Welcome back, race fans. This will be my 17th year bringing you criticism of TV broadcasts. The hope is that I can bring attention to both the good and the not so good on broadcasts. There’s a lot of change for 2025.
That said, we’re starting the year with a broadcast that has the least change compared to last season. For this year, pretty much everyone is back in their previous roles. FOX’s booth of Mike Joy, Kevin Harvick and Clint Bowyer are all back, as are Jamie Little and Regan Smith in the pits (expect additional pit support at Daytona International Speedway).
This year, NASCAR started the season off at Bowman Gray Stadium in Winston-Salem, N.C. as opposed to Los Angeles. You had a smaller crowd than either 2022 or 2023 (given the circumstances, we’re not going to count last year here), but these dudes were raucous.
Likely the only real change in on-air talent that we saw last weekend at Bowman Gray Stadium was the addition of Jamie McMurray to NASCAR RaceDay. I like McMurray on broadcasts and sincerely believe that he’ll do well on The CW later this year. However, I have no idea what the plan was here.
On paper, this setup will have McMurray co-hosting NASCAR RaceDay with Chris Myers. However, Bowyer and Harvick tend to join in as well. That makes for a four-person standup and things get busy. On multiple occasions on Sunday (Feb. 2) night, people like Richard Childress and Noah Gragson joined the group. Now, you have five people trying to get a word in edgewise. It’s a mess. I don’t understand this move.
It was already busy with three people there and had a special guest last year. We’ll just use Joey Logano as an example. Logano shows up for a conversation before the spring race at Phoenix Raceway and he chats with Myers, Harvick and Bowyer. It’s already a bit much there. Now, you have four people peppering the guest with questions.
Honestly, I’m a little surprised that McMurray is back with FOX Sports this year. I was under the opinion that it didn’t think much of McMurray as an on-air personality. That belief was why he never got more of a shot in the booth on FOX broadcasts. Whether that’s true or not doesn’t matter.
During the races on Sunday, there were no full-screen commercial breaks. The Last Chance Qualifier never ran long enough under green that they could’ve had a commercial. Meanwhile, the 200-lap main event had four commercial breaks, all of which were side-by-side breaks….
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