FOX Broadcast Criticism

Over time my frustration has been building with the way that the broadcast has been handling televising these races, and I think the Bristol truck race tonight just finally broke me. Don't get me wrong, I get it that tonight was an elimination race in the playoffs. But your coverage of the race should not so drastically change based on what time of year or what part of the season we're in.

Instead of calling the race they seemed to spend most of the time reminding us of playoff implications and the current unofficial standings based on the running order at that point in the race. We did at least get to see some racing mid-pack (if you count as low as 15th as mid-pack anyway) instead of watching Sheldon Creed run away with (most of) the race, but the cameras rarely seemed able to give us a good idea of what was going on action wise on the track when something happened until later in the race.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NASCAR/comments/pps4hl/austin_hills_playoffs_hopes_are_dashed_after/

I think the straw that broke the camel's back was the coverage from the video linked above. Without closely watching the broadcast it's hard to tell who all was involved in that wreck (I mean shoot even if you were the camera coverage still makes it hard) because they spend so much time talking about Austin Hill and the playoff implications that this wreck has for him. From a TV coverage perspective why are we looking at a high shot on that 16 truck for literally almost 30 seconds?

To me at least, the coverage of a race should not drastically change over the course of the year. Whether it's the season opener at Daytona or the season finale at Phoenix, the broadcast should be covering the race and the action on the track first and foremost. You get two stage break cautions in the middle of the race that should ideally give you plenty of time to paint the championship picture with actual officially allotted points. If two or more drivers are battling on the track and it's both for position on the track and in the standings- great, call it out.

But don't take away from the viewers' situational awareness for what had to be over half of the race duration showing us the standings instead of the race leaderboard. Don't start talking about the championship after literally the first race of the season, telling me about how somebody is locked into the playoffs for winning at Daytona.

Maybe I'm just another negative fan, maybe I'm wrong. But the hyper fixation on the championship standings has been making it hard to watch some of these races for me personally. And maybe that's just something I needed to get off my chest tonight.