Baseball Tonight?!!!! (1 Viewer)

[NHRAMike]

Holy chizz, on ESPN women's college softball goes extra innings, so baseball tonight gets moved over to the deuce, moving the 4-wides to a slot an hour later. Thanks ESPN

 

[Buns]

Gotta love it...

 

[d'kid]

Don't NEED to watch at all, I know the results...

Some of us HAVE to WORK tomorrow...

Sorry, ain't watching anymore...

d'kid

 

[Jer]

COMPLETE BS

ESPN bites

 

[Johnny Ringo]

Why do the (over paid) guru's an NHRA (National Hackneyed Retard Association) tolerate this crap? Do they think the fans of baseball, football, basketball and hockey ( I had to look up the spelling for them) EVER watch drag racing? Think "Speed Channel". Comments welcomed as I'm not watching f..ing boreball now. LOL!

 

[rollemup]

....everyone can stop whinning now, the drags are on

 

[BF]

Holy chizz, on ESPN women's college softball goes extra innings, so baseball tonight gets moved over to the deuce, moving the 4-wides to a slot an hour later. Thanks ESPN

It's called having priority. There's a reason the NHRA gets treated like that. (PS: do you expect them to cut into a live event to show a taped show?)

 

[T.Smith]

Why do the (over paid) guru's an NHRA (National Hackneyed Retard Association) tolerate this crap? Do they think the fans of baseball, football, basketball and hockey ( I had to look up the spelling for them) EVER watch drag racing? Think "Speed Channel". Comments welcomed as I'm not watching f..ing boreball now. LOL!

Most of the racing fans I know are fans of stick and ball sports.

 

[willy]

How long did we have to wait..15 min? That's not bad.

And I thought the broadcast was pretty cool.

 

[Johnny Mopar]

Holy chizz, on ESPN women's college softball goes extra innings, so baseball tonight gets moved over to the deuce, moving the 4-wides to a slot an hour later. Thanks ESPN

MIke,

Go to the Nielson Ratings thread for this discussion...

I realize we're all disappointed when our coverage is delayed, but we've beat this horse to death!!! Can we please accept the facts and reality of why this happens and just move on??? The only thing I'm certain of on a Sunday evening of a national event is someone posting a thread about ESPN. With the low audience level our coverage garners we should be happy they even allow NHRA to pay them for broadcasting it.

ESPN is doing an excellent job of putting the coverage together. If you've forgotten what it used to be like, pull out an old VHS tape from the TNN coverage and watch that. We've come a long way, thanks solely to ESPN.

Be thankful for what we have.

 

[Ron]

MIke,

Go to the Nielson Ratings thread for this discussion...

I realize we're all disappointed when our coverage is delayed, but we've beat this horse to death!!! Can we please accept the facts and reality of why this happens and just move on??? The only thing I'm certain of on a Sunday evening of a national event is someone posting a thread about ESPN. With the low audience level our coverage garners we should be happy they even allow NHRA to pay them for broadcasting it.

ESPN is doing an excellent job of putting the coverage together. If you've forgotten what it used to be like, pull out an old VHS tape from the TNN coverage and watch that. We've come a long way, thanks solely to ESPN.

Be thankful for what we have.

Did you ever consider the reason you have lousy ratings? The constant preemption may be the cause not the effect. Does woman's softball actually out draw NHRA coverage?

I don't have a Neilson box in my house but if I did the ratings would have gone down a lot since the constant not starting on time has pretty much made be a non watcher.

 

[FC138fan]

MIke,
pull out an old VHS tape from the TNN coverage and watch that.
Be thankful for what we have.

I don't know if I would say today's coverage is better then the TNN days.

More coverage then the TNN days, true, but not better quality. Even when ESPN 2 started covering the drags on speedworld, they had the same TNN style of coverage. When we were able to find them in the TV guide (sometimes 2 weeks after the fact) it was an awesome 1 hour show. I remember taping the 96 ATSCO nationals at 10:00pm on a Tuesday for an hour, and burning that tape out because it was the only coverage on for weeks.

I said it before, but 2.5 hours is just too long. The old shows were 1 hour, they did highlights of qualifying, then ran 2nd round through finals. It was enough for me. I would say a 1.5 hour show would be perfect, same format as the mid 90's shows but include first round. Take an hour Sunday morning and run all the backstory stuff. ...

That sounds familiar... Recall 1996 or so ... TNN... NHRA Today ran every Sunday at 11 where they would do the backstory stuff.. driver profiles, tech segments... Then the race ran on raceday Sunday night - racing only... Always on time...

It is what it is though, the coverage isn't BAD today, its just fine... so long as I can DVR it and FF through the side show stuff.

The camera angles IMO are kinda crappy though, I don't like that stationary camera trackside that shows them fly by 250 mph, or the constant in car cameras. Just show the run, one camera shot from the start, and then a 1000' wide angle to show who gets to the finish first. Quit trying to cut to 5 different shots in a 3.5 second run.

