Sunday, July 01, 2001
Auto racing insider
NBC faces task of living up to Fox's coverage
By Tom Groeschen
The Cincinnati Enquirer
This must have been how Jay Leno felt when he replaced Johnny Carson.
Leno's network, NBC, is taking the NASCAR televison baton from Fox next Saturday for the Pepsi 400 at Daytona. Fox and its cable wing, FX, telecast the first half of the 2001 season to almost universal acclaim. NBC and TNT will telecast the second half.
Fans will have new alternatives to Darrell Waltrip singing, “You picked a fine time to leave me, loose wheel,” and so on. But Waltrip became the star of Fox's telecasts with sometimes funny and often sharp commentary. Larry McReynolds was his down-home but equally informed partner in analysis, with Mike Joy the cool play-by-play moderator.
Fox/FX averaged a 5.3 Nielsen rating, a 29 percent improvement over last year's 4.1 midseason average on ABC, CBS, ESPN, TNN and TBS.
Now, NBC will try it with Allen Bestwick, Benny Parsons and Wally Dallenbach in the booth.
Parsons is every bit the equal of Waltrip, as a former Winston Cup champion with folksy appeal. And he has been doing TV much longer, as a veteran of ESPN's NASCAR coverage. But he knows NBC will be under a microscope after Fox broke new ground in areas including FoxTrax (an arrow that points out the cars the announcers are describing) and a ticker that tracks every car in a race.
“It's been tough having to
sit and watch Fox,” Parsons recently told Sports Illustrated. “I'd watch and say, "Wow, that's really good,' but sometimes I'd also think, "Why didn't they say that?”
NBC will feature the same graphics used by Fox, with the technology licensed by a company called Sportvision.
For all the critical acclaim, Fox's NASCAR ratings had been dropping until last week's Dodge/Save Mart 350 (at Sears Point, Calif.) pulled a 5.0. Before that, the ratings had dipped steadily from the season-opening Daytona 500 (10.1) down to the Pocono race June 17 (season-low 4.4).
NBC should get a ratings plum with Saturday's Daytona race. There will be the curious tuning in just to see how the network does, plus the built-in appeal of night racing. Plus, it will be NASCAR's first trip to Daytona since Dale Earnhardt was killed Feb.18.
KENTUCKY UPDATE: Mark Cassis, Kentucky Speedway general manager, said the track has sold 21,000 tickets for its
ARCA race July 13 and 34,000 for its featured NASCAR Craftsman Truck race July 14.
Cassis said the speedway is not content to rest on its laurels from June 16, when 70,338 fans filled the speedway for a NASCAR Busch race.
“We continue to work on parking and getting people in and out of the speedway. We've improved, and we'll continue to evaluate our performance after each event,” Cassis said.
LOCAL SCENE: Weekend programs continue at local tracks Florence Speedway, Lawrenceburg Speedway, Tri-State Dragway (Hamilton), Edgewater Sports Park (Cleves), and Thorn Hill Drag Strip (Kenton, Ky.)
Some of the top events this summer include:
• July 26 at Lawrenceburg: USAC's Robbie Stanley Memorial race, as part of Pennzoil Indiana Sprintweek;
• July 27-28 at Florence: UDTRA Ironman 100 ($20,000 to win);
• Aug.3-5 at Edgewater: NHRA Federal Mogul Drag Racing;
• Aug.18-19: Cincinnati Sports Car Club's “Lunken Runway Enduro” at Lunken Airport.
IRL GROWS: The Indy Racing League, which has 13 races in 2001, will have 14 in 2002.
IRL officials announced next year's schedule Saturday before the night race in Richmond, Va. The series added races at Michigan and Nazareth, Pa. Dropped was the race at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
This year, the IRL makes its stop at Kentucky Speedway on Aug.12, with the Belterra Casino Resort Indy 300. In 2002, the race at Kentucky will be Aug.11.
E-mail: tgroeschen@enquirer.com.
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