Not the worst broadcast, but this lost me as a fan.... What lost me was back when there was a yellow flag and Robby Gordon disobeyed the officials and stayed in the number 2 position instead of moving back in the pack where he was officially listed. But Robby didn't like that so he didn't obey them... yet they went back to green flag racing anyways and Robby Gordon spun out the leader because he was pissed at him for bumping him and going around him a few laps earlier. Because the officials went ahead and started the race... they lost me!! Everyone knew Robby was going to spin the leader... even the commentators said he would! I can't stand the jerk but the officials not doing anything sealed the fate of NASCAR for me... But recently I have been inching my way back into watching again.
Stephen A. Smith just recently declared on ESPN, after his co host said the Rangers are cup contenders and have the best chance of bringing a championship to NY, said "the only sports we care about and cover are NFL, NBA, and MLB". ESPN hosts don't even know what they cover.
@@Ultimate23Dragon i can agree. So sad considering I grew up watching NASCAR on ESPN/ABC. It was never as good as FOX with DW. It was better than CBS though. I remember they where awful.
I was about to comment the same thing when I saw this video. They are paying $400M a year to broadcast the NHL while also having their hosts diss hockey on all of their shows. Amazing.
@@Username-2 They don't have to openly research and talk about all sports that ESPN covers, but they shouldn't say hockey "doesn't count" and dismiss it on a vague question about New York sports teams. Stephen A Smith doesn't need to contribute much to the analysis, but if a host brings up hockey - let him make his point. I'm not saying he has no right to do it, but I'm just saying there should be a standard. You can't even make the argument that First Take doesn't cover hockey, because they covered the Cup Finals before every game. This isn't the first time they have done shit like this though. During their coverage of the Stanley Cup finals, most of it was just PK Subban defending hockey as a sport because Stephen A Smith was shitting on it, despite doing a segment on the sport. ESPN bought the rights to it because they want to drive people to the network, and they should make at least a little bit of effort to not make hockey fans feel invalid.
A massive broadcast blunder in recent memory that I don't think many people remember is FOX's sudden blackout on the final laps of the 2019 Martinsville truck race where Todd Gilliland got his first win. People watching at home were unable to witness the finish on TV, and right when the race came back on, they immediately had to move on to college football. I believe Eric Estepp made a video reacting to it
@@runrafarunthebestintheworld I figured my judgement on that would be wrong lol, I just barely hear about it anymore so I figured people just kinda stopped thinking about it
I have an inverse, where the broadcaster actually cared: Surprised the 2005 UAW GM Quality 500 doesn’t get mentioned. It was the inverse of ESPN. The controversial USC vs Notre Dame game ran so long that NBC switched to NASCAR right as the pace car pulled off. From what I heard, the NBC Sports director tried to time the race start with NASCAR and they ran like 10 pace laps (according to people at the track and a long lost SPEED program from 2005).
I remember watching that game & race I actually liked it, a classic College Football game between two epic blue blood schools with a historic rivalry, an epic ending with Reggie Bush pushing Matt Leinhart over the goal line for the game winning TD, then they cut right into the race as soon it was started. Aside from missing the national anthem & the command, it felt kinda good not watching the long pre-race stuff
They were really doing the panning of kids bad this past weekend at Las Vegas I'm glad I'm not only one that notices this. It's creepy and this past weekend they panned to same kids multiple times 😮💨🏁
People who act like moving races to other channels is bad nowadays were definitely not around during this era. The number of times I tuned in to watch a race, only to see basketball or college football, are way more than what I deal with nowadays.
Reminds me of Heidi ! ..telling my age. Ha. On November 17, 1968, the Oakland Raiders score two touchdowns in nine seconds to beat the New York Jets-and no one sees it, because they’re watching the movie Heidi instead. With just 65 seconds left to play, NBC switched off the game in favor of its previously scheduled programming, a made-for-TV version of the children’s story about a young girl and her grandfather in the Alps. Viewers were outraged, and they complained so vociferously that network execs learned a lesson they’ll never forget: “Whatever you do,” one said, “you better not leave an NFL football game.”
