what i would like to see is actually green flag time that was lost to commercials do you have that marked from where they went away from actuall green flag time to put in a commercial i dont mind commercials over yellow flags.

Outstanding work! I really appreciate the time and effort you put into this effort.

Very informative.I’m just glad you did’nt tell us you were in your underwear while you were conducting the survey.

Glad you did this!!! I was thinking about doing it. This verifies that it isn’t about racing, its about making money. Slowly becoming an ex-NASCAR fan.

Great idea. I’ve been meaning to do this for awhile to find out how ridiculous the advertising time has become. Don’t forget to include the time spent on the “brought to you by …” when the announcers have to remind us after the commercials that there are more sponsors for the race. Keep up the good work. Let’s see which network sells and show the most advertising.

Take out the post race coverage and it is 142 to 73!

Damn. If I were to grab a beer from the fridge during every break, i would need more than a 24 pack!

Thanks for the info…but like neebs mentioned, it does miss a couple of things (don’t worry, I appreciate the info)...in addition to actual “commercial” time, how much of their on-air time was spent with promos and billboards instead of talking about the race. I’d be willing to bet we lost an additional 10-15 minutes thanks to their billboards and screen promos of NBC programming…ugh…please let ABC/ESPN be better…please???

Another interesting stat would be the number of restarts missed because of commercials. It used to never happen 10 years ago, but now there are usually 2-3 missed restarts per race.

Wow, I’ve never seen it broken down like that. Makes me want to Tivo it and start an hour and a half later.

This is exactly why I don’t watch NASCAR live anymore. Thank god for TiVo. Hopefully ESPN does better (like they did in the old days).

Very good work! I’d bet money that it’s even worse during a truck race!

And NBC could not make enough money on NASCAR telecasts???????!!!!!!!

1 minute of commercials for every 2 minutes of NASCAR, damn!!!!!!

The only thing I can really say about this is that unless you order the PPV In-Car package there are going to be commercials. The Networks have a duty to make money off the broadcast and commercials are their primary source of revenue. I get as frustrated as the next person but I also realize that races broadcasts are free. It’s hard to complain about free. I chose to pay the $79.00 per season (only $2.19 per race) for the In-Car package and have been very happy with it and have yet to see an entire commercial all season.

every one e-mail tnt and complain about the advertiseing like at bristol they would miss 20 laps at a time

Haven’t you guys seen ESPN lately? Everything is a cross promotion for something else. They will have the same racing-to-commercials ratio, except that that first category with the commercials about their own shows will be a lot bigger. Be ready to hear a lot of “Coming up next: Baseball Tonight!”

Thanks for all the effort. I have done similar W/ recorder starting green, stopping checker & dropped all other promos, Totals are a LOT HIGHER. Don’t put all the blame on TV Nets, they are all the same times, FOX was worse, they have to pay Brian’$ fee first before they get any.

You would think that in a sport with 43 billboards racing around for three hours, you could cut down on advertising a little. But you would be wrong. That’s why I use Tivo.

They need all these commercials so they can afford all the telemetry and crap like that. And its even more difficult to keep up with the race when you have the Positions scrolling by at top, a menu for who’s in the chase, on the bubble and been eliminated, speeds across the line, car telemetry to tell when they are in the gas and out of the gas (and that panel also shows a map of the track and where they are on the track), and i HATE it when they show two screens (one talking to the driver and one with the race) and they always have a TON of space that isn’t used, just graphics that cost money and generate more commercials in the long run. Completely rediculous if you ask me. Thats why I like ESPN. They don’t do anything real fancy, they give you the race with very few distractions.

The networks could at least show the split screen like they do during IRL.

Get a life then get Tivo.

PLEASE send this info to baby Brian and the folks at Nascar who claim that TV coverage of Nascar races is the best in the world.

Seems what they really mean is Nascar = mostly commericals interrupted from time to time by a bit of race coverage.

Thank God for High-Def Tivo!

How many times was the word “Chase” used during the broadcast???

Inquiring minds want to know. ~(:-o)))

Try watching the truck race on Speed. Its probably twice as many.

