Early bump in ratings helps clear out gloom and doom

If there were ever a weekend for the ratings to tank, this would surely be it. Conference basketball tournaments giving way to the NCAA selection show, the Rockets in Los Angeles going for another consecutive victory, Tiger at Bay Hill yet again making the unthinkable look routine -- they all lined up like an invading army marshalling at the border, ready to put an end to NASCAR's nice little early-season television bump. Sunday's event at Bristol Motor Speedway, where the Sprint Cup tour faced its toughest television competition thus far, seemed the place where the sport would be brought back down to earth.

Except it wasn't. The FOX broadcast of the Food City 500 earned a reported 5.0 television rating, not exactly a number that will have programming executives trading high-fives. But that was still up 2 percent from the same race broadcast a year ago. It was better than the ratings for the NCAA selection show on CBS, better than the ratings for Tiger Woods' amazing PGA Tour victory on NBC, and markedly better than the ratings for the Rockets-Lakers NBA game on ABC. And it continued an upward trend for television ratings in NASCAR this season.

With the exception of the rain-delayed event at California on Feb. 25, every race broadcast this season has earned better television numbers than the same event a year ago. Some of the gains have been modest, like the 2-point upturn for Bristol and the 1-percent increase for the Daytona 500. Others have experienced larger gains, like the 13-percent rise for the Las Vegas race and the 23-percent jump for the event two weeks ago at Atlanta, both five-year highs for those tracks. Ratings for the Budweiser Shootout and Daytona qualifying races also were up. Year to date, FOX's overall ratings are up a tidy 7 percent.

Now, no one is going to confuse ratings for a Sprint Cup race with those for the last MASH, or even a Sunday afternoon regular-season NFL game. But for a sport that last season seemed hammered at every turn because of its sub-par television numbers, these are rather positive early results. Add to it the fact that three of the first five Sprint Cup events have been sellouts -- and that the next three, Martinsville, Texas and Phoenix, have historically come very close to doing the same -- and the gloom-and-doom crowd that's been prophesizing end of times for this 60-year-old sport can at last be pushed into a quiet corner for a little while.

The revival of most popular driver Dale Earnhardt Jr., who has finished ninth or better in four of his first five starts with Hendrick Motorsports -- the exception again being California, where he was taken out in a weeper-induced wreck -- surely helps from a television perspective. So does the presence of FOX, an over-the-air broadcast network that's found a way to connect with race fans better than any other since the early 1990s heyday of CBS. Yes, Larry McReynolds sometimes mangles the English language. Granted, a hoarse Darrell Waltrip probably should have taken last week off. But FOX does NASCAR better than anyone else right now, a lead that's reflected in the ratings.

Autostock

Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s revival could be helping ratings.

2008 Overnight Ratings

Rating/Share for broadcasts

Race	2008	2007
Bud Shootout	4.5/8	4.2/7
Daytona Quals	2.7/6	2.5/6
Gatorade Duels*	2.1	1.87
Daytona 500	10.2/20	10.1/20
California	6/2/10^	6.7/13
Las Vegas	6.2/12	5.5/11
Atlanta	5.6/12	4.7/10
Bristol	5.0/11	4.9/11

* -- Denotes race was on SPEED
^ -- Denotes Sunday rain delay

Of course, Mike Joy, DW, Digger and Co. don't exactly have football to contend with. And the early schedule works in NASCAR's favor; the current off week comes during the height of the NCAA basketball tournament, and a Saturday-night race at Phoenix keeps the sport out of direct competition with the Masters. There's no reason, given the other sporting events that NASCAR is up against in the coming weeks, that television ratings should not continue to rise throughout the spring. Nobody in Daytona Beach is scared of arena football. But the real test comes in the fall, when race broadcasts on ABC and ESPN go up against the almighty NFL.

The e-mail box is cluttered every week with dire missives from the more pessimistic in the fan base, folks who rail about how NASCAR is ruined, how nobody watches or attends the races anymore, how the sport is going the way of thoroughbred racing and pro hockey. Such claims, of course, are immeasurably rash and myopic. All sports have their issues, from steroids in baseball to gun violence in the NFL. NASCAR has survived six decades, through tire wars and economic recessions and manufacturer pullouts and safety crises and gasoline shortages. It's not going to fall into the sea tomorrow just because Pocono draws a 4.7 or California can't sell out.

And at the risk of sounding like a house man -- although this site is owned and operated by Turner, not NASCAR -- chairman Brian France is exactly right when he points out that ratings fluctuate, and all sports are finding it tougher to attract the television numbers they once did. Does the 11-percent ratings decline suffered by ESPN's Monday Night Football broadcasts last season mean the NFL is any less viable as a commercial or television product? Absolutely not. It means that, regardless of the program being offered, it's harder to get people to watch.

Similarly, NASCAR's early-season ratings increase does not necessarily mean the sport is on a path back to the days of 2001 and '02, when a combination of factors -- FOX's entrance, increased expansion to major markets, the curiosity generated by Dale Earnhardt's fatal crash -- sent television ratings skyrocketing. And it doesn't mean NASCAR is without its media challenges, the biggest of which may not be TV, but the increasing number of daily newspapers that have axed staff-generated coverage of the sport. With profits dropping in that industry, racing with its $200-a-night hotel minimums is an expensive and easy beat to cut. The infield media center at Bristol never seemed as empty as it did last week.

But as always, the tube gets most attention. It's the television networks that pay the billion-dollar rights fees, that provide the window through which the vast majority of race fans view their favorite sport, that are seen as the harbinger of ill times when numbers turn south. And in this case, it's the television networks that give NASCAR some traction entering the meat of the season, proving in the process that times aren't as bad as some people would make them out to be.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.