grandstands during the Cup Lite race on Saturday. Proof once again that Cup drivers do not fill the grandstands. Top 5 finishers were Cup drivers. 7 out of 10 of the Top 10 cars are owned by Cup teams. And they can’t figure out why the stand-alone races with no Cup drivers pull in larger crowds. Anyone in the Ivory Towers awake or sober enough to get a clue?
The Queen of Hype was running in the Top 15 for a change (when it wasn’t for green flag pit stops) and gets wrecked, then asks what she should do? Hello? Have you ever thought about watching the races you aren’t in maybe to get a clue or does that tremendous marketing and branding ego prevent that? If not for the 9 start and parks, she’d have finished around 40th. As it was, she got her normal Top 30 finish.
And how about the accusations that she was intentionally taken out? The initial report from BSPN looked like a racing deal and then it became somewhat ambiguous as to maybe it was or maybe it wasn’t. By this weekend it’ll be a “fact” that it was intentional.
I hope nobody is surprised that the ratings were down yet again. 26% versus last season. And a massive drop of the all-time high of a 3.7 overnight rating for the same race back in 2007. That’s a loss of almost 2 full ratings points in just 3 years. Maybe if they returned to the 2003 rules, dumped the play-off format, and dumped the current (lack of) leadership, NA$CAR might be able to be saved from this lunacy that’s going on and bring the ratings back up. But as the constant state of denial exist in the Ivory Towers; it’s going to take the doors being padlocked to finally get the France family’s attention. Has anyone in the Ivory Towers ever heard of the phrase “the customer is always right”?
We got 5 commercials on average per break for commercial programming which came out to about 4 laps spent in commercials. The first 2 breaks for commercial programming came after 9 laps. Probably the shortest one was 3 laps of commercials with 2 lead-in plugs. The longest lead-in plug was 5. The storyline laid out by the Booth Buffoons was Shrubbery, Hamlin, and Johnson and that’s pretty much what they showed during the racertainment segments. While BSPN did a good job of not showing the empty seats, it was pretty obvious when they showed Jamie Little standing on the pit wall. There were lots of empty seats behind her and the camera zoomed in on her face to try to hide them. Despite tire problems during practice, no mention was made during the race so you have to wonder how many blown tires were from the tires shredding on their own. And we had the usual gaffs from the Booth Buffoons. Marty Reid saying the pace lights were out on the pace car. He also contradicted DJ when DJ said there was a lot of debris and Reid said there was a lot of paper. Reid said that Roto-Reutimann had pulled right up to Kenseth’s bumper when in fact there was at east a car length in between them. You had to wonder at Petree’s statement of “I don’t know which Jimmie Johnson team we’ll see today”. You mean there’s more than one Jimmie Johnson team? One restart was missed thanks to the commercials. Ms Terry DeBris showed up twice dressed up as Mickey Mouse to go along with the Mickey Mouse track. You could hear the happiness in Crusty and Drab Brad’s voices with the problems Ford was having with blown engines. All in all, a typical BSPN broadcast not worth the TNT to blow it to heck.
While the Busch Series was racing on Saturday, ARCA ran their season finale at The Rock. And unlike the fake play-off system of NA$CAR, which is nothing more than a massive manipulation of the media to generate artificial excitement, the ARCA championship actually came down to the last race of the season. And ARCA has a 9-time series champion still running on the track who was in contention for a possible 10th championship. What’s the best NA$CAR can field? One 4-time champ and one 4-time chump. And the track itself helped lend to the excitement of the season finale. A mile track with a lot of history to it and managed to have some of the most exciting races in the history of NA$CAR before the decision was made by the Daytona marketing genius and “soda” spilling palm tree hunter to replace it with a cookie cutter clone track. And we’re supposed to believe that the LaLaLand market wants NA$CAR?
If what Tom Bowles wrote is correct, Fontucky will be off the schedule come 2012 if things don’t improve there. I wonder what the excuses will be. Fans shopping under the grandstands? The local NFL team is taking all their fans away? INS is keeping fans away from the track? The dog ate my homework?
You also have to wonder just how many tickets were given away this past weekend. BSPN did a superb job of not showing the grandstands the last two weeks although they did screw up on 3 occasions showing empty seats at the pit entry, pit exit, and underneath the overhang and the shadows from it. Lots of empty seats in those sections. I guess since it’s a track of NA$CAR’s incestuous twin we won’t get to see the empty seats when they get to the next I$C track but you can bet they won’t have any problems showing the empty seats at the SMI tracks.
It seems the battle between Focks and Dish Network is causing all sorts of havoc with not just race fans but also pro and college football fans. If this continues into next season, there will be a major dip in the NA$CAR ratings yet again unless the fans can watch via the open airwaves.
NA$CAR better be doing more than just allowing the teams to check out the repaved surface at Daytona during January. There needs to be some serious tire testing done after the teams get their track time in January to make sure that Badyear actually shows up with some decent tires for the Daytona 500. Otherwise, we could have another big mess like Charlotte or Indy with yet another tire debacle. When your tires blow at over 200 mph, it’s a Badyear!
And how about those tires Badyear brought for the Cup teams to Otto Klubb Speedway that were tearing apart? Not a single word was mentioned about this during the race broadcast on Sunday. After all, BSPN has to protect the official tire supplier. Oh yeah, nothing like the best from the official tire supplier of NA$CAR and a customer of Faux King Brian’s Brand Nonsense marketing company. No conflict of interest there. At least not to Faux King Brian. Just like there’s no conflict with his marketing company handling Dodge, Ram trucks, Chrysler, STP, Kingsford charcoal, and the SyFy and Bravo channels (owned by NBC).
Interesting that JJ Yeley wrote on Twitter that the start and
parks would probably run 120 laps because everyone had a fre
sh engine and nobody wanted to be the first one out. During
the Cup racertainment on Sunday, several of the start and
parks were in and out of the garage to avoid being the 43rd
place finisher.
Shane Hmiel, the young driver who was banned for life by
NA$CAR for marijuana and cocaine use several years ago and
who also flipped off Dale Jarrett on camera, had a pretty bad
wreck in a USAC qualifier. His neck is broken in two places
and also his back is broken. He’s had surgery. It’ll be a long
road to full recovery if that’s possible. What I found interesting
is that he had an undiagnosed problem with being bipolar when he was running in NA$CAR. I’m not making excuses for his drug use but this seems to have been what led to it. Should he fully recover and wants to get back into racing again, I think that maybe NA$CAR needs to take the bipolar disorder into account and review his records since it was diagnosed.
FROM RACEMAMA: At this time I want to encourage each of you to visit Couchman's facebook page for helping children and families who come to them through the Muscular Dystrophy Association for the October at Charlotte Motor Speedway. He and his group go all out every year to help a child and their family Please help in any way you can, everything goes to the kids.Helping kids makes our Hearts Race.
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