September 30, 2010
By Doug Demmons
The most perplexing question in NASCAR, the question with no definitive answer but plenty of suspected causes, is why are NASCAR’s TV ratings tanking?
Ratings for the first two Chase races at New Hampshire and Dover are down substantially from last year. That isn’t exactly news. Ratings have been on a downward trend for about two years.
But it’s time to discard the usual excuses and try to figure out what’s really going on.
Let’s review the usual excuses:
* TV ratings are down because Dale Earnhardt Jr. isn’t winning.
* NASCAR just can’t compete with the NFL and college football in the fall.
* Start times are too inconsistent.
* The numbers are an anomaly because this year’s race was up against the Olympics/Masters/World Series/etc.
* The racing is boring
* The drivers are too politically correct
* Jimmie Johnson wins too much.
That about sums it up. Except for one thing.
The networks that cover the sport – Fox, TNT and ESPN.
Nobody at NASCAR cares to admit it –- and you can hardly blame them –- but the way NASCAR is covered and conveyed to fans does nothing but harm the sport.
Granted, it is a challenge to fit in commercials during a race broadcast since there are no natural breaks in the action – not even cautions, since a pit stop can make or break a team’s chances.
Baseball has innings. Football and basketball have timeouts, even timeouts just for TV.
NASCAR fans have to wonder what’s happening on the track while they are watching pitches for male enhancement supplements or whatever.
Football fans would never tolerate a network cutting away to a commercial while an NFL team is driving in the fourth quarter. There would be rioting in the streets.
But NASCAR fans are told they have to deal with it, that they should be grateful that they have TV coverage at all, that at one time races were only seen in highlights on ABC’ Wide World of Sports.
So shut up and watch.
Well, it doesn’t work that way any more. With as many options as there are to watch sports on dozens of channels and the internet, nobody has to put up with such arrogance.
And with increasing frequency, viewers are doing just that.
At the end of the Dover race ESPN cut away to commercials with 10 laps to go. Viewers missed five of the final laps of the race. There just isn’t any excuse for that.
If a network can’t fit all its commercial into a three-to-four-hour broadcast window without doing it in the last 10 laps, then that network needs to find something else to broadcast. Either that or there needs to be some radical rethinking.
The side-by-side broadcasts during Indy races on Versus are said to be impossible for NASCAR races. They are possible for Indy because those ratings are so low that advertisers are willing to gamble.
The more I hear that excuse, the less I buy it. There have all manner of things that were said to be impossible to pull off until one day they weren’t. This falls into that category.
It may seem like a piddling thing –- a few commercials driving people away from a sport. But with so many other options for entertainment today it doesn’t take much.
Doug Demmons is a writer and editor for the Birmingham News ~ he writes daily and weekly auto racing columns ranging from NASCAR to open wheel to Formula One, local tracks and more... you can read Doug's columns online at Blog of Tommorow
Follow Doug on Twitter: @dougdemmons
The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.
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