They need to stop having big name drivers in the booth for publicity purposes and actually focus on hiring ppl with play-by-play skills and great story telling abilities
Agreed. Just because Ned and Benny could do it doesn’t mean every former driver can do it. Buddy Baker’s stint on TBS comes immediately to mind. Couple that with a broadcast partner of Ken Squier and I usually turned the sound off and listened to the commentary on MRN.
The ESPN of today would literally pay the Nascar TV rights just to run it into the ground every chance it got. I honestly believe they would purposely try to destroy Nascar. Been a fan since the early 80's and I can't believe thats where were at.
NHL fans are not happy with them... still 5 years to go on the contract. Thx God this year cup final is on TNT, they inherited, for the most part, the really good team NBC had
@@Dratchev241 the best parts of the old contract were the calls by Gary Thorne and Bill Clement (later, John Davidson too) Now, not even great callers. McDonough lost his touch a long time ago, Wischunsen is decent, but not great
@@Dratchev241 man, I don't have many chances of watching (brazilian), but if it can be done, I would watch the DangleCast on YT with VPN. Game times are a b... here though... You have to pick your priorities or live off of highlights
I remember in 2014 for the Charlotte Chase race where nobody on TV saw like the first 50 laps because of a whole slew of college football games. I guess they were going over? Idk, but it was weird.
You mentioned the personnel shifts at NBC in the 00s and just to shed some light on that, it still blows my mind to this day why they kicked Allen Bestwick out of booth and tossed him to the pits. Don’t get me wrong I love Bill Weber just as much. If there was anyone to put in the booth after Allen, it was him. But Allen should have never left. He’s still one of the best race callers out there. Still so great calling the SRX series today.
@@evanwilliams6406 he broke his leg as well, and had to be replaced by Weber during the 2004 season The permanent replacing was a punishment, for him and us fans. Webber doesn't hold a candle to him on the booth
@@otaviofrn_adv Yeah I thought Bill Weber was alright as an announcer What’s funny tho is how his announcing career came to an abrupt end; he acted all high maintenance about his hotel room in New Hampshire the weekend of a race there, complained up a storm to hotel management, supposedly made a scene. Next thing you know, Turner Sports booted him off & fired him
@@jakehawkins8669 I was at that race and used to put the raw TV feed in the scanner, you hear the open mics while they are in commercial....a lot of commercials. They had just come back from a break for roughly 7-10 laps when a producer came on and said they were behind on paid ad time and had to break again, Weber was pissed and I vividly remember him saying "Well, we can't let the racing get in the way!"
One of the worst ones I can personally remember watching LIVE was the 2018 Las Vegas fall Cup race, where for SOME reason NBC tried airing Indycar's season finale AT THE SAME TIME ON THE SAME CHANNEL IN A SIDE BY SIDE as the NASCAR playoff race at Las Vegas. David Land even did a video on it. It was stupid. Like, really stupid, and NBC hasn't done it again since.
Also: idea for a future video: the time NBC/TNT replaced Allen Bestwick with Bill Weber and the latter apperantly being a bit of a nuisance, most notably the "It's a team, we're a family." incident in a 2006 Michigan race, like, that's been stuck in my head since I first saw it in a compilation video.
There was a long time theory that Marty Reid left ESPN because of Ricky Craven constantly picking on him during broadcasts. Looking back I wonder if the NBC/TNT guys were doing a similar thing with Weber... He seemed to get picked on a lot during both the NBC/TNT & the TNT Summer Series eras right up until he was ditched.
