Dear NASCAR: The Broadcasting Booth Desperately Needs a Shakeup
Dear NASCAR,
Believe it or not, one of your biggest problems is your television presentation. Sure, this doesn’t put fans in the stands, but it does play a crucial role in how fans experience NASCAR on a weekly basis. With that being said, the voices of Darrell Waltrip, Mike Joy, Chris Myers, Larry McReynolds and Jeff Gordon don’t really do the presentation the justice it deserves!
That’s not to say that these talented men haven’t helped NASCAR be what it is today, but almost all of the current commentators haven’t been inside a stock car competitively for over two decades now and that’s not a good thing. In fact, it could be one of the big reasons for your recent fall in the ratings.
Then there are the southern accents. While any announcer you put into the broadcast booth is most likely to have some kind of southern twang, it’s not really something that’s going to appeal to a lot of audiences. It also might have a lot to do with why NASCAR isn’t really bringing in new fans and is failing to retain many.
It’s a societal disconnect of sorts and most likely leaves fans wondering what the hell those old men are talking about it. Furthermore, it continues to contribute to the notion that NASCAR is nothing more than a bunch of drunk hillbillies watching other hillbillies turning left for three hours or more to determine who wins the race.
That’s why NASCAR needs to completely clean out the booth and bring in younger faces to be the voice of the sport. Candidates like Tony Stewart and Dale Earnhardt Jr. seem tempting, especially since it would help retain fans that might stop watching after Dale Jr. retires at the end of the season, but someone a little more “middle of the road” would be a good fit too.
There needs to be a balance. The booth can’t just consist of four rednecks speaking in southern slang words and laughing at inside jokes. There has to be something of substance to the new viewer. Sure, there can be one or two of those voices in the booth, but there also need to be a few drivers that represent the future of the sport: drivers with more modern day views and opinions.
Being as honest as possible, NASCAR has had virtually the same guys in the booth since FOX Sports first broadcast the Daytona 500 in 2001. The only exception to that is Jeff Gordon, who retired in 2015 after failing to capture a coveted fifth championship, but even his commentary is starting to sound stale like the product of a forgotten yesteryear.
Yes, NASCAR did make the move last year to move Larry McReynolds to a technical analyst position, but they still have Darrell Waltrip and Mike Joy in the booth and sometimes that can get incredibly annoying. Of course, some fans love it, especially since older fans probably grew up in the years that Waltrip was popular, but it really doesn’t help with the younger audience.
What would attract younger fans would be to bring in special guests throughout the broadcast. Anyone from pop culture icons, celebrities, and team owners coming on to be interviewed would be a great way to increase viewership, especially since it would allow for more people in the mainstream to be exposed to the awesomeness that is your sport!
What you needs to do is treat your product more like Sunday Night Football. Embrace the pop culture reality as a whole that you are a part of, no matter how small, and utilize that to your advantage. Get younger artists and celebrities in the booth and do something buzz-worthy with them. Maybe even hold little contests throughout the broadcast.
Not only does that help you create buzz around the sport, it also allows the race to be broken up into much more bite-sized and bearable segments. That doesn’t mean go to some insane game show format that will only alienate the die-hard fans and make them run for the hills, but create something that hasn’t been done before in sports broadcasting.
That’s not to say that NASCAR needs to become some kind of daytime talk show or reality game show, it just means that NASCAR and its broadcasting partners would vastly benefit from experimenting with what the broadcaster can do during a race weekend, especially if they were to introduce some kind of fresh new format for fans to enjoy.
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In the end, take the time to revamp some of your broadcast formats and bring in a new announce team. Or, continue to lose fan after fan and run potential fans off with confusing commentary, outdated experiences, overly southern tones. This will only make them think that they can’t identify with the product being presented to them.
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I look forward to your response.
Sincerely, a concerned race fan who wants to see change