Ratings Slide Continues

Well here's one you can't blame on the bad economy: overnight ratings for Sunday's Bristol race are down 18% from last year. Not too surprising, as the trend for the year has averaged down 11% already. And ratings have been petering out the past few seasons.

There are some obvious reasons for the decline, the clearest one being "the product" itself. NASCAR racing has become incredibly dull. And I'm not so much referring just to what's happening (or not happening) on the track -- there have always been boring races, and every sport has boring games. The problem as I see it is that there is no "off-track drama" to sustain people's interests. That is, the sport itself isn't exciting. The drivers are boring. There are no controversies or rivalries. The cars are embarrassingly ugly. The tracks are mostly the same configuration and the ones that are different are paved like sidewalks. Hell, I don't even admit liking NASCAR to my friends anymore -- I tell them I watch cricket.

But let's look past those obvious things and admit that NASCAR has another problem: the television coverage is absolutely terrible. And it seems to be across all networks. Between screaming rodents, quacking ducks and "boogity! boogity! boogity!", they have helped take NASCAR from a man's sport to a silly 3-hour joke more fitting of an afternoon at Sesame Place. Seemingly gone are the days of gritty drivers piloting bad-ass cars on a razor's edge and even breaking a sweat while doing it. If us fans are looking to watch cartoons and comedy, there are plenty of better options on the television dial that we can choose from.

It is really at the point now where I find it painful -- yes, painful -- to watch a NASCAR race on television. Certainly it is true that they have many more cameras than in the old days, and a lot more of the action is caught because of that, but the overall experience portrays "the product" as a kiddie sport no more dangerous than whiffle ball.

Unless NASCAR wants to "realign" itself right into irrelevance, it needs to pick up the phone here and address the state of its television coverage. It negotiated these big TV packages to begin with, I'm sure they could make changes happen... if they wanted to.