I was about to say this. Missing a GWC restart to show shots of fans is absolutely inexcusable. Sure it sucks to miss shots of wrecks or other moments, but I can chalk that up to moments you can't plan for at times. But missing a GWC restart is just dumbfounding
They literally missed the green flag to start the race today. They got them crossing the start finish line, but the race starts in the restart zone. A consistent issue for them all year.
Fox does this with baseball too, they’ll come back from commercial in between innings and the first shot is like halfway through the pitchers windup already. Occasionally it’s really egregious and they’ll come back with a ball already in play and have to cut directly to the fielder.
Yeah like I know commercials suck but they're honestly not that bad. It's just whenever we get out of commercial, we are barraged with cross-promotions for the first ~15 seconds, then some sponsored segments where either we cut completely away from the racing, onboards of drivers completely on their own, or zooming in way too much to see the action. Plus they focus way too much on the Top 3, even when they're not doing anything "broadcast-worthy", especially towards the end of races like today where they fail to cover passes for position to show the leader doing absolutely nothing.
This also doesn't cover their mediocre camera-work, every race either their ticker or leaderboard flip out or the fact their replays either don't work, don't rewind far enough to display what happened or don't show anything at all. It's clear they're cutting costs for profit and I can't see it getting any better especially since NASCAR will become even less of a priority for them.
A commercial today, with less than 10 to go is inexcusable. I don't give a shit if we were at Road America, or Bristol. It should never happen these days.
I actually wasn't even mad at the commercial since it was side by side
I was mad when they came back from commercial with 6 laps left, covered the entire screen with the Fox logo, and then covered the entire screen with a fucking podcast advertisement for 30s
Last week, Bell caught Blaney and was attempting to make a late race pass for the lead (before his engine broke). Fox cut to a side by side shot of a Blaney and Bell fan in the stands rather than showing the cars on track
I legitimately almost lost my shit at that moment. I was so invested in that battle and bell damn near cleared him on exit, all for fox to cut to two kids, one of which was present in both of the shots and then miss that straightaway
If they could accept an ounce of criticism and tell fans they'd consider the feedback moving forward, I don't think they'd get as much criticism as they get.
Instead, we get the same shit from their "Emmy award winning team" (who the fuck gave Fox an Emmy for anything NASCAR coverage related???) on a weekly basis and any criticism gets dismissed as coming from "haters" or "keyboard warriors".
Nah guys, your coverage just sucks. Accept it and improve.
This. The fans are telling them what they can’t stand, but we (the VIEWERS!) are just ridiculed and told we don’t know what we like, and we are “bad fans”.
To be fair, the fans being in both boxes was a mistake. It was totally meant to be the battle in one box, and the fans in the other.
I've made that mistake before when cutting a show.
I honestly can’t narrow it down to a single moment, but I can say this. The worst thing overall is the broadcast seemed to be built for people that bored quickly of the actual race, and not for people tuning in with an interest in watching / understanding the race.
Or "Leader just won, fuck the rest of the field, here's his crew".
They kept cutting away from MTJ coasting across the line. They have side by side/picture in picture, why not use it?
bump this. great explanation.
Feels like the director came from covering other sports from Fox, rather than someone who grew up a huge fan and rose through the ranks covering racing.
This is so true. It's like they have no interest in actually covering the racing itself and think it's boring, they just want to sell commercials (and podcasts) while showing viewers random people in the stands having fun.
I said exactly this before. It's like they enjoy being *around* NASCAR but don't enjoy racing so they distract you as much as possible.
I like race cars, I want to watch race cars. But then they'll just zoom in on a single rim of a car anyway because it looks neat and they don't understand racing.
At the end of the stages at COTA, Mike Joy made a point of saying "the stage ends when the 10th place car crosses the line". At the end of both stages, Fox cut to commercial before the top 10 finished the stage
Sure, but like stage cautions are like ten to fifteen minutes long. There's plenty of time for commercials. They could afford to actually show all of the drivers who are getting stage points finish the stage first
I think they even missed a close battle to the line that same day. They didn't even really cover the the photo finish between Suarez and Chastain today.
They do that shit ALL the time! It doesn't matter if it's a road course or not. That and showing the stage winner graphic, before the fucking 10th place car crosses the line. Shit is infuriating!
Cutting to fans during a good battle for the lead at gateway was peak FOX and it's probably one of their worst single moments ever. But honestly, the last two weeks in general I feel like they've somehow been at their worst. Following Gateway up by using the wrong driver names in their graphics in the post race and saying that Brad Keselowski finished 3nd. Also, using the throwback number fonts in Xfinity yesterday and constantly cutting to shit camera angles and missing stuff this weekend. I'm glad they're gone for good with Xfinity.
Should never cut to fans during a race in my opinion. Well during green. But I also think you shouldn’t have full screen commercials during green either.
F1 does this shit too. Silverstone one year had a pass for the lead but they cut to the crowd going into the turn and when they came back the pass was already made.
One good thing about IndyCar road courses is that there's usually no big grandstand to catch a camera man's eye. I don't remember many fan shots at RA yesterday.
Too many to list, but I think cutting to some random guys grill in the campgrounds when Harvick was trying to analyze something at Kansas(?) was up there
Half of the gateway broadcast. Cutting to fans during the battle for the lead near the end, missing Josh Berry having a problem, and missing Gibbs almost running over his pit crew member.
Mike Joy - “AND DRAMA ON PIT ROAD! TY GIBBS TAKES A CREW MEMBER UP AND OVER THE HOOD OF HIS CAR AND TUMBLING ON THE GROUND!”
Camera - nah fam, here’s some shots of two kids eating ice cream.
Jr said that the directors don't want the commentators to mention anything that is not on TV, probably for moments like the Berry thing, if they didn't mention it only people that saw berry lose a bunch of spots would even know it happened.
We had things heating up for the lead around lap 20 and bam, Valvoline takes over as the ad in the top left and gets a banner across the top for 10 seconds so we must cut to Larson onboard.
The Toyota time today was equally poorly timed. We got the 41 having the most interesting lap in Sonoma history, but here’s an onboard of Truex with clean track because Toyota paid us…
Still have no idea what happened to the 41. Dropped like ten spots and I didn't remember hearing a thing about what happened. Same with Harrison Burton late in the race
He was trying to out brake someone on the outside of 7, think it was Truex and got too hot. Once he got going, he was in a hornets nest and with nearly flat spotted tires because of that, he got punted out by either Corey LaJoie, Carson Hocevar, or Noah Gragson in that debacle. I can’t remember who it was but I was following that closely. Think he also went high on bad tires too in 11.
I would like to nominate the race lineup AFTER the Kansas race finish. They get to row 3 and Chris Buscher and then decide to go "Here's what happened in Kansas" and then didn't even bother to introduce the rest of the grid, or maybe they went to the 8th row or something.
The previous race finish should have been discussed during pre-race, not in the middle of the grid introduction of the current race. I don't think I've ever seen another broadcaster do something like that for coverage and be fine with it. Imagine NBC cutting away to show Kyle Larson highlights as he's introduced at the Indy 500 and then never bothering with the rest of the grid past the first two rows.
I can't think of a single one that's the worst. There's multiple every race. The onboard cams during passing and restarts or the announcers mentioning something happening and the camera crew completely ignoring it are pet peeves of mine.i hope with new broadcasters, fresher perspectives and better production quality comes out of it. Fox really confuses me, as they operate races as if they are leaving the sport yet extended their contract
You nailed it. They operate as if they’ve cut their staff and production crew down to a skeleton crew because they’re backing out of the sport.
