NASCAR's Fall in Charlotte? Or, Has It Ever Been That Popular Here?
Current NASCAR
My 12 year old grandson said I was acting really mad Saturday night.
I'd had both grandsons at the house here in Charlotte during the late afternoon and it was just boys here, as the wife and two moms were out and about.
The pizza was eaten and we'd hurried to the den to catch the televised pre-race activities from the Cup night race at Bristol.
The 12 year old's favorite driver, Denny Hamlin, was starting on the pole, but the 8 year old's favorite, Jimmie Johnson (the one with his name spelled wrong) was leading the points he told us.
The NASCAR Sprint Cup Irwin Tools Night Race at Bristol was scheduled to be televised nationally on ABC Television and its affiliates as part of the final leg of the season with TV rights held by ESPN and its parent ABC.
Turned the TV on to the Charlotte ABC affiliate - WSOC-TV, Channel 9 - just before 7:00 p.m. and there was a Washington Redskins/Buffalo Bills preseason game on originating with the Washington Redskins Football Network - not ABC - that still had a complete quarter to play.
Scrolling across the bottom of the screen was a banner informing that programming would switch to the Bristol race when the game was completed, but that the race would likely be joined in progress.
I was livid.
I checked alternate ESPN programming. I saw an alternate channel offering the Bristol race in Nashville, Philadelphia and several other markets... but not Charlotte.
Charlotte is supposed to be the hub of NASCAR... right? Charlotte is supposed to be the center of the NASCAR universe... the home base area to the majority of its race teams, home to the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
BUT, the #1 rated television station in Charlotte decided it could pull in more viewers and revenue with a meaningless pre-season NFL Redskins game than with the beginning of what used to be one of the most anticipated races of the year.
In all fairness, the Redskins still have a huge following in Charlotte and in my hometown of Richmond. In the 1950s, the Redskins television network was carried in both Charlotte and Richmond, featuring those lovable, mostly losing teams with Eddie Lebaron, Norm Snead and a cast of true misfits. The highlight of each of those telecasts was a half-time performance by the Redskins marching band and the appearance of Santa Claus at midfield on Thanksgiving Day.
Richmond still has such a love affair with the Washington tribe that it spent $30 million (give or take a dollar) to move the Redskins training camp to Richmond this year.
However, Charlotte has its own NFL team - the Panthers - and they played on TV Thursday night.
I'm afraid that what happened Saturday night on a Charlotte flagship television station confirmed what I've said all along. Charlotte is NOT a racing town. My Richmond hometown IS a racing town. Humpy Wheeler knew that. In a famous quote, Humpy once said that if they ever closed the North Carolina - Virginia border, they'd have to close Charlotte Motor Speedway.
In all my years reading the Charlotte newspaper I have never even once seen a story covering or previewing a race at a local Charlotte area weekly track. The Richmond papers had reporters from both the morning and afternoon paper, along with separate photographers at Richmond's Southside Speedway every Friday night.
Charlotte is a banking town, full of Wall Street types and the financial gurus who lost all of your 401K and IRA investments. Charlotte is full of transplanted IBM employees who once labored in Endicott, New York.
Richmond was/is a manufacturing town with the workers who loved stock car racing. In Richmond you couldn't get a seat in a Moose Lodge or Eagles Lodge or Elks Lodge or Shrine establishment on Sunday afternoon when a race was being televised.
In Richmond, folks talked about the race at the water cooler on Monday. They talked about what Sonny and Ray had done Friday night, too... or who "Terrible" Tommy Ellis had wrecked at Southside. I've never heard anybody talk about a NASCAR race in Charlotte.
On the very day we were enjoying a fantastic get together of RR members at the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, there were news media on the premises interviewing attendees because the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority announced during our visit that the HOF had suffered another $1,000,000 plus loss and attracted 22,000 less visitors than it did the year before - a year that had also seen a severe attendance drop. The CRVA finally admitted they don't ever expect the HOF to meet attendance projections, but they are trying to maximize revenue with souvenir sales and building rentals at night for meetings and parties.
Maybe they should have built it in Richmond where I-95 and the circumferential interstate around Richmond and Petersburg merge just north of Richmond, as proposed by the folks in that town full of race fans where they don't preempt the Bristol night race on local television.
I'm almost through venting. I hope my blood pressure is dropping.
WSOC-TV, Channel 9 in Charlotte, the flagship ABC affiliate in the Queen City (Cincinnati is also the Queen City, but it is closer to Owensboro, birthplace of Jaws) continued to show all the post game interviews of Redskins and Buffalo Bills personnel long after the final whistle had blown signalling the end of the blowout by the feathered warriors.
Just in case you wondered, I began placing telephone calls at 7:15 p.m. to all six telephone numbers listed for the station... sports, programming, news... receptionist... etc. Never spoke to a live human. Got lots of busy signals. Were the lines overloaded with NASCAR fans calling? I hope. Got to leave three voice mail messages... each a little louder and more insistent than the previous.
Finally, around 7:47 p.m. EDT, the television screen switched to a shot of the Bristol flag stand just as the cars fired engines. No National Anthem, no prayer, no talking heads telling me what to expect. Perhaps that was a blessing not hearing the talking heads.
Did analyst Brad give any insights into why his #47 car never runs worth a crud? Finally, on this evening it looked like Bobby Labonte was having a late career surge and a heck of a race until he was taken out.
Maybe I didn't miss anything meaningful other than our National Anthem, but I'm still convinced that Charlotte is not a racing town. Thank you for listening if you made it this far.
updated by @dave-fulton: 12/05/16 04:04:08PM
