5/9/06
TV RE-VAMP DUE
In reference to your tidbit about the NHRA/ESPN ratings being down this year for most of the events, I suspect it has to do with the announcing crew, specifically Paul Page. While I like and respect Mr. Page, and this is in no way meant as a criticism of him, I do not believe he fits in well as a broadcaster of NHRA national event drag racing.
Mr. Page has done extremely well as an Indycar announcer for the past many years, and the ESPN decision to put Marty Reid on those telecasts while placing Mr. Page on the NHRA coverage was, I believe, a big mistake. I don't know the ins and outs, of course, and maybe Mr. Reid wanted to do something different, but whatever the reason for his moving to Indycar racing coverage, it has definitely hurt the NHRA coverage.
Mr. Reid has outstanding knowledge of the sport of drag racing, his excitement is apparent to all when listening to him describe a run, and his experience is beyond question. On the other hand, Mr. Page has consistently seemed lost in the numbers, often reciting the
times as "four point eight twenty two" or something like that, rather than "four eighty two, with a two" as Mr. Reid calls it. And he is obviously not familiar with drag racing, at least not enough to know what to be enthusiastic about and what to treat as a common occurrence.
Again, please understand that this is not meant as a criticism of Mr. Page, who I believe was placed on the NHRA coverage team against his will (though I have no evidence of that other than a gut feeling). Rather, I think ESPN made a critical error in replacing Mr. Reid with Mr. Page.
Another problem I have noticed is the lack of top-end interviews after runs. They seem to spend way too much "down-time" on seemingly irrelevant issues, while ignoring the obvious - talking to the men and women who just stepped - or crawled! - out of a two- or three-hundred mile an hour machine. Even John Force had an issue with standing there, waiting around for Gary Gerrould to interview him after a run, while he wanted to go and watch his other cars and his opponents runs.
When your uber-champion complains, you better listen. Force is a marketer's dream, despite his occasional off-color remark - or maybe because of it. In any case, when you fail to interview him after the run, you have missed an opportunity that you will never get back. Ditto for the rest of the competitors as well. Not all of them get out and simply state all their sponsors' names and say what an awesome run it was.
Since these telecasts are canned anyway (in the sense that they are shown hours after the event, with the exception of the final rounds), what I think they need is more top-end interviews (winners and losers alike), as well as starting line interviews with crew chiefs and others, more "live" runs rather than quick "highlights" of earlier round runs to get us up to date (they seem to have somehow forgotten they could get all the T/F, F/C and P/S runs in the show, since they usually have two or three hours to fill), and more behind the scenes stuff, not exclusively watching while some nitro team tears down and rebuilds an engine after a run. I know these racers are secretive, but there must be someone who could go throughout the pits and get some scoops once in awhile.
One last thing - highlight the efforts of the low-buck guys once in awhile. After all, they have sponsors too, and some exposure would be great. Last year, they showed my friend Vinnie Arcadi doing a wheelstand at night at Chicago, and related that he crossed the center line, then failed to show his last ditch effort to qualify, on which he ran an outstanding (for a low-buck racer with limited experience) 4.83/303. That kind of coverage would be beneficial to the sport, to the racers, and would be interesting to the fans, even the casual fans, I suspect. A complete revamping of their coverage would definitely not hurt.
John Murnan
Zephyrhills, FL