The farewell ABC broadcast of IndyCar was not a crowning achievement. 2018 Detroit Race 2. No retrospective, no final shot of the commentators, just Allen Bestwick blitzing through an ad hoc monologue over top of replay clips. No Jackie Stewart, Paul Page, Jim McKay, Sam Posey, or Chris Economaki. A half century plus of broadcasting and it just kinda gets dumped on the curb like an old family sofa.
They need to avoid ESPN in 2025 unless they want to be relegated to streaming. All you have to do is look at what they did to hockey after gaining the rights. They took games that were nationally broadcasted on cable (NBCSN) in previous years and put them on ESPN+. There's belief in the hockey world that part of the reason they bought the NHL rights was to take hockey off cable so there would be less competition for their more lucrative NBA, MLB and College Basketball/Football broadcasts. NASCAR would likely see the same fate
Yep it surprised me when it was announced that ESPN got rights to the NHL. I would've rather seen Fox, TNT and CBS get rights to the NHL At least CBS could put games on Paramount+
ESPN+ is part of the Disney+ package thats more exposure for NASCAR than FS1 or USA NASCAR already barely gets 10 network TV (NBC and FOX) races a year
I recall a race on ESPN back in the mid-80s that was tape delayed, and at about the midway point of the race, ESPN displayed "Rusty Wallace wins Valleydale Meats 500" on the crawl at the bottom of the screen. Derp.
The crawl didn't exist in the 80's. The crawl didn't exist for a good chunk of the 90s as well. By that point, races were broadcast live. This never happened.
@@RaceBoarder the crawl back then didn't actually crawl. it was a periodic screen shrinking border pop out that displayed scores and stories across all of sports. And this 100% happened. Because I was pissed and turned off the race.
@@FloridaManRacer exactly, I can even remember the do do do do do do sound it would make as the "crawl" would appear. and i do also remember some nascar races being tape delayed on espn back then.
That would require, and I've been screaming bloody murder about this since 2017, eliminating stage racing. NASCAR won't do that because they value entertainment over integrity.
Joshua- there is a 1 point bonus for leading a lap. And another point for the most laps… You- we need “ this” Reality- uh, you have that.. why want what you have already? Why not want something you don’t have? 🤔
Right off the top of my head: anytime recently that Fox has gone full screen for an interview or for someone joining the booth DURING GREEN FLAG RACING. I don’t care how “boring” the race is, we’re tuning in to watch nascar, not people talk about nascar. They did it a few days ago at Vegas where there was green flag racing going on and they went full screen away from the action to interview Justin Marks…. Infuriating.
One of the things that disgruntled me about the ESPN/ABC deal was my local ABC station. In almost any conflict between NASCAR and the 6 PM news, the news won. I still remember the last Saturday-night late-season Cup chase race where they lackadaisically ran a full half-hour 6 PM news show, no attempt to hurry it up, to join the race 30-some laps in.
@@DuckOfRubber true, but TV fans were used to seeing the lineup with the graphics on the car, especially with this being the first race of the year, with new schemes and sponsors.
Bill Weber's overdramatic monologues at the end of every race was the worst. That man could make a 4 year olds birthday party sound like the sinking of the titanic
@@xboxchadrein8044 I'm sure you can find the broadcast, but yeah, coverage was terrible. The number of commercials against racing was just insane. Its always great to see a race in person because you don't deal with commercials.
They're self inflicting Hockey right now, despite paying 400 million a year to broadcast it. You have ESPN talking heads not considering hockey a sport worth talking about. NASCAR would get the same treatment.
BREAKING: Chase Elliott expected to be out for 6 weeks. Josh Berry will drive ovals and Jordan Taylor at COTA. Love that Taylor's driving at COTA. 7th week would be Talladega. Expect Elliott to start but maybe not run the whole race.
I'm brazilian and I watched the indy race last week via Spanish broadcast. Sometimes I would switch to NBC one. And... Man the NBC coverage sucks ass in comparison to the Spanish (ESPN if I recall) broadcast. Mind-blowing stuff
I'd agree with you... except what drove me away from NASCAR was the fans choosing to get political starting in 2016, displaying flags for a certain president candidate I won't mention by name. It's apparently okay for sports to get political when you agree with the politics being stated.