How funny would it be for Tivo to sponsor a race! I’d never know who the sponsor was becasue I Tivo….I can’t EVEN imagine watching any racing live anymore…

I watched the US open this weekend and saw TENNIS not commericals. Refreshing. How would I get my 7 course dinner made if we didn’t have all these commercials. And someone please tell NBC and TNT to get rid of Bill Weber that man asks some of the dumbest questions and half the time he doesn’t even know what race track he’s at. Hey Bill look out the window and read the name of the track on the wall.

Thanks for putting so much effort into compiling this information. I, too, would love to see how many green flag laps we missed, how many restarts were missed, etc.

I admit, the appeal is wearing off when it comes to watching on television. Thank God for MRN.

It’s all NASCAR’s fault… they charge the network a ridiculous amount for the rights to broadcast and the networks have to show all the commercials to get their money back. Nascar (not the networks) has also said that they won’t allow the split screen.

AWESOME statistics. Either cut way DOWN on the commercials or at least have enough consideration for the viewers to have a split screen.

Great job! It’s interesting seeing them broken down into different groups,but as for me I haven’t seen one commercial since 1999. I thought there were to many commercials then and programed my remote for other shows.As soon as they start heading towards the commercials I zap over to another channel.I know they have to make money but I’m not in that 18 to 35 year old age bracket that they target, so if they want me to waste that much time watching their commercials they’re going to have to pay me!

Has anyone else noted the degree to which the nets seem to have their commercials synchronized so as to eliminate us channel flippers? I mean, you can’t tell me that the fact there is a commercial on 10 different stations all at the same time is ‘just a coincidence’. Now that we know they collaborate on this stuff, what else are they doing together, and isn’t there a law against this kind of thing?

There are laws against colluding to fix prices and such, but synchronizing commercial times seems legally acceptable. I’ve noticed that commercials all seem to run together as well.

With a little over 4 hours for the race and “only” 73 minutes of commercials it’s plain that the race DOESN’T have more commercials than any other prime time program. All of your one hour programs on t.v. contain 20 minutes of commercial time every hour. Don’t believe it? Buy a dvd of any t.v. program and check the counter. Forty minutes is what you get. Yes even with “24”. I’m not saying I like it. I’m just saying that the whole argument about too many commercials is unfounded.

Did you notice though how many commercials they just got started like 2 seconds into and then cut to the track. They did it at one restart and something else. As they were going into commercial, you could hear Wally say something about “They could warn us…” and it cuts to black. Oops and unfortunately, Bill got a contract extention for the next 7 years. I personally miss Alan in the booth. That’s my 2 cents. I was surprised at how many commercial breaks and how much shorter the broadcast was without the commercials.

I remember about 10 years ago the networks were toying around putting logo (advertising) on the grass area’s as a layover (kinda like the imaginary line in football). That died off and then they tried a couple where they showed the commercial and had the race in a small box on the bottom of the screen. Bombed like a Madonna movie! Like everyone else, I tape it and zoom through the commercials!

I would not mind the commericals if and only if they had a split screen to continue watching the race. Will have to use my TiVo much more.

Yea and with the 26 min. post race no adds..

Having taped every race for the past few years pausing for commercials, I have found on an average it is 20 min. of commercials per hour of racing. A year ago we decided to check other shows by doing exactly the same thing, and I’ll be darn, it was approx 20 min of commercials for ea hour of programming.
Then we dug out old tapes from ABC/ESPN days (which I had just set record and let run) and played them fast forwarding through commercials, Guess what…......??? Yup, 20 min per hour.
I was telling my mother about this and she reminded me in 6th grade I had to do a similar thing for a school project. She found my old note books, and we had figured 15 mins per hour show, and 10 mins. for half hour show, That was 50 years ago in the 50’s!
Bottom line is the networks have X amount of time to sell during a show, they do not add more to cover xtra costs, they increase the price per ad slot.