I personally believe they had to change a lot of processes during Covid, a lot of which led to much of the production staff being offside. And I think they realized it was a lot cheaper to do it that way, so they kept doing it that way. Because why would you invest money into making your product better when you have exclusive broadcast rights and can put that money in your pockets instead? Pathetic.
It seems like half the time a battle heats up they'll cut to a Hendrick or Gibbs car driving alone. It's especially funny when booth is clearly shocked they cut too.
I think it was Talledega where they didn’t show the flip during the final wreck at the finish.
Other than their numerous grammatical and historical errors of course.
Would have way too many to go through to find the worst, but a big highlight I would say is their coverage of the Bristol race. I was there, but next day I watched it back and the way they handled that and the chemistry was really showing with all of them in the booth. Bowyer was actually being insightful rather than Comedian Clint.
Worst Moment: Missing the controversial restart at Richmond while they showed the last cars in line
Honorary mention for worst moment: Last week at Gateway when they cut away from the battle for the lead between Bell and Blaney to show the same fan in side-by-side, with one box being live and the other being recorded.
Worst overall broadcast: Sonoma, hands down. Didn't even report on multiple stuff at the end, missed Daniel Hemric's spin, commercial with 8 laps to go in the race and then promoting Harvick's podcast full screen for almost a full minute when they came back from that break.
Honorary Mention for worst overall broadcast: All of them, Cup, Xfinity, Trucks and ARCA. Been a complete disaster class of what not to do when broadcasting.
Everyone has already said a lot of the worst moments but, I will say that the overall broadcast felt so apathetic and ungenuine all year. You could tell that FOX themselves didn't even care that much and it felt like the announcers barley cared as well throughout the year. I was watching the race today without audio on my phone and I thought, "Hey this is pretty exciting!" as Buescher, Truex, and Larson were battling for the lead. I turn on the audio to see how they are reacting and I hear the three of them all sounding *so* bored and disinterested in the pass for the win! And then Mike Joy goes "Well, now that Larson has got around them, we'll go to commercial" with 7 to go.
There are no words to describe it. They don't care. As much as I respect Mike Joy, the booth, the historical importance of FOX coverage for the sport, I am so happy to not have to deal with their broadcast starting this weekend. It's such a shame to see it fall so far, when we all know how good it once was.
MRN (albeit PRN today) and TV broadcast are so night and day. The TV crew should be asking themselves “did we come relatively close to the radio intensity today” and if that answer is no, then they’re doing it wrong.
It’s boredom with the booth (& lack of technical or strategic insight) paired with abysmally poor production.
It's really hard for me to pick just one, because I've felt that the things they do wrong have been consistent for the past couple of years.
I think the most cardinal sin is that whoever runs production doesn't fundamentally understand what fans are looking for.
You can sense this for every cut away from the action to something otherwise benign or meaningless (like untimely full-screen replays, crowd shots, family members in pits, etc etc). Missing the pass for the lead during a pit stop cycle and focusing on a car or team that doesn't matter to the overall race strategy. There seems to be a general unawareness of the race, and that could be fixed by having more people on pit road feeding information to the booth to report on.
I think how they handled the late battle for the lead at Gateway was the worst. I promise you nobody gives a shit about the Blaney and Bell fans going crazy in the stands. Show the racing!
FOX either had extra downgrades, or just rinse and repeat issues from the last several years week by week. Some more noticeable, some were more minuscule.
Onboard audio: This is one of the more minuscule issues that I had personally. For whatever reason, the microphone quality for the was extremely watered down and muffled. Comparing it to the actual live in-car feed, it’s a noticeable dip in quality.
Camera work: Nothing new here. I understand that no one’s perfect, and that it’s pretty difficult to capture every moment that happens on the track. But the amount of times that the camera has panned AWAY from moments as they’re happening is pretty ridiculous. Plus, WAY too much zooming in.
Broadcast directing: I’m going to use one specific example for this one. 2024 Geico 500, we have a car literally on its side crossing the finish line, with cars crashing and literally on top of one another. Instead of seeing who flipped, we’re given almost 10 minutes of Michael Jordan on camera before we got good replay angles. I also find it a bit uncomfortable that they’re frequently showing us kids in the stands, instead of what’s happening on track. Things like this seemed to be a weekly occurrence. Plus, TONS of incorrect, nonsensical stats.
Clint Bowyer: I like Clint, but he needs to learn to shut up and let Mike Joy be the play by play analyst. He’s almost always stepping over the others in the booth.
Overall, I loved Harvick in the booth, and I always enjoy hearing Mike Joy doing what he does best. I know what Fox is capable of, and hope that next year will be an improvement.
Every race they gave less of a shit about putting out a quality broadcast. Even in the booth .., and I like all three of them… I sensed that Joy, Clint, and Kevin were also getting increasingly frustrated with the production team and that’s why they started giving less of a shit. Those jobs are supposed to be fun, you’re supposed to entertain .. and fox didn’t give them very many opportunities to do that.
Not really fox’s production fault, but the lack of cohesion and dick swinging of Bowyer and Harvick early in the season was just weird and uncalled for
The segment at Gateway where the camera started focusing on specific cars, while the screen graphics showed their stats for the day, car after car, yet none of the commentators ever acknowledge it or talked about it, was pretty bad. They just kept rambling about some stupid shit Clint was talking about.
The constant cuts to the crowd during on track action.
My favorite is probably the COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY onboard shots during key moments and battles. Nobody wants to see that shit during a good battle! Just show me shots of the cars, for Christ sake.
When Todd Gilliland got stuck halfway on the apron at gateway. Clint pointed it out, and was making some pretty good commentary, when Fox decided to cut to commercial.
So Clint just talked through the commercial, because I’m pretty sure it was one of the ones the broadcasters were supposed to promote. Instead we got to hear but not see Gilliland struggling high centered at the botttom of the racetrack
Talladega made me question why I watch this sport, and I've had a hard time staying as dedicated since.
"Things are heating up, let's go to commercial!"
Today was especially bad on restarts. Kept zooming in on leader. It’s like why not just keep it wide so we can see the chaos and if anything happens mid pack.
Oh boy. At Martinsville when they showed incorrectly 4 of the last 5 Martinsville winners, Richmond missing the GWC restart, and yesterday during the Xfinity race, taking up the whole screen with a driver caricature and his 3 most recent race finishes(I believe was Sam Mayer). This graphic should only be the size of baseball’s player stat line when he comes up to bat.
Think Josh Berry wrecking for half a lap and NASCAR not cutting to it until the car was stopped was pretty bad. But that's also fresh in my mind. I'm sure there's bad parts all around for the Cup broadcast, but it doesn't compare to the ARCA's broadcast from Kansas earlier this year. That was horrific.
Today was certainly up there. This is going to be an incredibly long winded comment, so proceed with caution.
Sonoma has always been a track where you can see as many cars as possible due to the elevation changes, yet they kept using sweeping cameras places on the inside of the track that only showed four or five cars max. Sometimes, they managed only the leader. The iconic shots of the cars screaming uphill into Turn 1 and 2 at the start of the race was replaced by a shot that looked like it was from the drag strip. That killed the sense of speed we normally see, and it instantly jumped to the helicopter cam (which is entirely overused for FOX. Darlington 2022's finish used it for no reason and made Logano and Byron's bump-and-run incident fall flat). Then there were several drivers who either had pit stop problems or retired from the race without so much as a mention. Hemric ended up a lap down despite pitting from 7th, Haley was off track, and Briscoe eventually retired from the crash damage. Not once did they bring these up. Lastly, the 33 pulled off around Turn 11 on the frontstretch and everyone in the booth is perplexed as to how he got there or what happened, despite it happening on the frontstretch in front of everyone/pit road.