One of the WORST broadcast instances with ESPN that I can remember was when after the 2007 Busch Series Race at Memphis, where instead of having the traditional post race interview with the winner, David Reutimann, they cut straight to an episode of E60. My 9-year old self was NOT happy.... I really think that a new TV deal with ESPN would be a clear recipe for disaster.
NHL fans HATE ESPN right now. Also, NBC pushed the end of the 2018 Las Vegas playoff race to NBC Sports or something like that because of a red flag, and people also didn’t like how quickly they switched to the Stanley Cup Playoffs after the 2020 Daytona Road Course race.
I don’t know if it was a local thing, but I remember missing like 80 laps of the 2016 spring phoenix race due to some breaking news FOX felt like they had to report live instead of just putting it in a ticker like they usually do.
I had a similar thing with a race last year, but it was local since I'm Californian. They cut into the race to show a press conference relating to a mass shooting (one of the many in recent years). 20+ minutes, 30+ laps, I think it was at Richmond or something.
The one moment that stuck out to me was back in 2010 for the Bristol night race,Michigan residents (myself included) were forced to watch an hour live special on the Woodward dream cruise on ABC,I was PISSED to say the least,race didn't come back on till lap 230ish.
I remember this. While the Woodward Dream Cruise is a big event. It’s definitely second to a NASCAR race, even the lowest watched ones today, let alone Bristol near its peak
Do you recall a Richmond race getting shuffled off of Fox? At the time I didn’t have Speed Channel so I couldn’t see the ending. It would’ve been sometime between 2007-2010. I remember just throwing my hands up in disgust.
Same thing for me at Phoenix on The Philadelphia, Pennsylvania affilate: 6ABC, WPVI... Prerace and part of the first few laps were cut out by that stupid educational programming bit, AKA: Litton's weekend adventure... The sane thing happened at Bristol, and they showed "The Replacements " and "The Suite Life of Zack And Cody" as part of a preempted ABC Kids block. Now, I love that Replacements cartoon, but, when you have a race to cover, than cover the race. And that E/I bit from 1996, has ruined Saturday Morning Toons on network television. (And no, Toonzai on the litterally embarrassing CW and Qubo on "Criminal Minds" savvy Ion Television does not count, since they are not members of the big 4 networks.)
I have a feeling this will be added to the NASCAR Iceberg soon with "Race brodcasts ending before the finish" which refers to 2008 at Phoenix with ABC switching the end of the race to ESPN2 on the east coast, 2020 at the Daytona Road Course with NBC cutting to the Sunday Night News almost immediately after the checkered flag and 2020 at Talladega with NBC switching the end of the race to NBCSN
So the thing about moving broadcasts is this: ESPN does this all the time... They mostly do this to college football and basketball as a way to show more games across their networks... Also, NBC has done similar things where they moved races to NBCSN, CNBC or MSNBC, but they do better than ESPN about that... But I think ESPN moving SRX to Thursday is because SRX won't have to worry about other sports competing for their slot on ESPN, unlike NASCAR, who operates during the weekends when other sports are playing that ESPN would rather cover over NASCAR. That is why a lot of people think CBS will take NASCAR back, even though it would possibly conflict with CBS' contract with the NFL on Sundays because CBS doesn't have a backup channel for that situation (CBS Sports Network isn't exactly easily accessible)
The biggest upset from the whole moving to another channel such as ESPN 2 is that majority of cable providers in the area where I live don't offer ESPN 2 as a standard channel. We would have to pay for the "sports package" that literally doubled the cost of cable and included a bunch of other fluff channels that don't broadcast anything we would want to see other than re-runs of other past races from literally decades ago or strictly college sports or little league sports which have some sort of audience but why would my parents want to pay 50$ a month more for that just to have a chance to see the end of a race if there are elements out of the race's control such as accidents and weather?
