ESPN Broadcasting Races

[eyepatrol]

Got this from the NASCAR HSOforum. Comments from Rich Feinberg who's the senior coordinating producer for ESPN. I just hope ESPN is able to air less commercials than NBC/TNT did!!!

"I'm OK with people critiquing our work," Feinberg said to the recent scrutiny other networks have had in regard to commercial time and missing restarts, a reoccurring complaint among fans.

Those complaints, however, nearly lost velocity during the Chase, when NBC and TNT missed only two restarts in the 10-race playoff. During that span, an average of 31 percent of airtime was commercials, according to cawsnjaws.com.

"The reality of it is this is a business, and part of that business is to air commercials," Feinberg said. "The unique thing about NASCAR is there are no timeouts. So when it's time to go to commercial, you have to have a keen sense of awareness of when it's safe to go. But we have to make our best educated guess, and certainly there are ways to do that."

Feinberg said each network predetermines the number of commercials for every broadcast, and that the maxim amount of commercial time is part of the network's agreement with NASCAR, although he would not elaborate on ESPN's details.

"Now if there's somebody out there who can accurately predict there will be no pass or no caution while we're on break, I'll hire them tomorrow and pay them a hefty salary," he joked, noting that ESPN does have the ability to break out of commercial and back into coverage should a race-changing incident occur.

He said there is always a concern for missing action on the track, specifically restarts, but added that showing each restart in a timely fashion shouldn't be a problem for ESPN.

"I understand it's a concern," he said. "I read the blogs on Monday morning. Nobody gets more frustrated when we miss a restart or a pass than the guys in the [production] truck, because ultimately that's our job. What we have to do is a better job explaining how that process works. There are only three sports -- racing, golf and soccer -- that have no stoppage time, and they all deal with the same problem."

While football assigns an official to ensure the game is not in play until television returns from commercial, Feinberg said there have been no discussions between ESPN and NASCAR about dictating when the green flag would fly based on when the commercial breaks end.

[harvey lee]

More commercials, more income. Thats all it amounts to. The bottom line.

[LMITOUT]

I'm his man for the job as I can predict when there will be a caution.....anytime Gordon or Johnson goes a lap down! Where do I sign up?

[Black_Bay]

I liked the way ABC did it with open wheel racing. They had a split screen with the race in the upper corner and the commercial in the rest of the screen with audio. I don't understand why they don't continue to do that.

[Sifty]

Quote:

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More commercials, more income. Thats all it amounts to. The bottom line.

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YEP.

Sifty

[JohnMickish]

Thats why they invented TIVO.

[JKing]

Yep,

The commercials aren't going to go away. The contracts keep getting bigger & that means more commercials. I understand if a network misses a wreck because they are away at commercial (As long as they aren't at commercial every two seconds) but for a network to miss a restart should be considered unaceptable. The lights in the pace car go out at the line a lap before they go green so that should give the networks plenty of time to figure out when they need to come back from break.