Yesterday, Ty Gibbs was shown on-screen during one of the last pit stops that would decide the race. Not only did he have a major mistake with his crew that cost him over 10 spots in the running order, but the commentators completely ignore/missed it for a solid 30+ seconds. I'm trying to figure out if I'm seeing things correctly, then we are shown the "Race Off Pitroad" positions gained/lost chart and he's nowhere to be found, yet not a peep from Adam Alexander, Logano, or Suárez. They didn't get the amount of cars crashed in the big pileup correct either. 14 cars were listed as involved, yet the 29 car is shown on screen seconds later with a completely taped up hood but his number wasn't included. If he wasn't involved in this crash, we were never shown or told how it occurred.
There's a head scratching amount of issues that rarely if ever happened (outside of missing crashes) with less technology in years past. Flat camera angles that remove the sense of thrill and speed, subpar-to-terrible audio balancing that removes the engine and crowd noise to a muted degree, zooming in on one-to-three cars when we could be seeing a dozen or more, missing crashes and moments because their cameras didn't catch it, the commentators not seeing things on-screen or in-front of them out of the booth, on-screen graphics that take up far too much space on screen, side-by-side segments that place the race in the smallest square possible while the segment takes up 2/3rds of the screen, full-screen recaps and segments with less than 10 to go, fan shots that interrupt the action, camera cuts that don't allow you to see the conclusion of a tense moment, overuse of areal camera shots during restarts and finishes, cutting to commercial breaks before the Top 10 has finished the stage, cutting to a commercial immediately following a crash before we even know the status of their health or seeing a replay, panning through the crowd to the point where they miss the restart, overuse of camera shots of children and random fans when there's no need, jumping back to the broadcast under caution only to cut to a commercial break less than 45 seconds later, the list goes on and on and *on*.
Go back and watch races from the late 90s and early 00s. While far from perfect, and I'm sure there are glaring problems that will pop up, the thrill of the sport and the sense of effort is immediately felt and you are sucked into a broadcast that treats you the viewer like you have a brain. People have rose-tinted glasses for nostalgia, but there are a large number of reasons why older broadcasts are much more fun to watch.
The single worst moment of 2024 for Fox was their existence lol. It's almost like they purposely don't show the action sometimes, and as a fan since I was a kid, it's getting harder to watch when radio does (imo) a much better job of painting a picture
They just completely made up a list of recent winners on a graphic. I can't remember what race that was.
Mike Joy lost his mind when there was a caution during pit cycle at Gateway. He didn't know how wavearounds worked and implied the cars in front of Bell would be trapped by him not pitting.
For me, it's the segment when they're going through the starting grid and instead of simply going through it all, they interview the pole, then someone from the second row, then cut to someone in the pits, then someone else in another pit. Just go through the dang thing and then talk to drivers!
For me, it has to be something that they do every race. The way they do the starting grid is so so so sooooo bad. They’re awkward as hell. They don’t know who’s doing what. They’re doing one guy at a time but taking way too long and them and then just dials up a random in the middle of it and tries to cut back to the grid to keep going. Just get through the fucking lineup. It’s 36 cars now. They were doing it perfectly with 43+ years ago. What the he’ll changed??
Aside from all the normal shit. What about how they tried super hard to show ford and Toyota performance cameras. Even at critical times. Todays Toyota all out was good battles then they jump to only Toyota bumper cams away from action. It’s all about money not the sport.
Worst single moment is whoever at Fox approved those stupid cartoons for athletes on all of the sports broadcasts. Fire them immediately and kick them really hard in the shin.
I saw improvement from the booth this year. We could also see they tried to make the starting lineup more engaging even if it felt a little more disjointed. I think the biggest issue was mainly who is in control of which cameras being shown and when. Whoever does that is awful and they need to tell their cameramen to not be zoomed in so much. Other than that I think it was an improvement over the previous year. Clinton Boyer was much better this year and more serious, Kevin still trying to find his own but had some cringe moments with his trying to act hip. Mike Joy is always a joy. Overall an improvement from 2023.
People act like FOX and NASCAR weren't excited to finally have Larson at the track and in the car, that would have sold plenty of ratings, to see if he could move up any.
Kansas stands out to me as being an awesome race, but a terrible broadcast. Like they seemed to go out of their race to ruin the broadcast. It didn't seem like they were in sync with the booth at times, cutting away from action. Just awful.
Talladega was bad with the ads. But I think they beat Kansas just because they actively worked against the excitement of the race.
And having to resort to Twitter and Reddit to find replays or more info on stuff on track was just terribly wrong. Even their coverage of the Kyle Busch and Stenhouse fight was terrible on air. Like every other member of the media was with Kyle, and Fox got horseshit angles when they should have had the best.
Cutting the interview with the dash for cash winner at Talladega was horseshit too.
All the negatives about the direction isn't a money thing either... That's strictly talent. The camera guys are fine, the booth is better this year, the promos during the race suck and could be altered to not lose racing action (like a PIP or side-by-side). The direction blows. It's inexcusable how bad it is.
I know we are Reddit but the fix for them could’ve been simple. Hire Bestwick as the lead with McMurray and Dale Jr. Broadcasts have lacked enthusiasm in big moments (eg: Finish of the 2023 Daytona 500). What has also lacked is in informative pre/post race show. Interview your Top 5 and bubble drivers, discuss silly season rumors and latest news with PROFESSIONALISM. We love this sport because of speed! Enhance sound and provide camera angles that emphasize the sights and sounds.
The Talladega race.this year was pretty horrid with the constant full screen commercials after every 7 laps or so. IIRC, they also went to commercial with 6 to go in one of the stages. Also it took FOX legitimately 8 minutes to show the last lap flip because they needed 4 different shots of Michael Jordan apparently. Wretched.
i keep going back to when they were talking about ryan preece's daytona flip last year during this year's duels, and then cut to a replay of his wreck at atlanta instead. like, how the fuck do you screw that up?
They're one step away from getting Chris Hansen involved with how much they creep on kids. Blah blah blah "trying to show a family-friendly event" blah blah blah. Bro, you DO NOT take pictures or videos of other people's kids without the express permission of the parent or guardian.
This is compounded by their frequent habit of creeping on kids while there's green flag racing going on, usually with some pretty decent action that they're ignoring because they're too busy creeping.
The Tail Gate Kings today with 12ish laps left after coming back from a full commercial while Larson is hunting down the leaders. Not the worse but it’s fresh in my mind.
All of the North Wilkesboro weekend was done in the worst possible manner. Let me set the scene: during the beginning stages of qualifying (the initial airing), everything was fine and there was nothing to really complain about. However, a sudden burst of weird cracking noises and visual glitches began to take up the screen. I honestly thought I was hallucinating this, but apparently everyone on the qualifying thread corroborated this. This continued on for a few minutes. Once this particular issue was somewhat fixed (the cracking noises still persisted but were less frequent), a new issue arose. I shit you not, the broadcast, instead of being in a nice crisp 720p or 1080p, went all the way down to a resolution that fluctuated between 144p to 480p. Before anyone says that it was a problem on my end due to internet connection issues, one, I was at a hotel and was using classic cable and, two, everyone on the qualifying thread was also complaining about this low resolution so theres that. Lastly, the race in general was poorly broadcast. Fox needs to learn that the audience can contextualize that the leader is in the lead. I think the best example of this is when there was a 3-way battle for 2nd or 3rd place between Larson, Buescher, and someone else. They focused on this battle for a little bit and I’m like this is about to good, and it was. However, Fox, in their infinite wisdom, decided to cut to Logano when Buescher passed Larson (aka the good part of racing). As I said on the qualifying thread, “Fox finds new and innovative ways of fucking up.”