It wasn't just NASCAR that ESPN did this to as they also did something similar to CART in 1999 with the Molson Indy Vancouver. For some context, it had been raining hard throughout the race so much so that the race was shortened from 90 laps down to 74. However because the race was being run at a slow pace due to the wetness of the track, ESPN decided to switch coverage of the finish from ESPN to ESPN News so that ESPN could show the start of Sunday Night Baseball between the Yankees & Red Sox. Unlike this, ESPN did this nationwide. For those wondering why the race wasn't switched to ESPN 2, it was because they were airing an MLS match between the Tampa Bay Mutiny & Miami Fusion. CART fans across the country were largely screwed out of seeing the ending (unless they had ESPN News) & had to watch RPM 2Night later that night to see the ending. Juan Pablo Montoya ended up winning the race with PJ Jones taking a shock 2nd place & Paul Tracy rounding out the podium.
The Talladega race in 20 or 21 that got bumped to cable for the local news really chapped my backside. Unable and unwilling to pay for cable, I was limited to how many races I can watch live. This was one of them, and I made a big event of it, making absolutely certain I had all my household chores done to be able to watch this race from start to finish uninterrupted, only to not be able to see the crazy finish with Matt dibenedetto almost winning until the highlights got posted to RU-vid. I'm still salty about that.
My dad told me about one time when there was a race scheduled to be on TBS but the Atlanta Braves had a rain delay and then went into extra innings and by the time they brought the race on, it was over half way done.
NBC did this with Talladega a few years ago, I was watching at my dad's house, who didn't have cable. I had to quick pull up my phone, and watch it on there
ive found myself listening to MRM during the commerical breaks just to see what I miss during them. It's quite amazing how many times you end up watching the same commercials in a row. Really starts to grate on you
ESPN, in the 1990s, was the absolute class of the field when it came to broadcasting NASCAR. Bob, Benny, and Ned, were just fun to listen to. I never really noticed how bad NBC was, because I was already starting to not watch NASCAR anymore, when they started airing it. But it was very easy to notice how obnoxious and dumb Fox's broadcasts were. Fox nearly always gets the most obnoxious personalities in their booths.
Uhh NBC's coverage of a recent Xfinity Dalington race (i'm not sure the date) They cut off coverage to NBC sports about 20 to go and the race had a really good ending and it sucks that I missed that one live.
Wasn't the Phoenix race telecast supposed to end at 4 P.M. Mountain time (6 P.M. Eastern time)? A few years back, I recall that a Brickyard "400" race was delayed by rain, didn't even start until late afternoon, and ended around 8:45 P.M. Eastern time, just before sunset in Indianapolis. NBC stayed with the race until the end, although two hours of prime-time entertainment programming got pre-empted to carry the race to conclusion.
The opening 25 laps of the fall Charlotte race in 2014 where completely missed entirety by all ESPN networks. That was just as bad as this imo. Thankfully I was at the race that night so I wasn't bothered by it. Felt for everyone watching st home though
Ironically enough it was ESPN for my worst broadcast moment, 2007 Bristol Busch night race, a 3 car battle for win with 3 to go and the broadcast cut out, and we missed the entire finish, you can find it on RU-vid as well
I swear I remember watching this race as a kid and somehow being bummed out about not seeing the finish. Though of course my mom and I were watching AFV quite a bit then. But point being, I don’t remember the finish of the race or at least seeing it. Beyond that Johnson won and he needed to finished 36th or better next week
Can’t remember exactly when but it was within the last 3-4 years where the end of a race would be abruptly cut right as someone would cross the finish. Maybe that was just for streaming folks though. I know I miss quite a bit of post race interviews.
I can't remember 100% for sure if it was ESPN but I feel like it was. There was a race riddled with audio issues all day long. At least 4 separate times they switched to an alternate radio style frequency that sounded like AM radio or just flat out went silent, then cut to commercial break. Not the worst one, but one I can vividly remember happening...
