As we all know, people love to complain about the TV coverage. Do you all listen to those complaints and is it something that you think about? And what makes a good broadcast from your point of view?
Well first, to answer your question about the viewers, everyone is entitled to an opinion and we have become a very opinionated society. You look at the number of web pages that are out there, the blogs. I have no problem with anybody complaining -- what I want to know is ‘What do they want to see that's different?' I keep hearing people complain about not having the good old days. Well, the good old days -- and I was there -- we had five cameras in one truck, we missed crashes like crazy because we didn't have enough cameras to cover every corner of the track; to isolate views.
It's very rare that we miss a crash. We missed Elliott Sadler's crash back at Pocono. Both cameras went with the primary crash and then all the sudden there was a secondary crash. But in this day and age, they seem to forget that there were times that we missed a lot of things just because we didn't have the equipment to cover it. And they also -- I hear complaints about the racing not being as good. So I'm going ‘You want to go back to the days when Ned Jarrett won by two laps?'
I think just like we have selective hearing, I think we have selective memory sometimes. And I have no problem, though, with anyone that has constructive criticism; when someone says 'I don't like this, but here's my idea how to make it better.' I think the danger of the blogs is -- it's sort of like if you are liberal in mind, politics-wise, you're drawn towards MSNBC. And if you're a conservative, you're driven more towards Fox.
And I think what happens on the blogs and it's the samething. If someone comes in with a differing opinion -- I've heard tales of some of our crew and they would blog and defend a position and get ganged up on -- and people get to the point where they don't stay because their opinion isn't respected. So now you have blogs that are basically like-minds, all agreeing on the same thing. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's just the way it is. And like I said, my only concern there, is I would love when every time someone has criticism, give me an idea how to make it better. What do you want to see to make it better? I get viewers all the time [saying] 'less commercials.' Well, that's something I can't control. I can't control that. If they have a problem with me, let's say, not identifying a certain car correctly. I'm never going to be perfect. The day I do the perfect show, I'm out of here and I'm in my 29th year, so what does that tell you? None of us are perfect.
[Note: He's obviously not talking about From The Marbles because we don't agree with anything that's posted in the comments. Relax, we kid because we care.]
I think what we try and accomplish with the broadcast is it is a race first - now that we're in the Chase, the Chase is part of that race. Now, a lot of the focus does end up on the Chase because those are the best guys and they're running up front. But if you go back to our last two races, AJ Allmendinger has gotten more air time in the last two races than he's gotten in the rest of the season whether it was Fox, TNT or us. And the reason is because he's running up front.
Ryan Newman right now, he's running -- in the last five races he's got the third-best finishing average behind Busch and Edwards and he's getting coverage.
We also hear the complaints that TV ignores the Non-Chasers
Not true.
But if you also look at the broadcasts -- and what I'm happy about -- is that even in the Chase races we're getting back to battles for 25th, for 20th, and it's not just Chasers involved in those battles because that's where the best racing is. That's one of the theories that we've really refocused really hard on. Because that was thing we did back in the old days of ESPN because you had to go where the racing was because we only had five cameras. You had to go where the action was. So now that we have all these other cameras to cover the angles -- yeah sometimes we cut away from a battle to go to another, but now if you've noticed we're doing much more split screen which is very difficult for our camera crews and for the director. You are basically rubbing your stomach and patting your head at the same time. Oh, and then immediately change; pat your head and rub your stomach.