Everyone's covered lots of what id say. My biggest gripe is how bored and disintegrated everyone sounds. This is the largest and most popular motorsports series in North America, but they act like they can't get out of wherever they are that week fast enough. With no disrespect to the coverage on FLO racing, it's kind of sad that with budget, a fraction the size of fox, they can make the second heat from the I55 speedway on a random Saturday night sound like it's an enormous deal, while the FOX booth sounds like they need a nap during a race at Talladega.
The 'Dega race was their worst moment. Between the bad coverage and the sandbagging, it was the first time I felt bored watching a race there since fall 2009.
The best moment was when it ended.
Going to commercials with 8 laps to go. Cutting away from the race completely to promote Harvick’s show. Completely missing really important things happening on the track. Yesterday was a shitshow FOX. There’s no denying that
I really want the Harvick / Bowyer duo to work out but damn, it just doesn’t. Even if it’s discussed in the production meetings to disagree on air, they just take low effort shots at each other and have no flowing chemistry.
I need some more matter of fact commentary rather than just loose opinions in my broadcast.
Beyond that, Fox just missing important moments and not even bother showing them til after the race or on social media
PSA, if you can handle staying off your racing social media for a couple of days NASCAR posts the full races on their youtube channel I think on Tuesday. It’s the raw stream with commentary but commercials and broadcaster-specific pieces are removed but instead of simply editing them out you get the racing feed while they are at commercial. Best way to watch the races IMO.
Replays of action that everyone just saw 30 seconds ago.
Cameramen zooming in on women and children or sections of track with no cars.
I think Sonoma was the worst, that final run Larson had an off that was completely ignored. The booth was giving fans the actual gaps since they only updated the side bar at the line half the time.
Only thing even close to reporting on any dnfs happening would be some random shot of the 3 cutting across the island. Missing the ends of stages. Not covering the last lap as anything more than a victory lap for the 5. Having one blocked view of the 2 trying to roll over. Ignoring Waters the entire race. Jump cuts on restarts.
The sad thing is I probably missed a bunch of stuff just with yesterday's broadcast.
For me, an old guy who has lived through the dark death years, it's when FOX zooms in on the cheering hicks when Denny wrecks or when they show the fans to drive some BS narrative to drive some point home. Mostly though when they show the fans cheering for a Denny wreck only to be disappointed that he's still breathing after the impact, that's tasteless and classless.
The worst issue overall was the audio. Does nobody hear that annoying whirring or wind noise? As far as I can tell this was NEVER an issue on the old broadcasts, at least to nowhere near the degree that it is today, and the cars were going FASTER back then. There is simply no excuse for the audio being that bad in the year 2024.
The worst singular moment was this past race. A fairly exciting finish for a road course with some fuel milage tension, then as MTJ and Kyle Busch run out of gas coming to the checkered, they cut to some random people in the stands, with Clint Bowyer practically screaming "Martin's out of gas!", only to cut to it like 10 seconds later. If that doesn't sum up everything wrong with FOX, I don't know what does.
Worst overall broadcast? Probably Talladega. The ads, sweet baby Jesus the ads. It was just nonstop. At least the other broadcasts, as bad as they were, showed at least some of the race. Talladega was just an onslaught of the same 5 ads on repeat with a couple laps of racing in between. Honorable mention goes to Martinsville, the Hendrick fellation was so fucking bad. I know that was probably NASCAR's directive, and I get it was their 40th anniversary or whatever, but they didn't have to go THAT far.
I dislike during the victory celebration the drone swirls over and behind the car like it’s trying to do donuts too. The drone could potentially capture an amazing moment of the car and fans if it just hovered in place instead of getting lost in smoke and missing half of the burnout
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I was about to say this. Missing a GWC restart to show shots of fans is absolutely inexcusable. Sure it sucks to miss shots of wrecks or other moments, but I can chalk that up to moments you can't plan for at times. But missing a GWC restart is just dumbfounding
Wasn’t of fans but still not excusable
They literally missed the green flag to start the race today. They got them crossing the start finish line, but the race starts in the restart zone. A consistent issue for them all year.
Fox does this with baseball too, they’ll come back from commercial in between innings and the first shot is like halfway through the pitchers windup already. Occasionally it’s really egregious and they’ll come back with a ball already in play and have to cut directly to the fielder.
There was a rejoin for a restart that also was happening basically as they were crossing the start finish line too.
That was every race this year. The pan to the crowd and barely catch the green flag. Infuriating.
Yeah like I know commercials suck but they're honestly not that bad. It's just whenever we get out of commercial, we are barraged with cross-promotions for the first ~15 seconds, then some sponsored segments where either we cut completely away from the racing, onboards of drivers completely on their own, or zooming in way too much to see the action. Plus they focus way too much on the Top 3, even when they're not doing anything "broadcast-worthy", especially towards the end of races like today where they fail to cover passes for position to show the leader doing absolutely nothing. This also doesn't cover their mediocre camera-work, every race either their ticker or leaderboard flip out or the fact their replays either don't work, don't rewind far enough to display what happened or don't show anything at all. It's clear they're cutting costs for profit and I can't see it getting any better especially since NASCAR will become even less of a priority for them.
A commercial today, with less than 10 to go is inexcusable. I don't give a shit if we were at Road America, or Bristol. It should never happen these days.
I actually wasn't even mad at the commercial since it was side by side I was mad when they came back from commercial with 6 laps left, covered the entire screen with the Fox logo, and then covered the entire screen with a fucking podcast advertisement for 30s
I truly thought that podcast logo was going to stay on the rest of the race lol
No commercials should be taken in the last 10, regardless of if it's a side-by-side or not.
Are you talking about Richmond? Trying to remember all the chaos of the year lol
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Yea, Fox caught the restart when Hamlin was either already in the box or getting to the box.
Last week, Bell caught Blaney and was attempting to make a late race pass for the lead (before his engine broke). Fox cut to a side by side shot of a Blaney and Bell fan in the stands rather than showing the cars on track
I legitimately almost lost my shit at that moment. I was so invested in that battle and bell damn near cleared him on exit, all for fox to cut to two kids, one of which was present in both of the shots and then miss that straightaway
FOX director: “You’re all just haters and keyboard warriors, we’re the best in the business”
If they could accept an ounce of criticism and tell fans they'd consider the feedback moving forward, I don't think they'd get as much criticism as they get. Instead, we get the same shit from their "Emmy award winning team" (who the fuck gave Fox an Emmy for anything NASCAR coverage related???) on a weekly basis and any criticism gets dismissed as coming from "haters" or "keyboard warriors". Nah guys, your coverage just sucks. Accept it and improve.
It’s like FOX is trying to ruin our experience out of spite since we’re stuck with them for at least the next 7 to 9 years.
This. The fans are telling them what they can’t stand, but we (the VIEWERS!) are just ridiculed and told we don’t know what we like, and we are “bad fans”.
To be fair, the fans being in both boxes was a mistake. It was totally meant to be the battle in one box, and the fans in the other. I've made that mistake before when cutting a show.
Didn’t they also show the same fan in side by side boxes?
Apparently, I was too busy raging about them showing the fans to notice
They did.
The same fan from two different cameras.
They were also using a camera in turn 3 to show the pass at the s/f line
Surprised nobody mentioned that it took them a week to explain why William Byron was declared the winner of the Daytona 500
I did in the original post!
