by richard teague tinynascars@yahoo.com
When TNT and Fox, along with NBC, spent all that giant (not just big) money for the television rights to broadcast NASCAR races, I didn’t mind too much. The first few races that Fox/TNT did were strange with no graphics on the cars, but they got their act together and it improved somewhat. Then NBC took over and it seemed to get better. Then for the next several years things went along well enough that I could live with it. Now that NBC has dropped the hot potato multi-billion dollar rights and ABC/ESPN have spent even bigger bucks for the next few years, I’ll have to see how they do racing. At Homestead Sunday, day and night, you could really tell that this was NBC’s last shot at sending a NASCAR race out over the airwaves. Or at least John and myself thought so.
We sat there watching the race when the camera was following a couple of cars, and it wasn’t even Johnson or Kenseth, then it backed up for a second and went forward. Another camera shot came on with the aftermath of a crash and we’re sitting there waiting to see what happened to Labonte. Nothing. Usually they got 3 or 4 and sometimes more camera angles of an accident but not this time, and that’s when I started noticing little things for the rest of the race. Several more times when a caution came out, it seemed NBC did not have enough cameras to cover who caused what, who was at fault, or show a bunch of replays. Well they did get lucky when Kurt’s spring rolled up to one camera’s position and I thought they where going spend the rest of the race covering the dang spring.
On and on for the whole race it seemed to go like that. Either wrong camera positions or not enough cameras, or it just might have been a different director calling the shots. I think that it was a mixture of both. Because it was their last broadcast, and so far to travel with all the NBC stuff and staff, they said why do it? Hey why lug all this stuff down there and put all these people up in motels and spend all this money when can do the job with LESS! Heck we ain’t doing it no more and here’s a chance to recoup some bucks. Plus, we can advertise the new hit show “Heroes” nineteen times and not have to pay for it. Now if that ain’t a win-win situation I don’t know what is.
Speaking about advertisements, let me interject a little something right here about the few others that were shown during the race when NBC wasn’t pushing their shows. Who else out there is sick and tired of the FedEx commercial about “who does Denny call after he wins another race?” I mean, come on FedEx. Then there’s that other one about, “what did Denny do before he drove the #11 car”, yea right, hot rodded a dang golf cart through an airport terminal. John said you would think that FedEx, with all their money, could come up with something along the lines of those UPS ones. I love that one with the kid and the father along the fence and that one with the tire changer, heck I like seeing them several times, they’re great.
I don’t want to get started on commercials, because it would take a whole article to talk about them and I sure hope that next season will bring new ones, I want to talk about NBC. You know, I couldn’t help but think that there were only five or six cars in that race, but yea, I know, there were forty-three, but it didn’t seem that way. I guess NBC was doing the TNT thing with “Drama” and showed Matt Kenseth and Jimmie Johnson for most of the 400 miles. John’s favorite driver is Bill Elliott, and I think the only time we saw his car with that fancy paint job was when Jimmie or Matt happened to lap him or something. Matter of fact, the only time you saw another car was when the two Chasers were going by.
Yea sure, they did show Junior and Kasey by themselves, along with a few shots of the front of the field, but for the most part it was the #17or the #48 all race long. Don’t get me wrong, Johnson is my driver and I’m happy as all get out that he is the new Nextel (formerly the Winston) Cup Champion, and I do like to watch him race, but enough is enough. I want to see the field of cars and the rubbing and racing going on with the leaders, the guys in the middle, and even the rear of the pack. Why just show the two guys for the most of the race, it’s just leaving the other 41 out. Man I had to watch the ticker on the top of the screen more this race than before just to see where Tony was and find out how far Jeff was back. Then, when Montoya got his initiation to the NASCAR Cup Series with the fiery spin, there were only a couple of angles showing the crash. If this wasn’t their last show, or if it had been Fox or TNT, you would have seen five or six different shots of it and plenty of commentating about it but not this race.
Even the pre-show was nothing but “Matt this” and “Jimmie that” and then throughout the race they showed pre-taped interviews with Rick and other team members, but I don’t remember seeing to much of Jack Roush, did you? Is something else going on at Roush Racing that we don’t know about beside crew changes and Mark Martin leaving? One thing I noticed when they were talking to Martin was that he didn’t look too good, health-wise, and Jack didn’t seem to be top-notch either. Has there been a bug going round? Could that be the real reason for Mark to leave his old friend for a Chevrolet? Well at least Ford kept him in the fold with an F150 ride for next year’s CTS.
I guess it’s best that NBC doesn’t have any more NASCAR to show us, and I don’t think I’ll get a chance to watch “Heroes” even if it is the hottest thing since canned dirt. You know what worries me is how ABC and ESPN are going to do the NASCAR races. I mean they spent a ton to do it and they got to make their money back somehow, and will we the fans have to pay the price? Rusty will be all right in the booth, but a doctor and a basketball player doing racing? Hmmm. Makes you wonder doesn’t it? Perhaps ESPN can transform Chris’ “back back back……” to something catchy for NASCAR, is he still with them? I used to love to watch ESPN, but in the past many years they have really turned me off to different sports and I wonder how they’ll treat racing. And ABC? Well, I just loved the “Wide World” long ago, so maybe it won’t be too bad.
Yes the season is over and Jimmie Johnson is the Champion and like I said earlier, Hooray for Jimmie. He came so close two years in a row and now he has won, so that’s the hard part, the first one. Like I was telling John after the race last night, Johnson is in the field of drivers that I call the 21st Century Guys that will lead us there if we can put up with Brian France’s changes. So many of us old fans still long for the old drivers, that raced back in the 60s and up, that have left or are leaving racing, but we have to accept these new guys and their style of driving, which is called progress. I remember when I loved boxing before Clay became Ali and changed that sport forever, and I realized that it was a new horizon I had crossed over to, and also that he was the greatest fighter of ALL time.
It’s happening in every sport these days. Look at golf with Tiger and the way he has changed that game and perhaps will set records that won’t be broken for years to come-like the old guys did. All sports are like that with new athletes and their different styles, we have to adjust to them and enjoy the way things change, but not the basic mechanics of the sport. France has, and is, changing those so-called mechanics, and that is what will drive me away and I think many other fans too. Gosh, I sound like a philosopher don’t I? And I don’t even mean to. Well that’s all for the Socrates side of me this week and I hope to have some news next week about my new contract with the paper, and for now, if you need to contact me, you can make it so at tinynascars@yahoo.com, and also make this so: If it ain’t NASCAR, It ain’t s**t!
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