Dateline: 06/27/01

The first half of the season has ended, and it's time to bid a fond farewell the Fox Sports crew. With no race this weekend, I thought it would be good to review the Fox portion of the Winston Cup season and take a look at what NBC/TNT will face during the last half.

Fox changed the look of NASCAR broadcasting, from a country music influenced sport to one that was modern and cutting edge. It brought new formats, new camera angles and new features to the sport. They combined picture, sound and graphics in a way that had not been seen before. They were able to convey the true urgency of the sport. It also brought us one of the most entertaining commentators that the sport has ever seen, Darrell Waltrip. DW, as he is affectionately known, brought us inside the head of a driver, perhaps better than any other former driver who's manned a microphone. His stories may have got on people's nerves occasionally, but no one could deny that he was colorful. And combining DW with Larry McReynolds and Jeff Hammonds gave Fox a winning edge.

Of course, they also brought us one of the most tragic events in motor sports history, the death of Dale Earnhardt. Fox continued to place emphasis on this event, even though NASCAR itself attempted to move beyond it, and gave the fans the opportunity to grieve. Their "silent third lap", for example, gave all of us a chance to honor his memory, and hopefully will continue as the coverage passes to another team of broadcasters. It seems Fox created a tradition that fans at tracks all across the country honored. It would seem fitting for the new team to continue that tradition.

This change is a part of NASCAR's six-year, $2.8 billion television contract with Fox and NBC, and NBC is making every effort to avoid its past mistakes in race coverage. In 1999, NBC telecast the Pennzoil 400 from the Homestead-Miami Speedway. It was a miserable failure, to say the least. NASCAR reported that the ratings were the lowest of any race broadcast on network TV since it began compiling such information. The reason, fans didn't like the change from the familiar broadcast team that they had been viewing all season. Now they face the same challenge, to overcome the attitudes of the viewers. In 1999, fans blasted NBC's coverage, labeling it "pitiful" and "sanitized" and "god-awful." Will they have the same reaction this year? Only time will tell.

In my opinion, the only thing that will save the NBC/TNT coverage is to continue in the same vein that the Fox coverage established. If they try to put their own, traditionally conservative spin on the events they cover, they will face the same fate as before. They have been smart, bringing in some of the old CBS and TNN broadcasters, such as Benny Parsons, but will it be enough? The ratings for the first half of the season show that Fox averaged 19.9 million viewers per race, up 1 million from last year. Fox Sports and FX combined to average 29 percent above the ratings for the first 19 races last season. Those will be hard numbers to beat.

I wish the NBC/TNT combination the best of luck, but luck isn't enough. NASCAR fans have come to expect a certain standard of excellence, and experience has shown that NBC has fallen short of that standard. Let's all hope that they learned from the past and that they hit the ground running. If they wait to "establish a presence," their fate may be sealed before they begin. Again, only time will tell.