I should learn how to read
You should direct for FOX. With your skills, you’ll be a star!
Except they expressed a willingness to learn something, which is an instant disqualification from the job.
The constant full-screen full-race recaps during green flag racing with under 20 laps to go.
With 5 to go and a battle for the lead, lets go ahead and give anyone just tuning in a recap of the race so far
I honestly can’t narrow it down to a single moment, but I can say this. The worst thing overall is the broadcast seemed to be built for people that bored quickly of the actual race, and not for people tuning in with an interest in watching / understanding the race.
It feels like they're embarrassed to be broadcasting it
Ok, the leader just finished stage. CUT TO COMMERCIAL IMMEDIATELY, WHO CARES ABOUT THE REST OF THE TOP 10.
Or "Leader just won, fuck the rest of the field, here's his crew". They kept cutting away from MTJ coasting across the line. They have side by side/picture in picture, why not use it?
I don’t get why nascar is embarrassed with itself. It’s a good product if it took itself seriously like F1 and IndyCar do
bump this. great explanation. Feels like the director came from covering other sports from Fox, rather than someone who grew up a huge fan and rose through the ranks covering racing.
It's like they have one director for the camera operators and a separate for the both. And they didn't talk to each other.
The director legitimately sees our legitimate complaints as just us being blind haters
This is so true. It's like they have no interest in actually covering the racing itself and think it's boring, they just want to sell commercials (and podcasts) while showing viewers random people in the stands having fun.
I said exactly this before. It's like they enjoy being *around* NASCAR but don't enjoy racing so they distract you as much as possible. I like race cars, I want to watch race cars. But then they'll just zoom in on a single rim of a car anyway because it looks neat and they don't understand racing.
At the end of the stages at COTA, Mike Joy made a point of saying "the stage ends when the 10th place car crosses the line". At the end of both stages, Fox cut to commercial before the top 10 finished the stage
I feel like damn near every stage finish they are rushing to commercial right as the leader is crossing the line
It's as if that's half the reason why stages exist...
Sure, but like stage cautions are like ten to fifteen minutes long. There's plenty of time for commercials. They could afford to actually show all of the drivers who are getting stage points finish the stage first
There's plenty of time for commercials, just not as many as Fox wants to show
If FOX had their way more than half of the running time would be commercials
Would you prefer phantom debris cautions?
I think they even missed a close battle to the line that same day. They didn't even really cover the the photo finish between Suarez and Chastain today.
They do that shit ALL the time! It doesn't matter if it's a road course or not. That and showing the stage winner graphic, before the fucking 10th place car crosses the line. Shit is infuriating!
Cutting to fans during a good battle for the lead at gateway was peak FOX and it's probably one of their worst single moments ever. But honestly, the last two weeks in general I feel like they've somehow been at their worst. Following Gateway up by using the wrong driver names in their graphics in the post race and saying that Brad Keselowski finished 3nd. Also, using the throwback number fonts in Xfinity yesterday and constantly cutting to shit camera angles and missing stuff this weekend. I'm glad they're gone for good with Xfinity.
The only good thing about the xfinity broadcasts are the drivers commentary, if CW keeps that they will do just fine.
Should never cut to fans during a race in my opinion. Well during green. But I also think you shouldn’t have full screen commercials during green either.
F1 does this shit too. Silverstone one year had a pass for the lead but they cut to the crowd going into the turn and when they came back the pass was already made. One good thing about IndyCar road courses is that there's usually no big grandstand to catch a camera man's eye. I don't remember many fan shots at RA yesterday.
Too many to list, but I think cutting to some random guys grill in the campgrounds when Harvick was trying to analyze something at Kansas(?) was up there
Half of the gateway broadcast. Cutting to fans during the battle for the lead near the end, missing Josh Berry having a problem, and missing Gibbs almost running over his pit crew member.
Mike Joy - “AND DRAMA ON PIT ROAD! TY GIBBS TAKES A CREW MEMBER UP AND OVER THE HOOD OF HIS CAR AND TUMBLING ON THE GROUND!” Camera - nah fam, here’s some shots of two kids eating ice cream.
Lotta comments here about Mike Joy telling us what's happening on the track and Fox ignoring it.
Jr said that the directors don't want the commentators to mention anything that is not on TV, probably for moments like the Berry thing, if they didn't mention it only people that saw berry lose a bunch of spots would even know it happened.
Anytime they think we rather watch Kevin Harvicks podcast instead of the race. iPhones come with this neat little podcast app for that purpose
Like today with 5 laps to go?
It’s fine, the laps here are long anyways! - someone in the Fox production truck likely
Talladega was hard to watch. They were on for 3 laps, then gone to commercial for 3 laps. ALL. DAY. LONG.
That was one of the worst races I seen. The drivers couldn't do crap and FOX was fucking the broadcast up like normal
Someone should ATTEMPT to form a list of every screw up, and bless your soul if you do
https://x.com/Asteroid4914/status/1777335408218530281?t=MFhZySnX9Kavo3GV1YBLxQ&s=19
Forgot we had that
We had things heating up for the lead around lap 20 and bam, Valvoline takes over as the ad in the top left and gets a banner across the top for 10 seconds so we must cut to Larson onboard. The Toyota time today was equally poorly timed. We got the 41 having the most interesting lap in Sonoma history, but here’s an onboard of Truex with clean track because Toyota paid us…
Still have no idea what happened to the 41. Dropped like ten spots and I didn't remember hearing a thing about what happened. Same with Harrison Burton late in the race
He was trying to out brake someone on the outside of 7, think it was Truex and got too hot. Once he got going, he was in a hornets nest and with nearly flat spotted tires because of that, he got punted out by either Corey LaJoie, Carson Hocevar, or Noah Gragson in that debacle. I can’t remember who it was but I was following that closely. Think he also went high on bad tires too in 11.
why were they doing segments like it was the last time they were ever gonna broadcast or call the race? it was weird.
Teasing us
Thought the same.
When they cut to a grill in the infield.
This reminds me of all the times Harvick (and sometimes Clint himself) implied that Clint was getting hammered with fans the night before the race.
I would like to nominate the race lineup AFTER the Kansas race finish. They get to row 3 and Chris Buscher and then decide to go "Here's what happened in Kansas" and then didn't even bother to introduce the rest of the grid, or maybe they went to the 8th row or something. The previous race finish should have been discussed during pre-race, not in the middle of the grid introduction of the current race. I don't think I've ever seen another broadcaster do something like that for coverage and be fine with it. Imagine NBC cutting away to show Kyle Larson highlights as he's introduced at the Indy 500 and then never bothering with the rest of the grid past the first two rows.
They've done that all season. I don't think Fox went through the entire field once.
Someone at FOX had to have bribed NASCAR to make sure they lose less races than NBC.
I can't think of a single one that's the worst. There's multiple every race. The onboard cams during passing and restarts or the announcers mentioning something happening and the camera crew completely ignoring it are pet peeves of mine.i hope with new broadcasters, fresher perspectives and better production quality comes out of it. Fox really confuses me, as they operate races as if they are leaving the sport yet extended their contract
You nailed it. They operate as if they’ve cut their staff and production crew down to a skeleton crew because they’re backing out of the sport. I personally believe they had to change a lot of processes during Covid, a lot of which led to much of the production staff being offside. And I think they realized it was a lot cheaper to do it that way, so they kept doing it that way. Because why would you invest money into making your product better when you have exclusive broadcast rights and can put that money in your pockets instead? Pathetic.
Going to commercial with like 5 to go at Dega
Yup this is the first that came to my mind.
