Typically, Talladega Superspeedway races are some of the easiest events to cover on television, at least these days. Everyone is clustered together, so it’s fairly easy to keep track of everyone. It’s quite the difference compared to the 1994 and 1995 DieHard 500s I watched this past weekend on the NASCAR Channel, which saw small packs at times due to long runs under green.
Given the opinions on Sunday’s (April 27) NASCAR Cup Series race, I don’t know how fans would handle a race like what you saw at Talladega in 1994 and 1995. Back then, lead changes at Talladega were in the 20s. In comparison, Sunday’s race had 67.
For FOX Sports, Sunday was the end of an era. It marked the final race broadcast for longtime director Artie Kempner, who came on-air for an interview in the pit road photo stand during NASCAR RaceDay.
Kempner has been at FOX Sports since more or less day one, joining along with a number of colleagues from CBS Sports. That came as a result of FOX using a Godfather offer to acquire the NFC Sunday afternoon TV package starting with the 1994 NFL season. He’s been in the director’s seat for FOX’s NASCAR coverage since it first acquired rights beginning in 2001. He’s leaving for ESPN, where he will serve as the new director for Monday Night Football starting this fall.
Kempner, as one of the highest-ranking members of FOX NASCAR’s TV production, has had a significant effect on what we’ve seen on FOX broadcasts over the past 25 seasons. While he is not responsible for Digger, the gopher that used to show up on broadcasts (that was the idea of David Hill, FOX Sports’ former president), he is responsible for many things that you’ve seen production-wise on FOX’s NASCAR broadcasts, for better or worse.
Also, during NASCAR RaceDay, Jamie McMurray did a one-on-one interview with Chase Elliott. Elliott is far from the biggest personality in the sport. He approaches the sport differently from a lot of the other drivers out there. He may be the most popular driver on the circuit, but he’s also one of the most private. This piece was probably one of the best depictions of just who Elliott is. Someone who wants to win races badly, but doesn’t really want anything to do with the rest of it.
Sunday’s broadcast had some decent coverage of the on-track action. One of the key moments late in the race was likely when Ross Chastain executed a block on Denny Hamlin while he was getting back up to speed from his final stop. That move likely prevented the Toyotas from being a factor at the finish.
That said, there were quite a few things that were effectively missed. For example, of those Toyotas, the only one that managed to snag a top-10 finish was Bubba Wallace. That’s because he made a very aggressive move on the last lap, going through the middle of four-wide and having contact (not referenced on-air, but you could see it) to go from 20th to 10th. The disqualifications made it an eighth-place finish.
Second, there was an outright spin late in the race for John Hunter Nemechek. He spun exiting pit road on lap 113. Clint Bowyer noted that Nemechek clipped a small wet spot on the apron and wiped out. That incident brings up two questions, one TV-related and one not. First, why didn’t we get some replay of the incident? From what I’ve seen, this could have been much worse than it turned out to be.
The other is whether the track did anything to get rid of the wet spot. As you’re probably aware, it rained Friday night at Talladega. That rain ultimately shortened NASCAR Xfinity Series qualifying to one round. It didn’t rain the rest of the weekend. I get that the asphalt at Talladega dates back to 2006, but these drivers are lapping at over 190 mph. That’s dangerous.
The lack of cautions was likely to blame for the worst aspect of Sunday’s broadcast. FOX’s decision to go to commercial with nine laps to go for a full two minutes and 50 seconds (according to my official stopwatch). As a result, the broadcast returned to Talladega with a little more than five laps to go.
That seemed blatantly ridiculous. There are times when commercial breaks are frontloaded to prevent a circumstance like that from happening. It was frustrating to watch. Ideally, FOX Sports would take steps to prevent this from happening. If this were 2005, when the Cup Series was averaging more than 10 cautions a week, you could claim they forgot how to get the breaks properly spread out. That hasn’t been the case in recent years.
