Jimmie Johnson won the O'Reilly Auto Parts 500 to all but clinch his historic 3rd straight championship. But if you were watching the race on ABC yesterday, you would have had to go online to find that out, since ABC stopped covering the race with about 34 laps remaining.What was the urgent need to move the race away from ABC? America's Funniest Home Videos, of course.
The ABC network didn't drop the coverage altogether, but they did move it to ESPN, leaving many NASCAR fans and workers feeling like they are viewed as second rate.
One of Johnson's team members had this to say:
"I knew we were in trouble when I looked at the monitor and saw a monkey scratching its butt."
AP writer Jenna Fryer raises an interesting question. If this were an NFL game, or another one of the major sports, would this have happened? This race was the equivalent of a conference championship in football, or an LCS series in baseball. Would ABC have cut out from one of those events to show random homemade videos? Doubtful.
While to many people, watching people drive around in circles all day isn't the most entertaining thing in the world, it is still a great show of disrespect to replace the end of a sporting event with something as insignificant as "cats running into walls, dancing brides falling and children inflicting unintentional pain on adults".
If ABC is going to continue covering NASCAR, they need to give their viewers a fair shake, and actually cover it.
ABC's decision to leave race puzzles NASCAR [USA Today]
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