ESPN Has Some Work to Do on Their NASCAR Broadcasts

Since this is Daytona 500 weekend, I've been posting on the numerous issues that have come up during Speedweek. We've had scandals in the Cup series, a great finish in the Craftsmen truck race, and yesterday ESPN returned to NASCAR broadcasting for the first time since 2000. After six years of seeing the same Fox and NBC broadcast teams during the season, it was a bit of a jolt to find myself watching a crew made up of some familiar and some new faces.

First, the familiar. The ESPN team includes Dr. Jerry Punch, former NASCAR champ Rusty Wallace, and former driver/crew chief/car owner Andy Petree as the main race callers and analysts. The pit reporters include former NBC veterans Alan Bestwick and Dave Burns. Since Fox has a trailer with a show host and others, so does ESPN. The host team is not a "who's-who" but a "who's-that?" They also got Brent Musburger out of mothballs to toss in a few lines now and then.

ESPN has been doing Indy Car broadcasts since leaving NASCAR, which means they've forgotten how to broadcast a race that people are actually watching. Yes, I know the Indy 500 gets a big audience, but the ratings for their other races look a lot like the stands at those races - very sparse. While watching the TiVO'd Busch race yesterday, I had a couple of observations:

1. The main broadcast team is 2/3rd pretty good and 1/3 needs work. Dr. Punch is a pro and veteran of past NASCAR broadcasts where he often worked as a pit reporter, and Andy Petree was a pleasant surprise. He's knowledgable and easy to listen to. Rusty Wallace, however, needs work.

Rusty has a tremendous amount of NASCAR knowledge and experience, but he's a motormouth. His voice is fairly high-pitched, he speaks very fast, and is not all that pleasant to listen to. On top of that, he's got a verbal tic in which he says "I tell you what" every few sentences. I stopped count at 20.

2. The "host" team in the trailer seemed like a poor imitation of Fox. I don't even remember the names of two of the guys, but I do remember Tim Brewer, a former crew chief, who suffers from the same verbal tic as Rusty Wallace. His comments were never without a "I tell you what".

3. The pit reporters were fine. I'm used to seeing Bestwick and Burns on NBC broadcasts, and frankly, I don't recall who the other two were, but I don't remember any particular problems.

ESPN will do the Busch series all year, and later this summer will take over the Cup series for the final 15 or so races. Hopefully they'll have time to work out some of the kinks and deliver the type of broadcast to which I've become accustomed. The Fox guys have always been the best, and ESPN will have a lot of work to do to get close.