Wow! NASCAR's TV Ratings

[Joe Fan]

I just read in an Ed Hinton article in this month's issue of Car and Driver that NASCAR's television ratings have been higher than any sport it has competed against thus far. Wow! I never thought I would see the day where any form of motorsport would consistenly have better ratings than baseball or basketball. I bet these numbers won't hold when NASCAR competes with the NFL or the World Series in the fall, but still double wow!

[Emfa]

To what is this attributed?

• The people who can't afford to go to a race anymore are watching TV instead.
• The broadcasts are on Fox, thereby vindicating NASCAR's decision to make the change in broadcasting.
• It is more popular that ever.
• It has been competing against sports like XFL.

Sorry for sounding so cynical, but I'm just not sold on this new TV package yet, and ratings numbers are often so questionable.

[Ax Slinger]

Fox is actually doing a good job, but we'll see when the mid-season channel change comes. I actually like having announcers that are former drivers or crew chiefs. They at least have a better idea of what NASCAR is all about that your average TV personality does. Not to mention, as a musician, I get a kick out of some of their NASCAR "music videos"... If they had done that during the "NASCAR Rocks" promo, it might have been better. But then again, as it was the Allman Brother Band\NASCAR tie in was very cool. So I think the TV coverage this year is great so far.

The NASCAR website is another story though. NASCAR.COM is now operated by Turner Productions, Inc. (a division of Turner Broadcasting Systems) and they are not too well informed when it comes to NASCAR. I won't go into a bunch of examples, as even though they have screwed up several times in the accuracy dept., they change things on a weekly, and sometimes daily basis, and most of the blurbs I've seen are long gone. But it is very strange when you consider they coined the phrase "Know your NASCAR", and it is even more ironic that Richard Petty is the one you see on TBS most of the time in the "Know your NASCAR" commercials, and they screw up a piece of vital NASCAR history concerning him. In the Dale Earnhardt "Tribute to a Legend\The Legacy" page they have on the site, Joe Macenka, of Turner Sports Interactive, wrote this:

... Their driver won eight championships compared to seven for Earnhardt. ...

Now I'm usually not one to nit-pick, but this is supposedly the "Official" NASCAR website this fellow was writing for here. You would think he could do enough research to find out that Petty and Earnhardt were tied with seven championships each. If nothing else, he could have gone to Petty Enterprises website, and look at Richard Petty's career highlights, and he would know Petty was a seven time NASCAR Winston Cup Champion. He could have even found out which years he did it in (1964, '67, '71, '72, '74, '75, '79) if he had bothered to look it up.

If you ask me, comparing Earnhardt and Petty is a decidedly moot point. They were both great champions in their own way, at completely different times in NASCAR's history. It also isn't a very good way to pay tribute to Dale Earnhardt, but that is another point entirely.

[Joe Fan]

Tim, I totally agree that the new NASCAR website stinks. The old one was much better and more informative. You used to be able to find result information back five years, not anymore. NASCAR really needs to return to the old format and let whoever was running it before, run it again.

[Emfa]

I wonder if there is anyone who doesn't think that nascar.com stinks now (apart from the producers)? Prior to this year I usually managed a look at it at least once a day. This year it is usually only once a week, and that is on Monday's to check the standings.

I can't believe the error on the championships that Tim mentioned - that is almost unforgivable.

Speaking of standings - I don't know if anyone has noticed, but they are frequently very inaccurate. The Craftsman Truck table is the worst with multiple driver entries all over the place. I presume that they are using a database for these tables, but they just don't seem to be able to get it right.

NASCAR would do well to turn it back over to ESPN/Starwave, but that is unlikely to happen since the on-line stuff is tied into the broadcast deal with Fox and NBC/Turner.

[Ax Slinger]

Yeah... And have you ever tried to tell NASCAR.COM anything? They don't even have an email address. They do have an email "form", but like the rest of the site, it doesn't work worth beans.

And for a website about racing, the damn thing sure is slow... You'd think they would have a faster server, since they make plenty of money. What is that site on, a 386?

[Joe Fan]

The only thing that I think we can do is not patronize their website. When they starting getting data that shows a decrease in the number of hits for their site, that should send them a message. Personally, I find www.speedfx.com to be a better site. You also get post-race driver standings faster there, than on the NASCAR site. Also, www.jayski.com is a real good site. You can find out info there that you would not know reading NASCAR's site.