Wednesday TV/Media News And Notes

The big TV news this week was the final numbers coming from the Nielsen TV ratings folks about the Sunday race. NASCAR Chase races have been holding steady just below the 4.0 cable rating level for years now. Thanks to Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards that all changed.

"With a peak audience of 10.5 million when the checkered flag fell on champion Tony Stewart at 8:08 p.m. ET, ESPN’s telecast of the Ford 400 from Homestead-Miami Speedway averaged 6.7 million viewers and earned a 4.6 household coverage rating (4.0 U.S. rating), according to the Nielsen Company. The viewership average broke ESPN’s previous record of 6.6 million viewers for the 2008 Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis. Final figures do not include a rain delay from 4:45-6 p.m." That from ESPN's PR folks.

Pretty nice way to end a season full of the same old complaints about coverage during the ESPN telecasts. It seems a tad ironic that a two-man battle involving drivers racing with respect topped last year's effort that involved lots of TV hype and personal sniping among competitors.

The other big story is the Tuesday afternoon apology issued by Kurt Busch to Dr. Jerry Punch and the NASCAR on ESPN team. Click here to view the video of Kurt after his car's transmission failed early in the race and he was waiting to be interviewed on TV. Be aware that it contains profanity and is not suitable for youngsters.

"In my frustration with the loss of my transmission early in the race, I let my emotions get the better of me," said Busch. "I regret having done this and apologize to the sponsors of Penske Racing, to NASCAR, its fans, to the media and in particular, Dr. Jerry Punch."

Punch has been in tougher situations in the garage than having a driver throwing some poorly chosen profanities around for effect. ESPN acknowledged the apology and things will move on. Social media, in this case YouTube, once again playing a role in a NASCAR incident.

Speaking of ESPN, spokesman Andy Hall has confirmed that NASCAR Now will be returning next season. There are no details yet about in what format or timeslot, but it's clear after being pushed to mid-afternoon and having the later re-air cancelled the series needs some help. We will keep you posted.

Many fans asked why ESPN flew Tony Stewart to Bristol, CT on Monday and then did not have a final NASCAR Now show of the season. That is a great question. Instead, Stewart did some interviews on stick and ball shows and then hung a banner before departing. With three years left in the current NASCAR TV contract, perhaps someone at ESPN might make a note of this issue.

Here is a little DVR alert. The Sprint Cup Series race from Homestead re-airs on SPEED at noon ET on Wednesday in a three hour timeslot. That one is a keeper.

We are working with SPEED to find out future plans for the RaceHub program. It will continue next week at 6PM Monday through Thursday. Hopefully, there will be a holiday break and then it will pick right back up. Info on talent assignments was supposed to be out this week, but it looks right now like next week will be the time to find out who is going where.

The Camping World Truck Series schedule is finally out. There are only 22 races and both Richmond and IRP in Indy are not on the list. Rockingham will host a race and the series will wind-up in Homestead for a finale. Looks like a tough year for trucks coming up. We are waiting to see if Michael Waltrip's FOX duties will change SPEED's on-air truck series line-up for next year.

Click here for a great article by Karen Hogan on Bill France Jr. as he is an inductee for the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame. The late NASCAR chief was a colorful character who saw the sport through a period of amazing growth.

Tuesday night I participated in a podcast with Ken Fang of fangsbites.com and Keith Thibault of sportsmediajournal.com talking about NASCAR TV. Click here for the link page, the podcast will appear at the top of the page when it is posted. Thanks to those two for inviting me.

We invite your comments on any of these topics. If you have a question about the NASCAR media or TV, ask it. We will try to get everything wrapped-up before the Thanksgiving break. Thanks for stopping by.

The Boo Heard Around The World

To some folks in the news business, it did not matter that Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards put on a great show. The tension of the final laps, the tight points race and the great sports TV pictures were pushed aside.

Many mainstream media members, online news sites and international publishers had struck gold long before the first lap was in the books.

