I was in radio for a number of years as a morning drive announcer, did football games as lead, etc. Never did racing but there are specific ingredients that, I believe, make broadcasts excellent:
1. Your announcing team has to be knowledgeable, entertaining to a point, and clearly enjoy what they are doing.
2. It is ideal to have each member of the team have a natural, unique texture and pitch to their voice. The Fox team has that with Joy, Waltrip and Gordon. They have developed a generally good rhythm, which is what you want with any broadcast. Rhythm requires space between the notes. Every team is guilty of overspeak, but none worse than NBC. NBC’s addition of Junior (unique) helps a lot. Burton and Letarte have equally pitched voices (tenor) as Junior. They sound very similar to each other, especially when excited. This makes for some grinding and overkill when everyone is working hard to fill every moment of airspace with noise.
I believe Junior has proven to be a good analyst in a very short time. This is strictly due to his personality and good insights from just having competed last year. He is the Dandy Don Meredith for this NBC team, while Waltrip plays that role with the Fox team. Gordon is good, smooth, more formal, comes across as very knowledgeable but with biases. He is a good counterweight to the professional (Joy) and the clown (Waltrip). Rick Allen is a good announcer, smooth baritone voiced lead, until he tries to construct grand pronouncements, or tries to insert over the top excitement into something that isn’t there. That sounds fake, like he’s trying for the Al Michaels miracle moment every time.
