[Curves24]

It was lap 119 of 200 scheduled for the Nationwide Series in Phoenix when ESPN's Dale Jarrett finally remarked that the race had the potential to let "some other guys" possibly win. That would be anyone in the field other than Kyle Busch or Carl Edwards.

ESPN's fascination with the Cup drivers who participate in the Nationwide Series races has never been more clearly on display than Friday night in Phoenix. Other than two brief recaps of drivers running in the top twenty, the TV coverage was squarely aimed at Edwards and Busch. The ESPN scripted style of race coverage had returned.

How and why this dynamic is unfolding this season is a mystery. In the field are great stories from veterans trying to work their way back to the Cup level to young drivers leaving everything on the track while trying to keep their NASCAR dreams alive. The decision not to tell these stories is ruining the series on TV.

Announcer Jerry Punch was giddy when Busch got a lap back to remain in contention. He was heartbroken when Edwards was forced to pull off the track with engine problems. The ESPN coverage continually showed Edwards in the garage with the hood up and the car silent.

Once again the dreaded "points now" graphic was used endlessly as if fans did not know the calendar said April. Jarrett summed up the issue at the end of the race after Punch again tried to build the fake drama as the series heads to Talladega. Jarrett remarked that Edwards can make up the points deficit in just one race.

Two cars pulled off the track before lap twenty and headed straight to the garage. Once again, ESPN did not follow-up the growing "start and park" controversy by determining what mechanical issues "forced" these cars out of the race.

Edwards and Busch are certainly the fastest drivers in many Nationwide races, but the story of the season revolves around the other teams in the field and the sponsors who continue to support the series. Has there ever been a year where this issue has been more crucial?

There was often good racing on the track, but the TV scenario was limited to Busch, Edwards or the current leader of the race. This really makes it tough to watch when a scripted TV theme dominates the telecast regardless of what is actually happening on the track.

By the end of the race it was clear that the ESPN script was not going to play-out and Punch would have to settle for trying to hype Greg Biffle and Jason Leffler battling it out during a green/white/checker finish. Biffle's win at least allowed ESPN to exit the air by interviewing a Sprint Cup Series owner.

Several times during the telecast the network flashed the TV motorsports calendar for racing fans. The glaring absence of the Saturday night Phoenix Sprint Cup Series race on Fox showed the animosity between the two TV networks and the willingness of ESPN to put NASCAR on the back burner anytime it pleases. It was almost painful to hear Allen Bestwick read the promos without the Cup race being mentioned.

As usual, the pictures and sound were outstanding and that is the shame of this telecast. Used correctly and without the bias toward Busch and Edwards, these TV tools could have brought the mix of drivers, good racing and constantly changing storylines right into homes of NASCAR fans across the country and around the world.

SPEED handled the live Nationwide Series practice and qualifying by introducing the teams and setting-up the stories of the day. Hermie Sadler and Jeff Hammond conveyed the issues confronting the teams in Phoenix and built-up the excitement of the race. Kudos to SPEED for treating all the Nationwide teams as equal.

ESPN had the goods for an outstanding telecast delivered to them on a silver platter. Instead, the network followed the script and wound-up with egg on its face once again. Talladega looms as a test of continuing this scripted approach or simply covering the events on the track as they unfold.

Did you watch the race? TDP welcomes comments from readers. Just click on the comments button below to add your opinion. This is a family-friendly website, please keep that in mind when posting.

Thank you for taking the time to stop by The Daly Planet.

Phoenix N'wide Tv Coverage

[Curves24]

Nuts for Nationwide: TV Coverage Strangling the Nationwide Series

Bryan Davis Keith · Friday April 17, 2009



Back when the deal was first announced that ESPN would be returning to NASCAR broadcasting, and would also be giving the Nationwide Series a steady, permanent home, I was absolutely thrilled. What could go wrong here: a network whose Wide World of Sports coverage was largely responsible for NASCAR’s ascension from a niche to a national pastime and a mainstream TV home for NASCAR’s second-tier series?
How could I have been so naïve?
ESPN’s coverage of the Nationwide Series race at Texas was without question the worst of their NASCAR broadcasts I have ever seen. And while Nashville was an improvement, much of what was wrong with the Texas telecast was again evident during coverage of the first standalone race of 2009.
Over the last two weeks, I can’t count on both hands the number of solid runs by NNS regulars and their teams that have gone all but unnoticed on the air. Did you know that in the last two weeks Michael Annett scored his career-best finish? That Scott Lagasse, Jr. has moved into the top 10 in points on a streak of four consecutive top 16 finishes? That Casey Atwood is running full-time for the first time in years? That Jeremy Clements made his first NASCAR start of the season on Saturday? That Kelly Bires is very, very good…good enough to school Carl Edwards in his concrete castle?
If all you’ve been doing is watching ESPN’s broadcasts, you hardly know any of that. How do I know that? Because if you’ve been watching on TV, you’ve only heard about Lagasse’s ascent up the standings in passing when the points are put on screen after the checkers have flown. You only saw a brief glimpse of Kelly Bires putting the moves on Carl Edwards late in the race, before cutting away. And as for the tidbits on Annett and Atwood…you definitely didn’t find out about those on TV, because they weren’t even mentioned (if you heard them and I didn’t, you’ve got quite the ears).
It is unacceptable for a network whose contracted responsibility is to cover a development series to have a driver like Michael Annett finish 11th on the lead lap at Texas, and literally get less on-air recognition than Johnny Chapman and Terry Cook, who both were mentioned during green-flag coverage when they took Phil Parsons’ Nos. 90 and 91 cars behind the wall ten miles into the race. But, unfortunately, that’s become par for the course when it comes to ESPN’s Nationwide Series coverage. Because there is only one word that can describe the excuse for “coverage” that they are broadcasting:
Lazy.

