Over the last month or so NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour series director Jimmy Wilson has worked hard through social media and traditional media in trying to promote the professionalism and stature of the historic division he oversees.
On Thursday night the broadcast on NBC Track Pass of the Whelen Modified Tour season opening event at Martinsville Speedway took all those efforts by Wilson and stomped on them with the force of a 10-car pileup at speed.
After all the buildup to the season opener, after all the anticipation of the return to Martinsville, after all the wait of the offseason, NASCAR’s broadcast partners put in an effort Thursday that treated the Whelen Modified Tour like they were the JV hoops throwaway broadcast on a bad cable access outlet.
Want to know what sounds immensely disingenuous? When you’re a broadcaster calling an event like Thursday’s at Martinsville and you’re portraying yourself as a huge fan of the series and its history and its excitement, and then you can’t pronounce the names of the drivers involved and you don’t know what a NERF bar is.
Ever been to a Super Bowl party and someone is going on and on about how they’re a massive fan of one of the teams, but then it becomes clear they actually don’t even know who any of the players are? That’s what happened Thursday night with the announcers calling the Whelen Modified Tour Virginia Is For Racing Lovers 200.
Sam Rameau? He became Sam RAY-MEE-OHH.
Sing along with us at home, DOE RAY MEE OHHHH!
Somehow Tommy Catalano became Tommy CAT-UHH-LEE-NO.
Just how do you get one from the other? Just sound it and you’ll do fine.
Legendary former driver and now Patrick Emerling crew chief Jan Leaty was referred to as “Jane” Leaty.
At one point NERF bars were referred to as “Those protective bars”.
The reality is anyone that’s been around short track racing long enough has at one point or another heard some bad announcing. It happens. Names get mistaken or mispronounced. Mistakes happen whether it’s names, or the amount of laps left or running orders or any other number of things that can get screwed up.
What’s disheartening is when it becomes clear that it’s not just mistakes, it’s about a production group that’s too lazy to actually put the effort in to produce a professional broadcast.
No broadcaster with any desire to come across as a professional should be mispronouncing names. It’s beyond simple. You do the homework before the event and get prepared. There were 32 names in the Thursday’s field, most of which are very easily pronounced. The broadcasters calling Thursday’s race should have taken five minutes and went to a series official and said “Can you tell us the pronunciation of each driver in tonight’s field?” It’s literally that simple to do.
The message sent by the two announcers handling Thursday’s broadcast was: “It’s just the Whelen Modified Tour, we don’t need to prepare, we can just make it up as we go because nobody cares about these drivers or this series anyway?”
And that’s not fair to the Whelen Modified Tour. It’s not fair to the teams of the Whelen Modified Tour who try to present the series professionally at each event they go to.
It’s simply demeaning to the efforts of those teams and the efforts of NASCAR to bring a professional and prepared look to the series at each stop when there’s a broadcast streamed on a nationally recognized outlet with a “Screw these guys, let’s just mail it in” production quality.
Throughout the broadcast the announcers took turns giving Eric Goodale different pronunciations on his name. Sometimes one would mispronounce it one way and literally in the next sentence the other would mispronounce it another way. How bad it is when the announcers can’t even simply agree on one wrong mispronunciation and have to use multiple wrong names for the same person?
Goodale went on to win the Martinsville race, but the broadcasters didn’t get the opportunity to mispronounce his name during his victory celebration ceremony. No, viewers didn’t get that chance because the broadcast abruptly ended before Goodale ever even got out of his car. No celebration shot. No interviews with the winner. No interviews with anyone.
Race over, thanks for coming, bye.
Here’s hoping NBC Track Pass will do better going forward.
More importantly, here’s hoping NASCAR officials won’t just stand by idly and let dreadful broadcast efforts be what represents the series to a nation of viewers.
