Last Friday’s NASCAR sprint at Phoenix International Raceway saw the return of Denny Hamlin only ten days after intensive knee surgery, a major gaffe by Kyle Busch during a caution, and the first win of the 2010 season by Ryan Newman. Unfortunately, fans tuning into Fox found very little reaction and post-race coverage following the 3 hour, 48 minute event. Going a full 50 minutes past its broadcast allotment, the network aired only a few minutes of interviews and analysis after the race, yet still ran two commercial breaks totaling nearly seven minutes. After a considerable amount of fan complaints—Friday’s Subway Fresh Fit 600 wasn’t the first time the network was forced to cut its coverage—Fox took the cue and turned to new media for a solution.
The Overdrive on FoxSports.com will be launched today immediately following this afternoon’s Samsung Mobile 500 at Texas Motor Speedway, allowing fans extended access of post-race analysis and driver interviews. Fox will commit their entire nine-person broadcast team to the new venture.
“It’s something we should have been doing all along,” Fox Sports Senior Producer Bill Brown told The Associated Press. “It’s definitely a can’t lose, especially when you take into account what the audience wants to see. We are trying to take care of an audience that has invested four hours into the race, wants more, and we can give them more.”
The move marks a refreshing, but not entirely new strategy for the network. Though sometimes a bit antiquated in commentary and more than a little over-the-top in coverage, Fox has been an industry leader in connecting their multiple media platforms through social technology. Award-winning scoring bugs and on-screen graphics, an early adoption of high-definition programming, a successful chain of regional sports networks, and online initiatives steeped in new media technology are only a few enhancements that the network has provided over the years.
On a broader level, the idea of moving post-game analysis to an online forum is not only more liberating in terms of content and programming, but also much more cost efficient. An hour or so of online coverage is dwarfed significantly by that of an equal television block, not to mention considerably less costs on advertising and production. What it also continues to accomplish is the gradual shift from one-way television viewing to the exchanged discourse of online participation. Ultimately, more access with more athletes means higher ratings, increased web traffic, and much more loyal viewers.
A word to the wise though: just don’t bring back the glowing puck strategic disaster of FoxTrax.