It’s a big contrast to Saturday’s Ag-Pro 300. The last side-by-side commercial break in that race occurred with more than 30 laps to go. On the restart from the third caution with 28 laps to go, Adam Alexander stated that the broadcast was going to be commercial-free to the finish if the race stayed green. Aside from commercials in subsequent cautions, it was.
The race coverage itself saw some aspects return. For example, the Gyro cam was installed in Riley Herbst’s car. It’s been a while. A few years ago, those things were in play every week.
We also got a nasty shot of Kyle Busch’s left front tire, which showed cords due to getting involved in a crash early on. You rarely see that at Talladega.
The race ended ahead of schedule due to the lack of big wrecks. Viewers got a half-dozen interviews and some post-race analysis before leaving for prime-time programming. That portion of the broadcast is too dependent on McMurray and Chris Myers. They don’t really add anything to the show here.
Overall, Sunday’s broadcast had a couple of aspects that cannot happen. You can’t ignore spins. I’m pretty confident that FOX had footage of Nemechek’s spin. If it didn’t, it could have used the footage above since it has access to the in-car cameras on Max’s service as well.
The commercial schedule was terrible. You shouldn’t be in a commercial break under green with six laps to go at any race, let alone Talladega. Thank goodness that FOX brought back the no full-screen commercials under the green rule from earlier this year. Things could have been different had this not been on FOX.
Unfortunately, this was not the best farewell from FOX’s NASCAR coverage for Kempner. I’ve seen better broadcasts at Talladega over the years.
That’s all for this week. Next weekend is going to be a very busy one. NASCAR has a tripleheader weekend at Texas Motor Speedway. The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series races Friday night, the Xfinity Series on Saturday and Cup on Sunday.
Outside of Texas, the ARCA Menards Series races at Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway on Saturday, May 3. FloRacing will broadcast the race live at 9:30 p.m. ET. Also, the NTT IndyCar Series will be at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama and Formula 1 makes its first visit of the year to the United States in Miami Gardens, Fla. TV listings can be found here.
For next week’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday here at Frontstretch, we’ll cover the Wurth 400. Hopefully, FOX Sports does better than last year’s broadcast, which was downright putrid. In the Critic’s Annex, we’ll cover Saturday’s Ag-Pro 300.
As always, if you choose to contact a network by email, do so in a courteous manner. Network representatives are far more likely to respond to emails that ask questions politely rather than emails full of rants and vitriol.
Phil Allaway has three primary roles at Frontstretch. He's the manager of the Frontstretch email newsletter that publishes Monday-Friday and occasionally on weekends. He keeps TV broadcasters honest with weekly editions of Couch Potato Tuesday and serves as the Frontstretch Sports Car racing editor.
Outside of Frontstretch, Phil is the press officer for Lebanon Valley Speedway in West Lebanon, N.Y. He covers all the action on the high-banked dirt track from regular DIRTcar Modified racing to occasional visits from touring series such as the Super DIRTcar Series.
A “lead change” at Talladega, Daytona and Atlanta occurs when two cars leading a traffic jam switch positions at the finish line with a difference of a coat of paint. That is one of NA$CAR’s favourite numbers but don’t really mean anything at those tracks.How about 60 lead changes at Talladega when cars could actually catch and make pass?
Check out 1975 Talladega race:
https://www.racing-reference.info/race-results/1975_Winston_500/W
Those were “lead changes”!
lead changes sunday were a result of green flag pit stops and the cars pitting in groups of what 5-10 cars? that’s what drives that number up.
I thought passes during green flag pit stops didn’t count? I’d like to see how many green flag passes the lapped cars had.
I’m not one who rages about every single thing, but the commercials have really jumped out to me this year. It seems Fox and CW have taken side by side commercials as justification to show long commercial breaks, AND ignore any action taking place during said breaks.
Again, I’m not a “back in my day” sort of person, but in this case, I think it’s justified. Once upon a time, coverage would cut back to the race if an accident happened during a break, but this essentially never happens today.