That's not when ESPN cut from the feel good story of AJ Almendinger and team owner Brad Daugherty winning their first race almost immediately to repeated replays of a fatal accident involving Tony Stewart.
2020 NBC throwing to NBCSN right before the GWC finish of the Yellawood 500 at Talladega. I was at a hotel at the time, and they didn't carry NBCSN. That made me pretty angry. Lol.
McNeil’s response is so tone deaf. The channel you work with paid for the rights to air a major racing series and they abandon it and leave millions out to dry for less-funny Ridiculousness. There’s no feasible way you can frame that as a good thing.
Fans that want ESPN to come back are delusional. To give you an idea of what a new ESPN deal would be like, just look no further than how horrid their hockey coverage has been since they’ve taken over their broadcast rights
Yep and Sean McDonough as lead commentator isn't much better either. That doesn't surprise me an also NHL fans where asking for other people to be lead commentators.
@@otaviofrn_adv yep and many of the commentators on TNT used to be from the NHL on NBC team like the lead commentators of NBA on TNT who used to do NBA on NBC and TNT when it was on both.
@@runrafarunthebestintheworld yes... It's so much alike that Kenny Albert is leading NHL on TNT, and he is Marv Albert's son, and he led NBA on NBC's coverage for much of the tenure and TNT until 2020
@@runrafarunthebestintheworld The crazy part is while I’m not a big fan of Sean McDonough, he’s not even the biggest problem. The production is just absolutely horrible (shitty camera angles, not showing replays of penalties, lack of pre/post game shows). Plus the network has no respect for the game, as shown last week when Stephan A said the Rangers winning the cup wouldn’t be a big deal for NY cause “hockey doesn’t count”
I was at the Phoenix race! Being from Massachusetts this is nothing special for me, but this was Avondale Arizona, dry as a scone. My dad and I were in the Turn 1 & 2 stands. When it starts raining, we hide underneath the bleachers, and so many of the fans were outraged of the weather. I remember my father shouting to the complaining fans saying, "Why are you guys complaining? Arizona never gets rain!" So funny, even to this day. Thankfully the rain and wet track were very brief!
Whoever is broadcasting, they need to review their business model. With F1 and streaming on the rise, Americans are starting to realize they get screwed by ridiculous amounts of ads and weird network decisions. I'm a Belgian NASCAR fan and it was a shock how many ad breaks there are. Just to give an example how bad it is: the NFL broadcast here in Belgium starts with an hour delay, and they cut out all the ad breaks, so by the end of the game they're live. A full HOUR of ads... F1 can make it work, soccer can make it work, hell, even professional cycling is on with minimal interuptions in 6 hour broadcasts. If the rest of the world can do it, why not the US.
@@jamariiion actually more like, less people are watching our shit, its hurting the ceo from getting a new yacht so instead of doing quality broadcasting so we can charge more for the limited ad space lets just run off the remaining viewers by shit spamming more ad crap on the program. Broadcast radio has done the same thing, which is why I nor anyone i know listens to radio. and why everyone i know pirates shit.
Commercials are the worst thing in USA sports broadcasts. I'm from Brazil and I can't understand why USA channels go everytime for long commercials in the middle of the race or everytime in NFL, MLB, NBA and more.
One thing that ESPN did was to go through the field a few times during the race showing where every car was running and mentioning the major sponsor. Fox decided that the sponsors should pay to have their name mentioned on the air which dried up the pool of companies wanting to sponsor cars. This is what is killing the sport. NASCAR has to take some of the blame for not spelling out what broadcasters have to do as part of their coverage such as mentioning sponsors and covering races to the end.
I can't remember what year, but there was a Saturday night race scheduled to start after a college football game on ABC. The game went into overtime and ESPN said the start of the race would be available on ESPN3 streaming. But they never got the stream up. Fans had to wait until after the football game before they could see the race.