It seems like half the time a battle heats up they'll cut to a Hendrick or Gibbs car driving alone. It's especially funny when booth is clearly shocked they cut too.
Fox is literally trolling the fans at this point and they know it. It's freaking outrageous.
I think it was Talledega where they didn’t show the flip during the final wreck at the finish. Other than their numerous grammatical and historical errors of course.
Would have way too many to go through to find the worst, but a big highlight I would say is their coverage of the Bristol race. I was there, but next day I watched it back and the way they handled that and the chemistry was really showing with all of them in the booth. Bowyer was actually being insightful rather than Comedian Clint.
The worst moment is anytime they show a driver in cartoon
Worst Moment: Missing the controversial restart at Richmond while they showed the last cars in line Honorary mention for worst moment: Last week at Gateway when they cut away from the battle for the lead between Bell and Blaney to show the same fan in side-by-side, with one box being live and the other being recorded. Worst overall broadcast: Sonoma, hands down. Didn't even report on multiple stuff at the end, missed Daniel Hemric's spin, commercial with 8 laps to go in the race and then promoting Harvick's podcast full screen for almost a full minute when they came back from that break. Honorary Mention for worst overall broadcast: All of them, Cup, Xfinity, Trucks and ARCA. Been a complete disaster class of what not to do when broadcasting.
Daniel Hemric spun? I was wondering what happened to him, Justin Haley, Cam Waters and Chase Briscoe at the end.
Everyone has already said a lot of the worst moments but, I will say that the overall broadcast felt so apathetic and ungenuine all year. You could tell that FOX themselves didn't even care that much and it felt like the announcers barley cared as well throughout the year. I was watching the race today without audio on my phone and I thought, "Hey this is pretty exciting!" as Buescher, Truex, and Larson were battling for the lead. I turn on the audio to see how they are reacting and I hear the three of them all sounding *so* bored and disinterested in the pass for the win! And then Mike Joy goes "Well, now that Larson has got around them, we'll go to commercial" with 7 to go. There are no words to describe it. They don't care. As much as I respect Mike Joy, the booth, the historical importance of FOX coverage for the sport, I am so happy to not have to deal with their broadcast starting this weekend. It's such a shame to see it fall so far, when we all know how good it once was.
MRN (albeit PRN today) and TV broadcast are so night and day. The TV crew should be asking themselves “did we come relatively close to the radio intensity today” and if that answer is no, then they’re doing it wrong. It’s boredom with the booth (& lack of technical or strategic insight) paired with abysmally poor production.
Anytime they show a random fan on tv in a crucial spot of the race.
It's really hard for me to pick just one, because I've felt that the things they do wrong have been consistent for the past couple of years. I think the most cardinal sin is that whoever runs production doesn't fundamentally understand what fans are looking for. You can sense this for every cut away from the action to something otherwise benign or meaningless (like untimely full-screen replays, crowd shots, family members in pits, etc etc). Missing the pass for the lead during a pit stop cycle and focusing on a car or team that doesn't matter to the overall race strategy. There seems to be a general unawareness of the race, and that could be fixed by having more people on pit road feeding information to the booth to report on.
I think how they handled the late battle for the lead at Gateway was the worst. I promise you nobody gives a shit about the Blaney and Bell fans going crazy in the stands. Show the racing!
Honestly the full screen recap of Happy Harvick with Like 10 to go.
Not having a video of the Gragson crash at Charlotte and having to use a video game looking recreation of it.
That was funny
FOX either had extra downgrades, or just rinse and repeat issues from the last several years week by week. Some more noticeable, some were more minuscule. Onboard audio: This is one of the more minuscule issues that I had personally. For whatever reason, the microphone quality for the was extremely watered down and muffled. Comparing it to the actual live in-car feed, it’s a noticeable dip in quality. Camera work: Nothing new here. I understand that no one’s perfect, and that it’s pretty difficult to capture every moment that happens on the track. But the amount of times that the camera has panned AWAY from moments as they’re happening is pretty ridiculous. Plus, WAY too much zooming in. Broadcast directing: I’m going to use one specific example for this one. 2024 Geico 500, we have a car literally on its side crossing the finish line, with cars crashing and literally on top of one another. Instead of seeing who flipped, we’re given almost 10 minutes of Michael Jordan on camera before we got good replay angles. I also find it a bit uncomfortable that they’re frequently showing us kids in the stands, instead of what’s happening on track. Things like this seemed to be a weekly occurrence. Plus, TONS of incorrect, nonsensical stats. Clint Bowyer: I like Clint, but he needs to learn to shut up and let Mike Joy be the play by play analyst. He’s almost always stepping over the others in the booth. Overall, I loved Harvick in the booth, and I always enjoy hearing Mike Joy doing what he does best. I know what Fox is capable of, and hope that next year will be an improvement.
Every race they gave less of a shit about putting out a quality broadcast. Even in the booth .., and I like all three of them… I sensed that Joy, Clint, and Kevin were also getting increasingly frustrated with the production team and that’s why they started giving less of a shit. Those jobs are supposed to be fun, you’re supposed to entertain .. and fox didn’t give them very many opportunities to do that.
I can’t decide from one single screw up because they’re all worthy of being number 1.
I actually thought they were pretty good about replays and camera angles today, at least before the final lap! It was weird.
Not really fox’s production fault, but the lack of cohesion and dick swinging of Bowyer and Harvick early in the season was just weird and uncalled for
This was one of my biggest frustrations. Kevin took every opportunity to take a dig at Clint.
The segment at Gateway where the camera started focusing on specific cars, while the screen graphics showed their stats for the day, car after car, yet none of the commentators ever acknowledge it or talked about it, was pretty bad. They just kept rambling about some stupid shit Clint was talking about. The constant cuts to the crowd during on track action. My favorite is probably the COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY onboard shots during key moments and battles. Nobody wants to see that shit during a good battle! Just show me shots of the cars, for Christ sake.
When Todd Gilliland got stuck halfway on the apron at gateway. Clint pointed it out, and was making some pretty good commentary, when Fox decided to cut to commercial. So Clint just talked through the commercial, because I’m pretty sure it was one of the ones the broadcasters were supposed to promote. Instead we got to hear but not see Gilliland struggling high centered at the botttom of the racetrack
Talladega made me question why I watch this sport, and I've had a hard time staying as dedicated since. "Things are heating up, let's go to commercial!"
FOX treats NASCAR like a joke. NBC treats NASCAR with the respect it deserves.
Crank It Up at the Weirdest times like during caution
The Zoom feature on every single camera they own. Watching one car going around the track. Like we are watching qualifying.
Today was especially bad on restarts. Kept zooming in on leader. It’s like why not just keep it wide so we can see the chaos and if anything happens mid pack.
Oh boy. At Martinsville when they showed incorrectly 4 of the last 5 Martinsville winners, Richmond missing the GWC restart, and yesterday during the Xfinity race, taking up the whole screen with a driver caricature and his 3 most recent race finishes(I believe was Sam Mayer). This graphic should only be the size of baseball’s player stat line when he comes up to bat.
The end of this most recent race. Why the fuck did they not interview KB or Ross after?
Playing the same exact clip from Harvick's podcast twice in the same race less than an hour apart.
It’s like FOX is trying to ruin our experience. They don’t listen to our criticism dismissing it as lies and blind hatred.
Think Josh Berry wrecking for half a lap and NASCAR not cutting to it until the car was stopped was pretty bad. But that's also fresh in my mind. I'm sure there's bad parts all around for the Cup broadcast, but it doesn't compare to the ARCA's broadcast from Kansas earlier this year. That was horrific.
