NASCAR On NBC Reaches New Low At Indy
If there’s one thing that NASCAR fans learned Sunday Afternoon, it’s that NBC really doesn’t care about them or the sport of auto racing in general. In fact, NBC thought so little of the latest acquisition of their sports network, that they shoved one of the sports crown jewel races to their sister station in favor of local news!
Kyle Busch taking a victory lap around Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Mandatory Credit: Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports
This surely puts NASCAR on a short trail into obscurity in the coming years, especially with the schedule that NBC has chosen for The Sprint Cup Series this season. While the main channel will be covering the final three races of the season, other great tracks like Talladega, Martinsville, Bristol and Richmond will all be on their sister channel NBCSN
For those of you that don’t think that this a bad thing, consider this, The Kentucky Derby, The Preakness, The Belmont, The Indianapolis 500, The NFC Championship, The AFC Championship, The College Football playoffs, The college basketball championship and even the PGA are all broadcast on one of the main channels. If coverage of NASCAR’s signature races are already being pawned off on a lessor known channel, then it won’t be long before the entire season is pawned off on the sister station
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If you think that the poor broadcasting efforts on NBC’s part isn’t affecting the beloved sport at all, consider that last week’s New Hampshire race on garnered a 2.0 on The Nielson scale. That’s .4 drop from their race at Kentucky and a .7 drop from their Daytona race. Obviously fans new and old have flocked to see what the fuss was all about with NASCAR on NBC , and then left when they realized it was nothing of substance.
As for Sunday’s broadcast of The Brickyard 400, it was plagued with unenthusiastic announcers, constant commercials, horrible miscues, audio problems, cringe worthy graphics, obvious favoritism towards specific drivers and blatant instances of the announcers having no idea what to say. If anything, it was an improvement on last week’s performance, but still came up short of being bearable.
Kyle Busch pulling away from the field in The Brickyard 400. Mandatory Credit: Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports
The coverage was pretty decent at the end, especially with the great play-by-play on the restarts and the talks about fuel strategy. Unfortunately for fans and NASCAR, that wasn’t enough to save the Lackluster and often monotonous broadcast. The commercials were also a problem and made it really hard to really get into the early stages of the race.
Finally, there’s the obvious favoritism that’s at play during NBC’s coverage of The Sprint Cup Series. At the beginning, it wasn’t that noticeable, but as time went on, it became blatantly clear that NBC was rooting for Kyle Busch to make The Chase and win The Sprint Cup Championship in November.
There could be a theory to this favoritism though. Maybe NBC was trying to find a good angle to showcase for their coverage and Kyle Busch was the best storyline available. He is a younger driver and does have a very attractive edge to him. That’s not say that he is getting any performance boost or illegal help of any kind, but it seems that no matter how good of a day another driver is having, all NBC wants to talk about is Kyle Busch.
Sure, Kyle Busch has now won four out of five races, and is only 26 points outside of the top-30, but that does not mean he is the only driver out there! What about Kasey Kahne, Kurt Busch, Chase Elliot, Jimmie Johnson, Martin Truex Jr. and Danica Patrick? Is NBC really that afraid of taking their cameras off of Busch for more then ten seconds? If so, they really need to prioritize their broadcasts and realize that 42 other drivers are competing on the same track.
In all honesty, NBC may not get their footing this season, or even next season, but hopefully it will happen sooner rather than later. Race fans deserve better than this, NASCAR deserves better than this, first time fans deserve to see a better show then this! Let’s make it happen NBC!