Disgruntled ABC/ESPN NASCAR Viewers May Want To Think Twice

Submitted by RACING NEWS DIGEST

I recently received a letter from Andy Hall at ESPN about my post “Dear ABC, Your Viewers Would Like To See The Chase – Not Commercials“. Now all Andy did was contact me through my contact page and asked if he could get my email address so that he could send me some information pertaining to that post.

UPDATE – Andy and I have exchanged a couple of emails and he has told me that it is ok to quote him from his email. So throughout this post I will put some of his responses/comments where they fit.

I will start with the following from Andy –

* ESPN and ABC’s commercial load in NASCAR events is consistent with other networks

* Starting in 2008, and continuing this year, we REDUCED the number of
breaks in our Sprint Cup races in order to give the viewers more green-flag racing

* NASCAR sets a maximum number of commercials we can run (it varies from track-to-track), and we are well below that maximum

I decided to head over to Jayski.com and start checking out some stat’s concerning commercials per race. I have to admit that I was surprised at what I found and I think you will be as well.

Well, Jayski’s stats show that there were NO MISSED restarts. They do say there was “one very close call”. I don’t know what they (or however collects this information) thinks a close call is, but in my book and I am sure in every fans eyes a close call would be seconds before the green flag drops. Maybe they were still on the first lap of the restart. But missing the green flag and not seeing the cars get up to speed and all is……wait for it…..a missed restart.

To be really fair, I would like to stress that I am pretty sure Jayski does not collect those stats. So don’t blame Jayski for numbers or think there is some big ESPN/Jayski conspiracy. I believe CawsNJaws are the ones that actually collect the stats. DON’T quote me on that.

Do you remember what race had the least amount of commercials? That would be TNT’s coverage at Daytona for the Pepsi 500. The most commercials so far this year? That would be ESPN’s coverage at Pocono. Now, TNT’s coverage at Daytona was that special coverage where they had limited commercials, so in all fairness I should not have even thrown that one in there except for the fact that I know NASCAR fan’s loved it! As far as ESPN’s coverage at Pocono? You can’t blame them to much for having the most commercials because they also covered the race that lasted the longest. And their percentage of commercial minutes to total air time was really pretty low.

We’ll take a look at the 2 Richmond races for starters. ABC had 23 minutes less of total race coverage (the total broadcast time), 7 less commercials and 1 minute less of commercial time compared to FOX’s coverage of the race earlier in the season.

But what I do find kind of interesting in these two races is when I divided the total time of commercial by the total time of race broadcast. Meaning we end up with what percent of the race was commercials. FOX’s broadcast came in at 23.77% of the broadcast being commercials while ABC’s broadcast with less time, less commercial time and everything came in at 25.24% percent of the total broadcast was commercials.

This may seem like a very little difference. It’s what….about 1 and half percent difference? But it is a difference. And I don’t even want to put my brain into overdrive to figure out what the 1.5% translates to.

Here are Andy’s thoughts on why it may seem like a big difference at a short track –

Mike, I believe that people remember most what they saw last, and because the Richmond race was on a short track with very quick laps, it presents the perception that there are more commercials. Did you feel this way watching our Atlanta telecast, or Michigan?

In response to that question…..I don’t know. I honestly don’t remember. And plus, a lot of what I am writing about is from comments that I have noticed on Twitter. Andy may be completely right that short track racing brings that false perception. But I still THINK that people are not complaining about to many commercial breaks until it comes to ESPN/ABC broadcast.

It seems like the complaints about commercials have been going on for a weeks now. Maybe I am thinking wrong. Maybe Atlanta was good but there were complaints about Bristol?

And while people might remember most from what they saw last, there is no denying that the last they saw was the highest rate of commercials by ESPN/ABC for this season so far.

And after looking at the numbers I don’t fully understand it to tell you the truth. FOX seems to have a pretty high percentage rate of commercial. But I am thinking that maybe everyone just wanted to kill Digger this year and didn’t pay attention to the amount of commercials.

I think I proved that comparing the 2 Richmond races that ABC did squeeze in more commercials or I should say more commercial time than FOX did in their Richmond coverage this year.

Now in ESPN’s defense, they seemed to do better than FOX on the other races that each hosted. That REALLY surprised me.

Maybe other networks are better at their commercial management. I don’t know, and I mean I really don’t know but maybe the other networks are doing 5 minutes of commercials every 15 minutes while ABC/ESPN are doing 2 minutes of commercials every 10 minutes. All I know is that Twitter seems to get a little “lit up” when another commercial comes on when ESPN/ABC is broadcasting the race.

The viewers know. It is noticeable.

But here is the breakdown of the season so far….according to what I found at Jayski.com.

The columns are as follows.

TV / Track/ Race TOT Min / TOT # Commercials / Total Race Min / Total Comm. Min. / % Commercials (TOT Comm Min / Race TOT Min)

As you can see ESPN/ABC really isn’t that bad. They are higher than some of other races, but they are also lower than most of the other races.

For a “numbers” guy like me, I found all this interesting.

What say you? Am I off base here thinking viewers speak up more about commercial breaks with ESPN/ABC? Do you think it at least appears that ESPN/ABC has more commercials and commercial breaks?

Visit 1800blogger to see all of our industry leading blogs.

Nascar fan? We want to know your thoughts about auto racing. Register on Auto Racing Blog now and get published within minutes. Before posting, it is recommended that you review our posting guidelines.

One Response to “Disgruntled ABC/ESPN NASCAR Viewers May Want To Think Twice”

1. MikeL77 Says:
   September 27th, 2009 at 1:32 pm

   In a slightly different vein:
   This new coverage by ESPN/ABC that started at New Hampshire, Sept. 2009, is terrible. The sound of the cars is barely audible during an ongoing blither blather of inane commentary. How about a segment where they discuss what color shoes the drivers wear? Whoever is producing this is obviously not a NASCAR fan. Turn up the sound of the cars, and make the announcers shut up - at least occasionally.

Comments