It was supposed to be a quick stop for First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden in Homestead on Sunday. Just a visit with the families of military service members who had been invited to the track for the final race. Obama and Biden would then join in with some of the children at the gathering to give the starting command.

The appearance was part of the "Joining Forces" program that encourages Americans to support military families going through the hardship of having loved ones on deployment. There were five thousand active and retired military and their families at the race. It certainly seemed like a good idea.

Click here and take your pick of sources to see the NASCAR fans in the grandstands boo Obama when she was introduced with the children to give the starting command.

This blog is not about politics, political parties or debating freedom of speech. Save your comments on those topics. We watch the media happenings in and around NASCAR.

What we are discussing is the viral spread of less than one minute of NASCAR-themed video around the world. Instead of a smiling and happy Tony Stewart, many media outlets chose the Obama booing video to distribute.

At first, this might seem harmless to the sport. It's just a video snippet of some folks choosing to express themselves on one topic when actually another is the one being celebrated.

But in today's world, the media can't help but add-on to the story. Since Obama did nothing but stand there, guess who took the hit for this one? That's right, it was the NASCAR fans and the sport.

The New York Daily News: "NASCAR fans revved up the boos for Michelle Obama and Jill Biden at the car-racing league’s season-ending event in Florida."

Sydney Morning Herald (Australia): "Further signs of the polarisation of American politics was evident at the Homestead-Miami Speedway on Sunday when the First Lady and vice-president's wife were booed by the crowd at the NASCAR season finale."

The Guardian (England): "NASCAR is a good old southern sport dreamed up in Florida in the 1930's. It's a sport whose viewing audience is almost entirely made up of white Southerners and the soundtrack is country music and hard rock."

Los Angeles Times: "NASCAR officials downplayed reports that Michelle Obama faced a hostile reception at the Sprint Cup finale in Florida on Sunday, despite the sounds of booing heard during the live television broadcast."

In today's world of specialized new media interests, there were plenty of personalities who took it upon themselves to interject.

Rush Limbaugh (Syndicated Radio): "The NASCAR crowd doesn’t quite understand why when the husband and the wife are going to the same place, the First Lady has to take her own Boeing 757 with family and kids and hangers-on four hours earlier than her husband, who will be on his 747. NASCAR people understand that’s a little bit of a waste. They understand it’s a little bit of uppity-ism.”

Jay Busbee (Yahoo! Sports): "This is not about politics. This is not about free speech. This is about being enough of an American, whoever you are, to recognize that we should hold ourselves to some higher standards in our public life. You just harmed the image of NASCAR worse than anything that Obama ever could have done."

Terrance Harris (BET): "NASCAR has for years claimed it gets a bad rap as a conservative hillbilly outfit where the Confederate flag flies as a symbol of racial divide. And then those who support NASCAR go out and prove those who believe as much right."

This is just the tip of the iceberg on this topic. Basically, what we have here is a wonderful example of just how an unintended media event overshadowed what many of us consider to be a historic one. I live about 2 hours north of the Homestead-Miami Speedway. Our local TV news featured the booing video, but none of the stations showed even a moment of race footage on Monday.

Speaking of Monday, the Obama's hosted a night of country music at the White House that included Dierks Bentley and Allison Kraus. Perhaps used to just this kind of media issue, it seems the first couple have moved on. The performances were recorded and will be aired Wednesday night on PBS and later this week on American Forces Network for military personnel.

What's left behind after this mess is more work for NASCAR's new Integrated Marketing Communications team (IMC) to get out there and make some noise about this championship outside of the motorsports media. The IMC gang has a little over two months to turn the actions on the track into public relations gold off of it.

In a sport splintered by four TV networks with different agendas, the official NASCAR website in disarray and a shrinking media corps, the task of erasing the perception that drunken rednecks booed a black First Lady standing with the children of soliders might take a little bit of work.

