying $2.8 billion for six years of Sunday night telecasts of the National Football League. Most production members will stay with TNT. Both the new NFL and old NASCAR deals overlapped in 2006, which forced some postrace coverage at NBC races to air on CNBC. FX is apparently getting out of the sports business entirely and is expected to concentrate on a general entertainment lineup. However, there is a slight possibility that FOX telecasts would move to FX if the previous day's race was rained out, as happened twice in 2006. One reason for this would be a larger number of TV households for FX than for SPEED.
[edit] Coverage details
The new contracts increase the amount of coverage from each weekend's races. All practices for NEXTEL Cup Series races are now televised, whereas only the final practice ("happy hour") was carried before. In addition, all Busch Series final practices and qualifying sessions are now shown; before, a few qualifying sessions were not seen and only a handful of practices were seen. Most, if not all, truck series time trials will also be broadcast.
Other changes include revamped graphics and expanded telemetry. Also, Fox has unveiled "Fox 3D," which will replay various moments as it looks from virtual reality.
[edit] NASCAR on radio
Currently, three separate networks cover NASCAR races on radio:
- Motor Racing Network: Founded by Ken Squier and Bill France, Jr. in 1971, it covers all NEXTEL Cup and Busch series races at tracks owned by ISC, all such races at tracks owned by other track promoters (with one exception, see below), as well as all Craftsman Truck Series races and all exhibition races (All-Star Challenge, Duel, and Budweiser Shootout).
- Performance Racing Network: Covers all Cup and Busch races at tracks owned by Speedway Motorsports, Inc.
- Indianapolis Motor Speedway Radio Network: Covers the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard, with the same announcers and production staff that covers the Indianapolis 500.
From 2002 to 2006, all races were heard on XM Satellite Radio channel 144 across the continental United States. In 2007, national satellite radio rights moved to Sirius Satellite Radio from XM. Sirius NASCAR Radio now airs on channel 128. Among the programs on Sirius NASCAR Radio are a weekly program co-hosted by TV pit reporter Matt Yocum and 2002 and 2005 Cup champion Tony Stewart and a morning drivetime show with print reporters David Poole of the Charlotte Observer and Marty Smith of ESPN.com.
XM channel 144 now houses XM Sports Nation, a general sports radio channel. Claire B. Lang continues to host a NASCAR show as part of XM Sports Nation. It was announced on February19, 2007 that both XM and Sirius would merge. How the merger will affect the current Sirius exclusivity with NASCAR is currently unkown.
All three networks also have affiliation deals with hundreds of local radio stations. Many stations sign with more than one of these networks to ensure coverage of the entire season.
[edit] See also
[edit] Reference
- ^ Ultimate NASCAR, ESPN Books, 2007, p. 42-43