A lot of people wonder why F1 is growing so rapidly in the US. I think the lack of commercials is a large part of this. With NASCAR, Indycar, and other US based series, I am always certain to DVR the race, as the preponderance of commercials ruins the flow and drama of the event. With F1, it’s flag to flag coverage, every single week.
This isn’t limited to NASCAR though. Basketball seems to allot a zillion timeouts to each team, and it seems obvious this is to create more commercial breaks. I’ve mostly stopped watching basketball.
Football has instant replay, which also adds extra opportunities for breaks. I’ve also mostly stopped watching football.
I don’t really see a way out of this for NASCAR. If they negotiated requirements like no commercials, or limited commercials, it probably would increase viewership, and eventually increase revenue. But, in the short term, it would mean less money for the teams, for NASCAR, etc. Good luck convincing Hendrick, Penske, Gibbs, Jordan, NASCAR, and everyone else to take less money in the short term, with the hopes of a long term gain.
I’m not sure exactly when or why it changed, but NASCAR fans used to be fiercely loyal to sponsors who supported the sport (it may not have changed – my perception is it has decreased). We all know sponsors are what allows this sport to continue (from grassroots level all the way up), and overall we are happy to support those sponsors who support racing. We get that TV generates their revenue through advertising, but can they not find a better way to advertise than losing coverage to full blown commercial breaks? Side by side is better, but still not ideal. I’d prefer to see Mike Joy enjoying a Coca Cola / Pepsi while Harvick is drinking Busch beer and Boyer amps himself up on Monster. What I’m saying is I’d rather see sponsor product placement be integrated into the telecast – it would be better than a billion cuts to commercial. Surely they can find better ways to engage the fans and generate value for advertisers than cut to the same 8 commercials every 4 minutes.
On edit: Isn’t it interesting they are constantly working to find new ways to change/update/keep the content interesting and engaging with viewers, but when it comes to advertising it’s been the same, stagnant, annoying formula of constant commercial breaks for as long as I’ve been alive.
I don’t know who some of the sponsors are and who their target audience might be.They’re not trying to sell me anything. NASCAR and the teams will take money from any source available. I don’t know of any other professional sport that can match the ads and entitlement sponsors NASCAR and the networks promote during a broadcast.
Hey, nobody wants commercials, but they are necessary, just keep them to a minimum. I’m about over the regifted breadmaker ad. It was hilarious the first 100 times…
side by side drives me crazy, just pick one and go for it, and never returning back if a crash happens seems standard fair nowadays.
Not watching football because of commercials seems pretty silly to me, but to each their own…
Cant wait to see what Amazon tries to inundate us with, heaven help us!!!!
And yes, how greedy can Fox get cutting away so close to the finish… 6 laps left???!!!!
I hear ya on all fronts, and if I’m being honest, I think some of it with football is just my priorities changing as I get older, and seeing what CTE has done to many players has taken the fun out of a lot of the big hits. To think, it wasn’t that long ago some of the most popular blooper reels were of guys stumbling around after a concussion…we just didn’t know what that was doing over time.
The extra breaks for instant replay do get on my nerves a bit though. Not that I have a problem with instant replay…it’s more that I don’t care for yet another commercial break being used here, when the calls are sometimes obvious and quickly resolved, especially on scoring confirmation replays.
I’m curious about Amazon as well. I suspect this will either be epic or awful, with little in between.
i’m thinking amazon/prime will be no holds barred as i think streaming service isn’t governed by fcc censors. i won’t be watching those races as it’s too rich for my budget.
I agree SB. I watched both races and noticed that with 10 laps to go Fox was still doing side by side ads. It was annoying enough that I almost walked away.
If he thinks the Fox ad schedule was bad, he would flip at the CW! 5 laps of racing, 3 laps of side by side ads. If a major issue happens on track, CW just keeps plowing ahead until they have shown all the ads. Neither one is yet showing the whole top 10 finishers rather than pit crews of something else irrelevant.
i tell you every few minutes cw was going to commercial. i felt like i saw more commericals than on track racing. ridiculous