It should be interesting to see in 2012 just how many politicians are involved in NASCAR pre-race activities and who is asked to be the Grand Marshal of the upcoming Daytona 500. What a fascinating 24 hours in media land.

We invite your comments on how the media used this story and where you saw it. Please avoid political comments, this is a media blog and we are just watching the ongoing NASCAR media happenings. Comments may be moderated prior to posting. Thanks for stopping by The Daly Planet.

Race Wrap: ESPN In Homestead

Sometimes, the reality matches the script. ESPN could not have asked for a better scenario than the battle between Carl Edwards and Tony Stewart for the Sprint Cup Championship.

Nicole Briscoe hosted a pre-race show that featured both contenders in the pit studio. Rusty Wallace and Brad Daugherty were joined by ESPN reporter Marty Smith for a portion of the hour.

Features were mixed with interviews. ESPN paid a lot of attention to Jimmie Johnson, a driver the network romanced for many years. While Edwards is an ESPN favorite, it is no secret that Stewart does not enjoy ESPN's approach to the sport.

The race was called by Allen Bestwick, Dale Jarrett and Andy Petree. Early on, Kurt Busch exploded his transmission and a piece punctured the radiator of Stewart. Despite many camera views, ESPN did not have a replay.

This got the team off-balance as hyper-tight shots returned and ESPN was plagued by caution flags happening in commercial break. Since the Nonstop format did not start until halfway, there was a lot of replays used to show viewers what was going on.

Dr. Jerry Punch, Jamie Little, Dave Burns and Vince Welch got a chance to do some bonus interviews when a red flag stopped the race for a rain shower. Despite the fact that almost all of the ESPN personalities are on Twitter, there was no interaction with fans during the delay.

The restarts resulted in some wild action that ESPN followed with aerial shots and wide camera shots for one or two laps. Then, the familiar pattern followed of showing only one or two cars in the camera view at a time. Incidents were replayed and the announcers often sounded frustrated when what they were describing was not what viewers were watching.

With under 100 laps to go, another caution for rain scattered the field and put distance between Edwards and Stewart. Bestwick is a master at working through those kinds of issues and took his time to explain who was where and why. This is exactly the problem the network had with Marty Reid.

Edwards and Stewart both had radio contact with ESPN. Jarrett was outstanding in keeping his conversations short and to the point. Gas mileage became an issue and it took a lot of talk to figure out what was actually going on.

NASCAR really needed a fresh and new storyline and it was delivered. This kind of Homestead excitement will attract the mainstream media and get NASCAR exposed on lots of outlets Monday that may not normally report on the sport.

The race restarted with slightly less than 40 laps to go, ESPN got the job done with coverage as the race narrowed down to the top two cars. Ultimately, the action on the track for the first time in a long time pushed any concern about the TV coverage aside. ESPN simply had to follow the unfolding reality.

ESPN made good pictures, great sound and once again delivered a telecast free of technical problems. Early in the race, the network pulled the lower third sports ticker and left it out for the rest of the championship event. There were several special effects tried with special graphics and in-car cameras, but ultimately it was just cameras aimed at two cars fighting for the championship.

The finish line coverage focused on the championship after a solid final lap call from the TV booth. The top three cars were shown crossing the line and sound from both contenders was used. One of the hardest thing in sports broadcasting is knowing when not to talk and Bestwick did a superb job in the moments after the race.

Little interviewed Edwards post-race and Punch handled Victory Lane and the presentation of the championship. It's always awkward, but Stewart finally showed some emotion with Punch in a very open and honest interview the kind that NASCAR just loves. Somehow, the final rain shower made for a fitting ending to a historic day.

We invite your comments on the final Sprint Cup Series race coverage on ESPN. To add your TV-related opinion, just click on the comments button below. Thanks for hanging with us all season, we will be updating every day with NASCAR TV and media information. There are plenty of things about to be announced next week, so check back with us please.