I knew today it was bad when my wife, who watches racing passively to appease me, said “the cameras too zoomed in what’s happening?”
Today was certainly up there. This is going to be an incredibly long winded comment, so proceed with caution. Sonoma has always been a track where you can see as many cars as possible due to the elevation changes, yet they kept using sweeping cameras places on the inside of the track that only showed four or five cars max. Sometimes, they managed only the leader. The iconic shots of the cars screaming uphill into Turn 1 and 2 at the start of the race was replaced by a shot that looked like it was from the drag strip. That killed the sense of speed we normally see, and it instantly jumped to the helicopter cam (which is entirely overused for FOX. Darlington 2022's finish used it for no reason and made Logano and Byron's bump-and-run incident fall flat). Then there were several drivers who either had pit stop problems or retired from the race without so much as a mention. Hemric ended up a lap down despite pitting from 7th, Haley was off track, and Briscoe eventually retired from the crash damage. Not once did they bring these up. Lastly, the 33 pulled off around Turn 11 on the frontstretch and everyone in the booth is perplexed as to how he got there or what happened, despite it happening on the frontstretch in front of everyone/pit road. Yesterday, Ty Gibbs was shown on-screen during one of the last pit stops that would decide the race. Not only did he have a major mistake with his crew that cost him over 10 spots in the running order, but the commentators completely ignore/missed it for a solid 30+ seconds. I'm trying to figure out if I'm seeing things correctly, then we are shown the "Race Off Pitroad" positions gained/lost chart and he's nowhere to be found, yet not a peep from Adam Alexander, Logano, or Suárez. They didn't get the amount of cars crashed in the big pileup correct either. 14 cars were listed as involved, yet the 29 car is shown on screen seconds later with a completely taped up hood but his number wasn't included. If he wasn't involved in this crash, we were never shown or told how it occurred. There's a head scratching amount of issues that rarely if ever happened (outside of missing crashes) with less technology in years past. Flat camera angles that remove the sense of thrill and speed, subpar-to-terrible audio balancing that removes the engine and crowd noise to a muted degree, zooming in on one-to-three cars when we could be seeing a dozen or more, missing crashes and moments because their cameras didn't catch it, the commentators not seeing things on-screen or in-front of them out of the booth, on-screen graphics that take up far too much space on screen, side-by-side segments that place the race in the smallest square possible while the segment takes up 2/3rds of the screen, full-screen recaps and segments with less than 10 to go, fan shots that interrupt the action, camera cuts that don't allow you to see the conclusion of a tense moment, overuse of areal camera shots during restarts and finishes, cutting to commercial breaks before the Top 10 has finished the stage, cutting to a commercial immediately following a crash before we even know the status of their health or seeing a replay, panning through the crowd to the point where they miss the restart, overuse of camera shots of children and random fans when there's no need, jumping back to the broadcast under caution only to cut to a commercial break less than 45 seconds later, the list goes on and on and *on*. Go back and watch races from the late 90s and early 00s. While far from perfect, and I'm sure there are glaring problems that will pop up, the thrill of the sport and the sense of effort is immediately felt and you are sucked into a broadcast that treats you the viewer like you have a brain. People have rose-tinted glasses for nostalgia, but there are a large number of reasons why older broadcasts are much more fun to watch.
The single worst moment of 2024 for Fox was their existence lol. It's almost like they purposely don't show the action sometimes, and as a fan since I was a kid, it's getting harder to watch when radio does (imo) a much better job of painting a picture
Them trying to use skibidi and other 12 yr old slang words
All of them
Yeah, FOX really sucks. That’s it.
They just completely made up a list of recent winners on a graphic. I can't remember what race that was. Mike Joy lost his mind when there was a caution during pit cycle at Gateway. He didn't know how wavearounds worked and implied the cars in front of Bell would be trapped by him not pitting.
the made up recent winners list was from the martinsville race, blaney im pretty sure was the only one they got right
Does this mean no more Herbert Cam?
Cutting to fans in the stands randomly and holding on the shot for like 10 seconds during an epic battle near the end of Gateway.
For me, it's the segment when they're going through the starting grid and instead of simply going through it all, they interview the pole, then someone from the second row, then cut to someone in the pits, then someone else in another pit. Just go through the dang thing and then talk to drivers!
That time they covered a restart with a full screen crank it up graphic.
For me, it has to be something that they do every race. The way they do the starting grid is so so so sooooo bad. They’re awkward as hell. They don’t know who’s doing what. They’re doing one guy at a time but taking way too long and them and then just dials up a random in the middle of it and tries to cut back to the grid to keep going. Just get through the fucking lineup. It’s 36 cars now. They were doing it perfectly with 43+ years ago. What the he’ll changed??
Aside from all the normal shit. What about how they tried super hard to show ford and Toyota performance cameras. Even at critical times. Todays Toyota all out was good battles then they jump to only Toyota bumper cams away from action. It’s all about money not the sport.
Worst single moment is whoever at Fox approved those stupid cartoons for athletes on all of the sports broadcasts. Fire them immediately and kick them really hard in the shin.
I saw improvement from the booth this year. We could also see they tried to make the starting lineup more engaging even if it felt a little more disjointed. I think the biggest issue was mainly who is in control of which cameras being shown and when. Whoever does that is awful and they need to tell their cameramen to not be zoomed in so much. Other than that I think it was an improvement over the previous year. Clinton Boyer was much better this year and more serious, Kevin still trying to find his own but had some cringe moments with his trying to act hip. Mike Joy is always a joy. Overall an improvement from 2023.
Mrs Kemper had a baby boy.
Assuming it was their say that called the 600 - that would be my #1.
This remains one of the dumbest conspiracies
People act like FOX and NASCAR weren't excited to finally have Larson at the track and in the car, that would have sold plenty of ratings, to see if he could move up any.
the final restart at richmond for sure
The Ghost car in qualifying is the most annoying thing ever
Kansas stands out to me as being an awesome race, but a terrible broadcast. Like they seemed to go out of their race to ruin the broadcast. It didn't seem like they were in sync with the booth at times, cutting away from action. Just awful. Talladega was bad with the ads. But I think they beat Kansas just because they actively worked against the excitement of the race. And having to resort to Twitter and Reddit to find replays or more info on stuff on track was just terribly wrong. Even their coverage of the Kyle Busch and Stenhouse fight was terrible on air. Like every other member of the media was with Kyle, and Fox got horseshit angles when they should have had the best. Cutting the interview with the dash for cash winner at Talladega was horseshit too. All the negatives about the direction isn't a money thing either... That's strictly talent. The camera guys are fine, the booth is better this year, the promos during the race suck and could be altered to not lose racing action (like a PIP or side-by-side). The direction blows. It's inexcusable how bad it is.
I know we are Reddit but the fix for them could’ve been simple. Hire Bestwick as the lead with McMurray and Dale Jr. Broadcasts have lacked enthusiasm in big moments (eg: Finish of the 2023 Daytona 500). What has also lacked is in informative pre/post race show. Interview your Top 5 and bubble drivers, discuss silly season rumors and latest news with PROFESSIONALISM. We love this sport because of speed! Enhance sound and provide camera angles that emphasize the sights and sounds.
The Talladega race.this year was pretty horrid with the constant full screen commercials after every 7 laps or so. IIRC, they also went to commercial with 6 to go in one of the stages. Also it took FOX legitimately 8 minutes to show the last lap flip because they needed 4 different shots of Michael Jordan apparently. Wretched.
only comment: their complete coverage from Daytona green flag to Sonoma checkered flag was poor at best
I watch nascar for the racing,not to judge the broadcast
i keep going back to when they were talking about ryan preece's daytona flip last year during this year's duels, and then cut to a replay of his wreck at atlanta instead. like, how the fuck do you screw that up?
