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Opinion: Daytona Speedweeks Television Coverageby Brett Baldeck ~ February 19th, 2007. Filed under: Racing Wire. |
Wow! Daytona Speedweeks went by fast, but it was full of television coverage so nobody missed a beat of the action.
Speedweeks marked the first races shown under the new 2007 NASCAR TV contract. Some of the coverage was good, while other parts of Speedweeks coverage was nothing the networks should brag about.
Let’s start off with the coverage of practice sessions and qualifying sessions from all three NASCAR series. All I can say is I could not keep up. They were spread out across many days, and were not on all the same networks. Some was on SPEED, and then others were on ESPN. But the ones that I did catch were pretty good. Qualifying for the Daytona 500 on FOX Sports was pretty good. They didn’t make it boring, and tried to add some excitement.
Now the actual racing coverage was spread across three different networks, for the first time I can remember. The Craftsman Truck Series race was on SPEED Channel, the Busch Series race on ESPN2, and the Nextel Cup Daytona 500 was on FOX Sports.
First let’s start off with the Craftsman Truck Series race on SPEED. I thought it was a good broadcast. The pre-race show was nice. They had a little tribute to both Bobby Hamilton and Benny Parsons. As for the actual race coverage, the only thing I didn’t like was there were a bunch of commercials, but I am guessing this was in part due to the many caution flags. The broadcast team did a good job and there really wasn’t too much to complain about.
Next, the Busch Series race, which was broadcasted on ESPN2. I thought it was terrific. The only complaint I have was they have too many analysts and the pre-race show was a bit long. But by far, ESPN2 showed the least commercials of the three networks that broadcasted racing over speedweeks. It really brought back some memories for me from when ESPN use to have NASCAR racing. Dr. Jerry Punch, Rusty Wallace, and Andy Petree did a great job in the booth. The pit reporters of Allen Bestwick, Dave Burns (Both Formely of NBC/TNT), Jamie Little, and Mike Massaro also did a great job. The graphics ESPN2 did look similar to those of FOX from last season, but they were still good. Easy on the eyes, which seems to be a problem with some networks lately.
Finally the big broadcast, The Daytona 500 on FOX Sports. I also think that this broadcast was pretty good. They kept us up to date, and even came out of commercial when Tony Stewart and Kurt Busch wrecked. I like how FOX had a Top 5 Running Order displayed while the rest of the 43 car running order was scrolling across the screen. Kritsa Voda definitely proved on Sunday that she belongs with the FOX Sports team. I think she did a fantastic job. The commercials were a bit much, but still not as bad as NBC. One thing that made me laugh was the finish of the race. FOX always seems to have the races that have very close finishes.
Overall Speedweeks TV Coverage was not to bad. But perhaps there was too much TV coverage over various different television networks? If there is such a thing called too much coverage. But there was a lot of coverage, and I just couldn’t keep up. When ratings come out this week, I hope they improved because I know that all the networks this weekend did a fantastic job. But the one thing that some of the networks need to still work on is when and how many commercial breaks to take.
It’s hard to believe Speedweeks is over. Off to California!
February 19th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
After going to Daytona for SpeedWeeks for many years but curtailing that effort in the late 90’s due to the hassle of getting there, reserving a room for gouging rates and putting up with the bad traffic jams, the TV coverage is better than being there. Between ESPN2, Speed and Fox it was wall-to-wall coverage was the best ever, this year. Competition improves the breed fits this present situation.
And if you didn’t get enough info on the tube, the internet was another valuable source of information. We are fortunate to live in the age of instant information.
Think about this when we started going to SpeedWeeks at Daytona back in the late 60’s we filed stories by Western Union Telegraph Service! In the 70’s it started off with Telecopiers, then Fax machines to the daily papers. In the 80’s it was word processers. Then along came e-mail using laptops that came on the scene in the late 90’s up to the present day.
The new technology, though, is not without some casualties. The daily and weekly trade newspapers now find it difficult to cope with the internet are having a rough go with all of these technilogical leaps in the Instant Information Age. But, that can be charged up to progress.
February 19th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
My only dispute is with ESPN. Everyone on the broadcast who has ever been involved with racing did a terrific job. My problem is with the people they have brought in who are used to stick and ball sports, and are neophytes to racing. They with their lack of racing acumen tend to detract from the flow of the broadcast. Just because a person is a host on a sports show, they aren’t necessarily good in a sport with history, rules, and tradition they are unfamiliar with. Can’t wait to see the train wreck named Musberger.
Won’t be long until people start watching for the commercials. They put the super bowl to shame…K