 

[FC138fan]

That sounds familiar... Recall 1996 or so ... TNN... NHRA Today ran every Sunday at 11 where they would do the backstory stuff.. driver profiles, tech segments... Then the race ran on raceday Sunday night - racing only... Always on time...

For awhile there they would time it so that they could do first round live right after NHRA Today on Sunday. Typically an oil down would ruin that, but at least they always started on time. They even timed it a few times to get the live final at the end of the day.

Can't do that now when Baseball tonight, or softball, or whatever pushes things back repeatedly.

 

[DrRocket]

I started my recording, and actually chuckled when I saw the Baseball Tonight show starting, knowing FULL WELL that I would see this thread, and you boys didn't disappoint!!

The delay lasted exactly 22 minutes on my TIVO timer.

It's why I"ve ALWAYS added an extra hour AT LEAST when I set my recordings.

 

[d'kid]

I started my recording, and actually chuckled when I saw the Baseball Tonight show starting, knowing FULL WELL that I would see this thread, and you boys didn't disappoint!!

The delay lasted exactly 22 minutes on my TIVO timer.

It's why I"ve ALWAYS added an extra hour AT LEAST when I set my recordings.

My Bad, I pitched a witch Because BBTN is normally an hour show... so, I just crawled into bed, picked up a book and started reading... and the race came on soon after... not like I would have missed anything, watched the thing on ESPN3 ... while listening to the audiocast... by the way, I like the 'blue bulbs', expect them at more tracks soon... heard this rumor that the ambers are getting hard to find/get...

d'kid

 

[Kelly]

Most of the racing fans I know are fans of stick and ball sports.

I'm one of them.

 

[Bullard Anderson]

Great point Nick. With a 1/4 mile or 1000 foot being such a short distance you need to allow the viewer to see the race and comprehend it as it happens. 2 changes on the switcher for the Technical Director is all we need.

I few weeks back I looked back at some old races on youtube and marveled at how much better the camera angles were for drag racing. It's worth looking at some old stuff from staging to the turn off at the end of the track.

And, I don't care if it's 1 hour late on Sunday as long as I see the show. When they start bypassing rounds to get the programming schedule back on track then when have a problem.

 

[DrRocket]

......And, I don't care if it's 1 hour late on Sunday as long as I see the show. When they start bypassing rounds to get the programming schedule back on track then when have a problem.

here here!!!

 

[vegasnitro]

REMINDER: ESPN doesn't do ch!t for NHRA. NHRA pays ESPN upwards of 10 million dollars per year for the privilege. The program is 3 hours because that is the amount of TV time NHRA has leased. I have ALWAYS advocated a 90 minute, tighter TV program. It is likely to hold viewer's attention better, and NHRA would SAVE money as they would be buying half the time from ESPN.

 

[Dave]

I don't know if I would say today's coverage is better then the TNN days.

More coverage then the TNN days, true, but not better quality. Even when ESPN 2 started covering the drags on speedworld, they had the same TNN style of coverage. When we were able to find them in the TV guide (sometimes 2 weeks after the fact) it was an awesome 1 hour show. I remember taping the 96 ATSCO nationals at 10:00pm on a Tuesday for an hour, and burning that tape out because it was the only coverage on for weeks.

I said it before, but 2.5 hours is just too long. The old shows were 1 hour, they did highlights of qualifying, then ran 2nd round through finals. It was enough for me. I would say a 1.5 hour show would be perfect, same format as the mid 90's shows but include first round. Take an hour Sunday morning and run all the backstory stuff. ...

That sounds familiar... Recall 1996 or so ... TNN... NHRA Today ran every Sunday at 11 where they would do the backstory stuff.. driver profiles, tech segments... Then the race ran on raceday Sunday night - racing only... Always on time...

It is what it is though, the coverage isn't BAD today, its just fine... so long as I can DVR it and FF through the side show stuff.

The camera angles IMO are kinda crappy though, I don't like that stationary camera trackside that shows them fly by 250 mph, or the constant in car cameras. Just show the run, one camera shot from the start, and then a 1000' wide angle to show who gets to the finish first. Quit trying to cut to 5 different shots in a 3.5 second run.

Pretty much sums it up. The early and mid 90s shows were great on all the networks. Sure the live TNN shows were mostly recaps with live finals, but then they aired full coverage on the hour and a half long American Sports Cavalcade later. The shows espn2 originally were doing in the late 90s when it expanded to the 2 hour format were a bit questionable. The TNN shows from 2000 were downright terrible. The show was an hour and a half long and that was when they had top fuel, funny car, pro stock, pro stock motorcycle, and pro stock truck to cover. Guess what ruled the show? Full coverage of nitro and only a quick recap of the semis of pro stock car, then finals only of pro stock truck and motorcycle. What a joke that was. I think that's what led NHRA to sign with ESPN full time to begin with. I wish they'd go back to the early 90's format. That was the best coverage. 3 hours long is way too long of a show, especially when its 75% nitro coverage anyways I don't need to see the cars go down the track, then 5 replays of it, then a super slowmo replay of it. One replay is fine then move on. This 4 wide show was the most ridiculous. So much filler and commercials and replays for so few runs.