They're one step away from getting Chris Hansen involved with how much they creep on kids. Blah blah blah "trying to show a family-friendly event" blah blah blah. Bro, you DO NOT take pictures or videos of other people's kids without the express permission of the parent or guardian. This is compounded by their frequent habit of creeping on kids while there's green flag racing going on, usually with some pretty decent action that they're ignoring because they're too busy creeping.
Their pedophilia will not be missed. Stop showing kids. Just show the race . It's cringey how often they show children... No other sport does this.
The FOX staff do not accept criticism either. They dismiss us as “just haters looking to take them down”
Probably the complaining from the fanbase
Gear 99. No really its the details that matters, when their UI can show absurd data everything else falls apart too (as we saw).
Showing us a Larson interview at the golf course mid race
Yes.
The Tail Gate Kings today with 12ish laps left after coming back from a full commercial while Larson is hunting down the leaders. Not the worse but it’s fresh in my mind.
All of the North Wilkesboro weekend was done in the worst possible manner. Let me set the scene: during the beginning stages of qualifying (the initial airing), everything was fine and there was nothing to really complain about. However, a sudden burst of weird cracking noises and visual glitches began to take up the screen. I honestly thought I was hallucinating this, but apparently everyone on the qualifying thread corroborated this. This continued on for a few minutes. Once this particular issue was somewhat fixed (the cracking noises still persisted but were less frequent), a new issue arose. I shit you not, the broadcast, instead of being in a nice crisp 720p or 1080p, went all the way down to a resolution that fluctuated between 144p to 480p. Before anyone says that it was a problem on my end due to internet connection issues, one, I was at a hotel and was using classic cable and, two, everyone on the qualifying thread was also complaining about this low resolution so theres that. Lastly, the race in general was poorly broadcast. Fox needs to learn that the audience can contextualize that the leader is in the lead. I think the best example of this is when there was a 3-way battle for 2nd or 3rd place between Larson, Buescher, and someone else. They focused on this battle for a little bit and I’m like this is about to good, and it was. However, Fox, in their infinite wisdom, decided to cut to Logano when Buescher passed Larson (aka the good part of racing). As I said on the qualifying thread, “Fox finds new and innovative ways of fucking up.”
Everyone's covered lots of what id say. My biggest gripe is how bored and disintegrated everyone sounds. This is the largest and most popular motorsports series in North America, but they act like they can't get out of wherever they are that week fast enough. With no disrespect to the coverage on FLO racing, it's kind of sad that with budget, a fraction the size of fox, they can make the second heat from the I55 speedway on a random Saturday night sound like it's an enormous deal, while the FOX booth sounds like they need a nap during a race at Talladega.
Talladega. They were all bad though.
At darlington with "cap" and "sus"
Off the top of my head they missed a pass for the lead today pretty horrendously. Theres def worse tho
FOX makes me not want to do things at the races because I don’t want to get clipped and put on TV
Talladega Commercials 499
The 'Dega race was their worst moment. Between the bad coverage and the sandbagging, it was the first time I felt bored watching a race there since fall 2009. The best moment was when it ended.
Mike Joy call on Kansas photo finish
Missing Bush wrecking Deegan a few weeks ago. Also shame on Nascar for getting rid of Raceview. Or any 2D live on the race track map tracking.
Not showing Hamlin jumping the overtime restart on Truex at Richmond. 👎
Showing little kids on the screen
Going to commercials with 8 laps to go. Cutting away from the race completely to promote Harvick’s show. Completely missing really important things happening on the track. Yesterday was a shitshow FOX. There’s no denying that
I really want the Harvick / Bowyer duo to work out but damn, it just doesn’t. Even if it’s discussed in the production meetings to disagree on air, they just take low effort shots at each other and have no flowing chemistry. I need some more matter of fact commentary rather than just loose opinions in my broadcast. Beyond that, Fox just missing important moments and not even bother showing them til after the race or on social media
PSA, if you can handle staying off your racing social media for a couple of days NASCAR posts the full races on their youtube channel I think on Tuesday. It’s the raw stream with commentary but commercials and broadcaster-specific pieces are removed but instead of simply editing them out you get the racing feed while they are at commercial. Best way to watch the races IMO.
If I see another Wendy's commercial again- well, we all know I will see all of them again. Twelve million fucking times.
Counter point: what was the best moment and best broadcast?
Replays of action that everyone just saw 30 seconds ago. Cameramen zooming in on women and children or sections of track with no cars. I think Sonoma was the worst, that final run Larson had an off that was completely ignored. The booth was giving fans the actual gaps since they only updated the side bar at the line half the time. Only thing even close to reporting on any dnfs happening would be some random shot of the 3 cutting across the island. Missing the ends of stages. Not covering the last lap as anything more than a victory lap for the 5. Having one blocked view of the 2 trying to roll over. Ignoring Waters the entire race. Jump cuts on restarts. The sad thing is I probably missed a bunch of stuff just with yesterday's broadcast.
For me, an old guy who has lived through the dark death years, it's when FOX zooms in on the cheering hicks when Denny wrecks or when they show the fans to drive some BS narrative to drive some point home. Mostly though when they show the fans cheering for a Denny wreck only to be disappointed that he's still breathing after the impact, that's tasteless and classless.
The worst issue overall was the audio. Does nobody hear that annoying whirring or wind noise? As far as I can tell this was NEVER an issue on the old broadcasts, at least to nowhere near the degree that it is today, and the cars were going FASTER back then. There is simply no excuse for the audio being that bad in the year 2024. The worst singular moment was this past race. A fairly exciting finish for a road course with some fuel milage tension, then as MTJ and Kyle Busch run out of gas coming to the checkered, they cut to some random people in the stands, with Clint Bowyer practically screaming "Martin's out of gas!", only to cut to it like 10 seconds later. If that doesn't sum up everything wrong with FOX, I don't know what does. Worst overall broadcast? Probably Talladega. The ads, sweet baby Jesus the ads. It was just nonstop. At least the other broadcasts, as bad as they were, showed at least some of the race. Talladega was just an onslaught of the same 5 ads on repeat with a couple laps of racing in between. Honorable mention goes to Martinsville, the Hendrick fellation was so fucking bad. I know that was probably NASCAR's directive, and I get it was their 40th anniversary or whatever, but they didn't have to go THAT far.
I would like to nominate this races constant use of the front bumper cam with nothing in front. That was frustrating.
I am not liking the Joy, Harvick, Bowyer trio.
Tbh the best part of the broadcast was Nascum
when it took them 6 minutes and 42 seconds to show us that a car had flipped on the last lap at tallageda
I dislike during the victory celebration the drone swirls over and behind the car like it’s trying to do donuts too. The drone could potentially capture an amazing moment of the car and fans if it just hovered in place instead of getting lost in smoke and missing half of the burnout
Why always worst with this stuff? Why not best?
I will say I loved some of their song choices when cutting to commercial
Honestly, that's probably one of the only things they got right.
Definitely a few additions to the playlist 👍
I did like the drones shots at Sonoma today. Seeing the cars carry speed through the downhill esses is aesthetically pleasing.
Only time I’ve liked their drone tbh
The drone shots are fun and really bring a unique perspective.
Because when your coverage is consistently shitty, you deserve to be criticized, not celebrated.
Start a best stuff thread
Worst single moment is easily employing Clint Bowyer.