ESPN’s coverage of the Nationwide Series events at Texas and Nashville can only be described as some of the worst Bryan Davis Keith has ever seen.

Laziness is perhaps the only explanation I can come up with for why ESPN somehow didn’t have a good angle of Joe Nemechek’s late-race wreck at Nashville, one of the most dramatic events that NASCAR has seen at any level in 2009. How can the same network that covers the Cup chase not have a camera at the exit of Turn 4?! Do you honestly think if the Cup Series had been running at Nashville that the exit of Turn 4 would not have cameras all over the place to give fans a breath-taking look at one of the most aggressive examples of driving in recent memory?
Maybe budget cuts had something to do with the lack of camera angles in the Music City. Maybe the camera crew was really honed in on the solid battle between Kyle Busch and Joey Logano. Whatever rationale you put forward, however, perhaps the defining image of the NNS series so far this season was captured from a grainy distance. That’s a failure in coverage. Period.
ESPN’s lackadaisical efforts with regard to the Nationwide Series were further evident this past weekend during their coverage of practice and qualifying. As noted by fellow writer Phil Allaway, the network had outdated graphics on hand for several entries in the field, and, in the case of Ryan Hackett, had none to display during practice.
That’s a joke. The entry lists for Nationwide races are made available a week in advance of hitting the track. It’s understandable that, unlike in the Cup ranks where a special paint scheme is a breaking news story, it is much more difficult — especially in the back of the pack — to know what paint schemes are going to look like. Fair point. But it is NOT difficult, nor is it too much to ask, to have a generic No. 76 available, especially when the entry list has again been public for a week.
More importantly, though, this complete failure to account for a number of entries in the field (including Rick Ware’s No. 31 car, a full-time competitor) is just one tangible example of how lethargic ESPN has been in chasing the stories of the Nationwide Series garage. And I point the finger squarely at the network much the same way as I did at Auto Club Speedway earlier this year when they managed to draw only 15,000 fans to their Nationwide race: They’re treating the Nationwide Series as an afterthought, a perquisite to getting their hands on Cup stuff.
TV broadcasts with a lack of camera angles. Scoring charts and graphics that are not prepared to handle the field of cars contesting the race. A broadcast booth that is seemingly aloof as to who the drivers in the pack are, or what they’re doing on and off the track.
If that doesn’t scream afterthought, I don’t know what does.
And yes, alongside all of this, there is the 800-pound gorilla issue in the room that everyone is sick of hearing about: the Cup drivers making the Nationwide ranks their second home. But, this issue and ESPN are inextricably linked.
Why? ESPN being lazy, they’ve got no need to chase the stories of the Nationwide garage…they just need to hit up their Sunday stories a day early. Why bother getting to know smaller teams, greener PR reps and drivers trying to make a name for themselves when you can just ask Carl Edwards about how the No. 60 car is handling instead of the No. 99? Why bother learning about 30 other drivers when you’re going to be seeing the 10-12 running up front Saturday on Sunday anyway?
Seriously, isn’t it just a little bit ironic that, in the week preceding the Texas NNS race telecast that saw the crew in the booth pose the question “How good is Kyle Busch?” three times in three separate venues, ESPN’s senior NASCAR writer, Ed Hinton, published an article describing the same Kyle Busch as “NASCAR’s newest media darling?”
April 1, Hinton writes that Kyle Busch is on-track to becoming “inevitably, a legend.” April 4, Kyle Busch mows down a minor-league field and is gushed over for it like his win at TMS was a legendary accomplishment. That’s more than irony. That’s a surefire sign that ESPN is doing to the Nationwide Series, and to NASCAR, what they’ve done to college football: They’re creating the news as much as they’re reporting it.
Sure, ESPN does provide a stable home for televising Nationwide races, and they do offer the Series exposure that it wouldn’t get on SPEED or another network. But at what cost? Is it worth gaining exposure in exchange for lackadaisical broadcasts and a coverage team that is content to rehash stories about the same handful of drivers week in and week out?
The answer is no. The product that is being put on TV week in and week out is not something that is going to encourage new sponsors to enter, or garner substantial exposure for up and coming talent. The teams that need more exposure and sponsors are the same ones that aren’t getting air time during telecasts.
ESPN on paper was the perfect home for the Nationwide Series. But while what it is doing right now might provide short-term gains in terms of TV ratings and sponsors for a handful of teams, the current model that its coverage, the lifeblood of the Series, is leading the Nationwide circuit on is not sustainable. Either ESPN needs to change, or the Nationwide Series needs to go elsewhere.
And trust me, ESPN isn’t going to change.



N'wide Tv Coverage

[Stewart Fan]

I would love to give some clever remark here about this but the simple fact is that ESPN sucks!

[Curves24]

Originally Posted by Stewart Fan

I would love to give some clever remark here about this but the simple fact is that ESPN sucks!

Tell us how you really feel SF

[Stewart Fan]

Originally Posted by Curves24

Tell us how you really feel SF

Well for starters everyone on ESPN needs to be Bit**** slapped!

I'd like to take Rusty Wallace and Brad(I'm not important enough for Stewart Fan to remember my last name) and tie them up to a chair and whip them with a car antenna.