In 2014 for the last ABC was airing race the first 25 laps wasn't shown due to overtime in college football, they tried ESPN NEWS but an preseason NBA was there instead and not even their ESPN 3 website didn't show the race. You had to listen to the PRN radio broadcast instead.
I know a ton of people are hyped for ESPN to potentially get Nascar races but let me tell you as a hockey fan, just because they show the games, it doesn’t mean they care about it. They have tanked the NHL ratings because of their awful broadcasts and booths who have no idea what they’re talking about. My Bruins played on ESPN last week and they constantly said incorrect information about the league
I mean in 99, CBS cut away from the Texas Cup race to go to breaking news, I'm 99% sure it was about the Kosovan war but I've never found footage of what the news broadcast was about. The thing is, some things are absolutely vital to cut in and interrupt programs. There's the now famous clip of a Houston area station cutting away from an NFL game due to a tornado warning for their area being issued, for instance, yet if that happened with NASCAR in 20203,2024 or 2025, you'd get death threats to that station even though cutting away would be the right decision though.
Over here on the opposite side of the pond, the F1 fans had concerns about adverts when they went from the BBC to ITV. The BBC doesn't have adverts and ITV does. The concerns were exactly what happened here, missing parts of a race at an important time. And itnpissed a lot of fans off. Sky Sports do the F1 and American motorsport. And whilst they are a commercial channel, we've never had issues, apart from problems with broadcasts, not as interuprions. We've also had times when an event has switched channels, but never from terrestrial to satellite/cable. Usually it is either on to another terrestrial channel or satalite/cable channel. But that being said, ITV have fucked up twice in the last 14 years. During the 2010 World Cup in South Africa a “technical glitch by Technicolor” meant that ITV1 went to a break in the fourth minute of the England v USA match and missed the opening goal by England. And in the February the year earlier during an FA Cup 4tn round replay between Everton and Liverpool they went to an ad break. Only, problem was it was with 4 minutes of Extra Time left and missed the winning goal for Everton.
we were big nascar fans until 2008 every sunday was a mini super bowl party around our house. between the chase Jimmy Johnson always winning and the insulting TV coverage by the end of that year we had all but stopped watching and just never returned. I believe the last time I even watched part of a race was like 2010.
Funny how Gordon, did win championships back to back, but he didn't win races constantly because despite winning the championship Bobby Labonte won the last 1998 race despite not winning the championship.
However, it's ESPN that's been put in the backseat by the NHL's other US carrier... TNT, featuring a slew of ex-NBC talent and a better showing of quality compared to ESPN.
Granted, it's a bad goof on ESPN. But NOTHING compares to the 2000 Albertsons 300 Busch Series race at Texas. The race was broadcast on CBS. A race that, like Phoenix 2008, was riddled with rain. They did at least race around 15 laps after a long-enough window opened up to at least actually get the race underway. However, Viacom had to move the race to TNN as CBS had the NCAA basketball Final Four games that night also. But the worst part is that once the race finally got back underway, THEY DIDN'T EVEN SHOW THE RACE! Essentially Viacom abandoned the rest of the race, despite pleas from Teams and NASCAR Officials to show the race. That was the final straw for NASCAR, as back then, track owners would be the ones to negotiate with the TV contracts. But starting in 2001 because of the incident, it would be NASCAR themselves that would negotiate the TV contracts. Something to be grateful for, even to this day. If you want more details, check out Black Flags Matter's video titled "The time NASCAR Broadcasters didn't care...".
I am still worried about if nascar goes to ESPN even part of the year the network has shown they don’t prioritize any sport besides NBA,MLB, and NFL. I say this because of how they handle the NHL after getting the rights. The broadcasters are dull and uninspiring and the analysts on programs outside of the sport make the game more of a joke than a serious sport and i would hate to see nascar go down the same path
