Sunday, June 6, 2010

TNT NASCAR Coverage: Horrible, Terrible, The Worst, Putrid

The Pocono 500 just ended and I wish the alleged TV channel, TNT would stop broadcasting. Their coverage of the last 3 laps of the race was horrible, even worse than an amateur could do. It's the worse I have ever seen.
To start, with 2 laps remaining, Joey Logano and Keven Harvick got into it, sending Logano into a spin. Immediately, one of these announcers automatically blamed Harvick, though he later apologized for blaming him. Ok, that part is ok, but they immediately went to a commercial and came back when the green flag was going to fly. Well, what happen during commercial break, we'll never know. Did anyone run out of fuel or take a pit stop? Was there any radio conversation between Logano or Harvick and their crews? We'll never know. How did Matt Kenseth go from about 13 to 20th? Don't know.
They come back from commercial with the green-white-checker. No talk of strategy or anything like that, though they explained about the green-white-checker. Then the big one happens behind the leaders and just before the leaders crossed the finish line. Well we knew Denny Hamlin won and.... Well, that was it. They didn't put up on the screen who crossed the finish line after that and we really didn't know who came in after that. They show the aftermath of the big wreck, one of the biggest of the year and then it is commercial time. Well, during the commercial break, winner Hamlin does his usual spin out and he crashes his car! Well, where is the video of that? Never saw it. That happens so rarely, but we missed it.
We come back to commercial and we see a big and angry meeting between Harvick and Logano. They didn't have any cameras on the ground and all you could see was the confrontation from the blimp shot and they only showed the middle and end of the confrontation. What happened before hand and what words were said? We don't know.
We saw a lot of replays of the big crash and then finally, after about 15 minutes, they showed the results. They also did some interviews and whoever did the Harvick interview did a horrible job and didn't even ask Harvick about the Logano confrontation after the race.
TNT really doesn't understand NASCAR. TNT is used to showing basketball games and this is how TNT showed the race, like a basketball game.
NASCAR should pull TNT from showing any more races until TNT can show they are up to the task, which clearly, TNT is not up to the task.
It is shameful that TNT did not do a good job. They were not prepared and they treated it like a basketball game. Pathetic.

3 comments:

  1. I couldn't agree more with your assessment of the coverage! But I wouldn't expect anything to change in the future. Just take a look at the bottom of NASCAR.com and see who owns it. TURNER as in TNT!

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  2. I hope more people chime in so NASCAR will do something about this. TNT does not need to be covering NASCAR at all, they do not know what they are doing and they do not know what the race fan wants to see. Replays are limited for the good stuff and over abundant for that stuff that you dont care about, please tell me where I can file a comment with NASCAR and encourage others to do the same

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  3. The NASCAR coverage on TNT is the worst. I am only thankful that that today is the last race for them this season. What they chose to show never seems to tell the whole story of the race. Even worse is the audio. Not that I realy care what Kyle Petty has to say, but I can't hear the commentary over the sounds of the cars. I hate to hear Fox say goodbye every year. TNT should leave this to the professionals. Surely they have a Law And Order to air.

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