Second Thoughts

Interrupting commercial for this race

Brad Keselowski’s victory in the Coke Zero 400 on Saturday night was criticized by many for the number of
commercials that aired during television coverage of the race.
Brad Keselowski’s victory in the Coke Zero 400 on Saturday night was criticized by many for the number of commercials that aired during television coverage of the race.

Brad Keselowski won Saturday night's Coke Zero 400 NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Daytona International Speedway, his first victory at Daytona and the 100th Cup victory for car owner Roger Penske.

But for fans watching on television at home or in their favorite sports bar, there wasn't much racing to see.

The race aired on NBC, its first race after the season's first half was shown on Fox and other Fox-affiliated networks. During the broadcast, fans flocked to social media to complain about the inordinate amount of commercials shown during NBC's coverage of the race.

Jenna Fryer, the Associated Press' auto racing writer, tweeted: "We interrupt this race update for .... COMMERCIALS!"

Steve Moore, CNN's law enforcement analyst, added: "Worst. #NASCAR. Coverage. Ever. Sad because the commentators were good. Commercials every 4th lap? ... So bad it was funny."

The numbers backed up the complaints.

According to cawsnjaws.com, which tracks and breaks down commercial activity for all Cup races, Saturday night's race contained 124 commercials, compared to 96 for the same race in 2015. During the previous nine Cup races, the amount of time commercials took away from racing viewership averaged 19.91 percent of the actual race time. On Saturday night, that amount leaped to 24.74 percent.

During the 2015 July race at Daytona, there was 168 minutes of race broadcast time with 35 minutes taken by commercials. On Saturday night, green flag to checkered took 143 minutes, and 47 minutes were devoted to commercials.

But a total of 75.3 percent of airtime was devoted to the race, which is relatively normal. Saturday night's race wasn't even the most ad-heavy at Daytona this season. February's Daytona 500, which was shown on Fox, showed just 72.8 percent of the actual race.

So why the outrage?

"It's possible viewers couldn't get over the higher frequency of late-race commercial breaks," wrote Tadd Halslop of sportingnews.com. "Five times in the hour leading up to the checkered flag, waved at [9:55 p.m. Central], did NBC cut to commercial. Last year's late-night/early-morning broadcast did so once. The Daytona 500 broadcast cut to break four times in the last hour.

"Another culprit might have been short segments of action between commercials. On 11 occasions, NBC showed five minutes or less of racing between breaks."

Pace crasher dies

One of the oddest footnotes in the history of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway has died.

Eldon Palmer, an Indianapolis-area car dealer and businessman who crashed the pace car into the photographers stand at the start of the 1971 Indianapolis 500, died Thursday in Indianapolis after a sudden illness. He was 87.

Palmer paced the Indy 500 field in the orange 1971 Dodge Challenger, with Indianapolis Motor Speedway owner Tony Hulman Jr., astronaut John Glenn and ABC broadcaster Chris Schenkel seated with him in the car. He led the field to green and peeled off onto pit road but the brakes locked, and as the field reached Turn 1, Palmer's out-of-control Dodge hit the three-tiered camera stand at the end of pit road at an estimated 60 mph.

"It was much faster than I had practiced," Palmer told the Indianapolis Star earlier this year. "[Polesitter Peter Revson] was going 125 mph."

No one in the car was hurt and there were no fatalities, but several photographers fell down several feet and suffered injuries.

Sports on 07/05/2016

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