Can Dale Jarrett, Andy Petree, Jerry Punch and the rest of the ESPN-ABC guys help turn this TV thing?

  Dale Jarrett (L, here with Jeff Burton) is polished and of course knowledgeable, but can he and his ESPN partners light up the TV fires for NASCAR? (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   INDIANAPOLIS
   Now it's ESPN's turn, to try to turn around NASCAR's TV ratings.
   Fox' ratings, for its 13-race schedule, were down, the lowest of its 10-year NASCAR run.
   TNT's ratings, for its six-race schedule just concluded, were down, almost 10 percent from last summer.
   And now Sunday's Brickyard 400 here kicks off the ESPN part of the stock car tour...and what might that bring? One big problem, of course, is this huge, square-shaped track isn't conducive to great side-by-side racing, because the corners are so sharp and the entry speeds are so high. And that makes for a different sort of drama than NASCAR-typical.
   Bigger picture: Well, back in January when ABC-ESPN-Disney announced it would take the 10-race championship race from ABC network coverage and move it to ESPN cable, it wasn't necessarily seen as a positive. After all, the whole point of NASCAR's 'new' TV package was to put the sport on network TV. And NASCAR was on ESPN back in the 1980s.....
   Of course ESPN today isn't the same ESPN back then. And to be honest ESPN, with its own hard-core sports demographic base, and its wide-ranging 'platforms,' might be just the right place for NASCAR, rather than ABC itself, with such nameplate prime-time programming as Lost, Desperate Housewives, and Grey's Anatomy.
   But the ESPN game has yet to be played out.
    Of the tour's final 17 events, 14 will be on ESPN, and the three Saturday night races, at Bristol, Richmond and Charlotte, will be on ABC.
   ESPN has been handling NASCAR's Nationwide tour since February, DanicaMania and all, and ratings have been, well, rather blah, though perhaps trending slightly to the upside.
  
  

  Fox' David Hill (L) worries about the 18-34 male demographic in NASCAR; ESPN's Andy Petree (R) questions why NASCAR penalized Brad Keselowski but says it's clear "Carl Edwards went over the line" in St. Louis (Photos: Fox, Bristol Motor Speedway)
  

   Will the latest Carl Edwards-Brad Keselowski run-in boost ratings for the 400?
   Could be. The two will not only play head-to-head at Indianapolis Motor Speedway but also across town at the O'Reilly Raceway Park bullring Saturday night.
    Dale Jarrett, now an ESPN commentator, considers the Edwards-Keselowski thing like this:
   "It looked like Carl could have maybe stepped over the line a little bit," Jarrett says. "It looked to me that Brad gave plenty of racing room and had done his job and gotten himself in a position."
    But Edwards didn't care for the bump-and-run and dished it back himself the last lap, creating a huge wreck.
    It's been like that, among the entire pack, in fact, much of the season.
   "I think we have to go back a lot more years than when I was driving to get to what we're seeing now," Jarrett says of the 2010 season of Boys, Have AT It.
    "The aggressive nature we see these drivers taking now, we'd have to go back to my dad (Ned Jarrett, the 1965 NASCAR champion) and Junior (Johnson) and (David) Pearson and these people, Curtis Turner, that group.  They didn't know any different.  There wasn't much of a gentleman's agreement of any type back then.
    "I'm not saying this is wrong; this is just the way racing is."
   And if Jarrett were still out on the track racing? 
    "I've looked at it and told people if I were still there, it would take some adjustment on my part in my thinking," Jarrett concedes. "I always felt I had to try to race people the way they raced me. 
    "What you see now that would be a big change over the way it was when I was driving.
   "But again, it's making the sport very exciting. 
    "We're seeing some rivalries start up even between teammates."

   Julie Sobieski, who handles ESPN's NASCAR account, says the moves from ABC to ESPN should help improve NASCAR's ratings among younger demographics. Fox'  David Hill had complained earlier this season about NASCAR's continued loss of the male 18-34 demographic, which he said was down 30 percent from 2009.
   While sponsors themselves, and traditional hard-core NASCAR fans, might not be all that interested in that particular demographic, it has been traditionally a hot TV demographic. Hence Playmate models here in bikinis, and who knows what Eddie Gossage and Marcus Smith might have planned for their own tracks later this year to attract the 18-34 male.
  

  

  What can ESPN bring to the table for the last half of the NASCAR season? Sounds like they may have their own version of 'Boys, have at it,' when it comes to analyzing things. That would be refreshing. Anchor Marty Reid (C) and ESPN's NASCAR connection Julie Sobieski (R) (Photos: Getty Images for NASCAR, and ESPN)
  

  
Sobieski says of that 18-34 male demographic "Certainly it's an important demographic for advertisers and for growth of the sport."
   And she says comparing NASCAR on ABC to NASCAR on ESPN, the ESPN coverage has done better at attracting that demo.
  "It is one good opportunity -- the move of these day-races over to ESPN," she says. "Obviously our 18-34 demos across the networks are very strong, and we think there is an opportunity there on ESPN.
    "Generally events tend to skew older with the demo perspective than for news and information style programs.
    "ESPN has a ton of events, but we have news-and-information programming that tends to skew to that younger demographic, so there is an opportunity there."
   Think SportsCenter?
   Sobieski just thinks positively: "If we cover the race as we think NASCAR fans in general do, regardless of their specific demographic, that that demographic will continue to climb."
   Post-race work should  certainly be stronger.
    ABC will forever have to live down that infamous switch a couple of years ago from the Phoenix race to America's Funniest Home Videos....before the checkered flag.
    Sobieski says "fans want a more in-depth post race experience around the races.
   "And one of the opportunity that these 14 races on ESPN affords us this year uniquely is that we'll be able to have SportsCenter, an expanded SportsCenter, on the back-end of those ESPN races.  We'll be able to go back (to the track)...and do more in-depth post-race analysis." 
    And what about the championship playoffs, the 10-race chase?
    That was first created to give NBC, then a NASCAR  TV partner, some fodder to use against the National Football League each fall. But NBC bailed out on NASCAR anyway, opting to return to the NFL. And NASCAR's fall ratings the past several seasons have been, well, falling.
   What can ESPN do with the chase that ABC and NBC couldn't, or didn't?
   "We believe there is a lot of opportunity to be had within the chase -- and growth available within that part of our season," Sobieski insists. "And we have had communication with NASCAR on that."
   Changes in the playoffs?
   That's what NASCAR CEO Brian France earlier this month said he was considering, without offering specifics. His game plan, he said, was to somehow add high drama to chase races.
    "Ultimately any changes they make rest in their hands," Sobieski says. "But we think there is a great opportunity to really increase the ratings within the chase and through the championship itself."
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  ESPN has a lot of guns to throw in this fight, like Mike Massaro (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)