TV coverage of NASCAR

[Phil Jacques]

I agree with Matt regarding the ratings. Nascar has to have reached close to the bottom of the decline. I still maintain that a major format change is desperately needed to make the show more viewer friendly. The long green flag stretches would be eliminated with time trial, heats, consy and feature format and would put additional pressure on the drivers to perform well in each segment.

The long green runs imo, come from give and take and the drivers knowing the races are so long. If you do as you have said with TT, Heats, Consi and Feature and shorten the features substantially, you may see a much greater urgency.

I say everyone gets 1hr of practice followed by 1hr break and 2 TT laps, Split up the field evenly with a max of 10 cars per heat for 20 mile heat races. Do a last chance qualifier race and a 150 mile (or so) feature. Doing this too, you could make it a 1 day show which could save the teams a bunch of expenses for food, hotels etc. NASCAR keeps talking about wanting to save teams money, there's one way. 1 day shows have proven to work for Trucks and Xfinity... It gives the fans a full day of on track action with a Saturday Night style format that is proven to work. Just my idea lol

[Matt Albee]

That's not a bad idea Phil, it would sure spice up the show. And here's another idea to make these long races more interesting. And it wouldn't require any change from NASCAR at all really. I don't mind the 500 mile races, though at some tracks it gets to be a bit much. But it's obvious that many of the drivers are more or less cruising around waiting for the final laps to actually go racing. It's called strategy i guess.
Increasing the money for leading the race or running with the leaders doesn't seem to work because money isn't a motivation for these teams. What does motivate them are points and tv time for their sponsors. So i think the answer is for NASCAR to come up with a points structure that rewards drivers who run up front, drivers who pass, and maybe even hurts drivers that don't. Points for being at or near the front, loss of points for riding around near the back of the pack. Extra points for most cars passed, points for second most cars passed, etc. That also gives every sponsor a better chance to be on tv because the cameras only focus on the front of the field...and Jeff, Jimmy, and Jr. of course.