Major League Baseball is rapidly becoming a sport that goes hand-in-hand with the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. Once again this Saturday night, Fox will have baseball games in-progress that will lead directly into the Darlington coverage.
The Hollywood Hotel is scheduled to take to the air at 7PM Eastern Time. Last time this baseball situation happened, only some portions of the country saw the complete pre-race show with Jeff Hammond, Darrell Waltrip and host Chris Myers.
Darlington is a touchy subject for veteran NASCAR fans, who want two races returned to this venerable track each season. It should be interesting to see how the Hollywood Hotel handles that issue, or if it is even mentioned.
Mike Joy handled the Cup qualifying and a practice sessions earlier in the week, but Saturday night will be the first time this veteran play-by-play announcer will be seeing Cup cars racing at speed on this new pavement. The dynamic of the competition is almost completely unknown. What was billed as a wreck-fest on Friday night was relatively smooth until fuel pick-up problems caused one big accident.
Joy, Waltrip and Larry McReynolds will have to be prepared for either a memorable race on a fantastic new surface or a Bristol-like single-file parade with passing basically limited to pit road. That will put the pressure on the pit reporters to document the action that may decide the race.
Veterans Dick Berggren, Matt Yocum, Steve Byrnes and Krista Voda will be in the very loud trenches and there should be some new challenges. On Friday, it was ESPN's Jamie Little who talked to drivers outside the Infield Care Center and in the garage if they had dropped-out with mechanical problems.
As the Cup evening wears-on, there is a distinct possibility that lots of cars may fall by the wayside. The follow-up in the garage area and documenting the frustration with the new track and the speeds should be an interesting challenge to present. Reality always has a way of being flavored with politics in this sport.
After the race, ESPNEWS will again have live coverage of the press conferences from the Infield Media Center. We remind you of this because once again SPEED will hold the original airing of Victory Lane until Sunday night.
This post will serve to host all of your comments about the Sprint Cup race from Darlington on Fox. To post your TV-related opinions, just click on the COMMENTS button below and follow the directions. The rules for posting are on the right side of the main page. As always, thank you for dropping by.
215 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 215 of 215Awesome as always. Have a great week everyone!
Signing off, time to listen to the Sirius post race show.
Thanks for the forum JD!
It sure took the guys in the booth a long time to realize that Tony was NOT the Lucky Dog on the last caution. He was behind Waltrip, about four spots behind the Beneficiary spot.
I watched the whole race from start to finish. I thought it was an excellent broadcast for FOX. Its has to be on one of the best this season.
I think good racing equals good TV coverage too. Tonights race was exciting and FOX showed it. I enjoyed every minute of the broadcast. There was just enough DIGGER cam, but not to much. Great camera angela all night and great job by the pit reporters and commentating crew.
I cant wait for the Coke 600 now. KEEP IT UP FOX!
"Wendy Venturini's primetime special"
JD, did I miss something? what is that about?
Anon,
The post will be up on the site by the time you check tomorrow! It looks like a very good show.
JD
Thanks bevo, have a nice night.
Thanks JD, makes watching the race all the more fun!
Fox just doesn't know anything about racing. They just don't get the importance of the top 35. That's why they go off the air without any update.
Anon,
I will ask about that. Even thought they were late, they normally review that stat. I am not a big fan of Chris Myers doing the post-race as I feel things tend to get lost in translation sometimes.
If there was a scoring issue or computer problem, I will update it in my wrap story.
Thanks,
JD
That was the best broadcast all year from the Fox gang. All of the negative comments I've seen so far tonight here have just been nitpicking... who cares about a bit of water on the camera, it's not a big deal in the scheme of things.
I think everyone got what they wanted tonight: Great coverage, little use of distracting non-essential camera angles (in-car, "digger"), seeing the cars cross the finish line, and time to wrap up the show. I think it's a good idea to have the booth guys wrap up the action tonight and have Chris Myers tag the end of the show with his reminder to tune in next week.
While not showing the top 35 is a slight error, I think that looking at this broadcast as a whole, you'd be crazy not to be satisfied with what you saw.
Also, remember yet again Fox screwed a few markets out of the pre-race show due to baseball.
Alex
You missed the camera lens point ENTIRELY. It was NOT A GRIPE ON THE RACE TONIGHT.
.it was a general camera question I asked and have noticed in all car racing series.... and some nice folks who work in the business answered me.
I thought tonights show was fine and the boys and camera folks ON their game.
Thanks again to the anons and tv guys that take time to explain tech terms here..like back field haul line..or whatever that term was! lol...I love learning the inside scoop.
Only here, has that happened.
And that very late night rain delay some months back, was a magic time to be posting here that night..with inside scoop from the horses mouth....so to speak.
Thanks again for this site JD.
@JD--I'm curious can you ask your SPEED buddies why they can have VL on *after* The Winston and *still* keep the Sunday/Monday block as normal but claim that they can't do it for all Saturday night races? According to my DVR it's set to record VL Saturday at 11 pm, Sunday 4 am again at 8 pm, and Monday 4 am and 8 am all eastern.
@anon 11:33--there's a special that will be on Monday - Friday that Wendy is hosting called NASCAR All-Star '08.
JD- I don't know where the problem was last night in the transmission, but somewhere along the way the NYC Fox station on NJ (Monmouth County) Cablevision lost its signal for a long time during the middle of the race. The Philadelphia Fox station had no problems on this cable system. Thankfully I remembered that the cable system carried the Philly station.
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