The racing in the early 90’s and previous wasn’t bad. They would air 2-3 commericials each break and at the most 4. They showed maybe 20 laps (1 – 1.5 mile tracks) and then took a quick break. Now the breaks are about 4-5 minutes, sometimes longer. I hate how when under caution they’ll come back some pit stops, take a break, come back, take another break. It doesn’t make sense. And if you remember correctly, none of this really started happening until TNN quit broadcasting races at the very end of 2000. They would have 5 minutes of racing, 5 minutes of commericial. And what really bugs me is when they come back from a break and say “This race is brought to you by Pennzoil, UPS, The Home Depot, Bank of America.” Right, we were just bugged by 4-5 minutes of commericials and now there goes another minute. NASCAR could really care less about the actual racing, but they instead care about the money. They are nothing but money sucking bastards. And I heard their changing their logo from NASCAR to NA$CAR in 2007.

NASCAR needs to add the side-by-side commercial breaks that ESPN uses for the IRL. But they won’t cause they think they won’t sell as many pay per view packages.

Great work Cheryl!

For once it didn’t bother me. This might put this in perspective. I’m a big Detroit Tigers fan and they were the Sunday night game on ESPN. I have a Tivo machine on my DirecTV. I set it up to watch both the race and the ballgame, recording both at the same time.

Guess what inning I got into while watching it during the commercial breaks for the race??? I got into the bottom of the 6th inning by the end of the race. Thats rediculous. I watch 2/3rds of a baseball game just DURING commercial breaks for this race. NBC should be proud of themselves.

Explain this to me. Why do they put a boring ass race like this on NBC, while putting exciting ones like Bristol (not as much this year) and Richmond on TNT? Doens’t make any sense to me. Remember the good ole’ days on ESPN. Hardly any commercials. I guess its all in the name of progress but I have been watching for 30 years and feel that they now cater to the new fan.

The thing to remember when comparing commercial time between tv shows and auto racing is that you are not missing any of the tv show during the commercials….

I sayfire the whole TNT and NBC nascar team. Can’t wait for ESPn to have nascar again and have the split screen.

Excellant work Cheryl and Josh! My hat is off to you. I would have gone absolutely berserk trying to keep track of all that!
Cheryl did the research, so you don’t have to!
(Miss ya over here at FS.com)
God Bless your family and tell Josh I said “Hi”

Great Stats. Rich is correct. Live auto racing and commercial breaks are problematic. Now I see that technology is possibly coming that would disable the venerable remote and our other techno devices thus preventing us from zapping the ads. Check it out.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/business/yourmoney/07digi.html?ei=5088&en=776d2dbf915ec2e6&ex=1304654400&adxnnl=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1157252872-YZf2unV3UhCz+9O5rYxqCA

“Mike Says:
Seep 5, 11:03 PM”

“Having taped every race for the past few years pausing for commercials, I have found on an average it is 20 min. of commercials per hour of racing.

There’s a good reason for that. The FCC mandates each hour of broadcast time can only contain 16 minutes of ads. They fudge that a bit but face a fine if they go way out of line.

I dislike ads as much as the next guy however I pose this:

An NFL game is 60 minutes of regulation time. Of that at most is 15-18 minutes of actual “action” where the ball and players move. Yet the broadcast takes 3 hours and sometime more in broadcast time.

FYI:

Just so you know, NBC/TNT has declined to renew thier contract with Nascar. In 2007 thier will be no NBC/TNT races. NBC has no Nascar reputation to uphold this year. This may be why the races are all adds. ABC will probably have the ladder part of the season in 2007. Have you noticed how NBC shows almost zero caution laps (except the one lap when the leaders pit). FOX has always had superior coverage and commentary. The end of the 2006 season is NBC’s final [goodbye] to Nascar fans. I Hope ABC learns from this.

It would be nice if Nascar would let the do the side by side like the do on Indy car racing. Thanks for the info.

You Go Girl!! I never knew what channel surfing was until I watched a Nascar race. Now I “channel surf” during Commercials. Thanks for taking the time and patience for proving a point.

A few things…

1) No side by side coverage on ESPN for NASCAR next season…NASCAR actually said this is bad for the fans and they won’t allow it!

2) TNT will be back next year for six races.

I too have counted commercials before. During Infineon there were 105 commercials. I don’t know if anyone else remembers this but during the 2000 coca cola 600, TBS showed the race in the corner of the screen during the commercials. this was the only time I remember this ever being done. Why would this not be possible again?