2010 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series - Broadcasting - United States

United States

Fox Sports, their corporate sibling Speed, TNT, and ESPN/ABC are in the fourth year of a seven year television contract scheduled to expire after the 2014 season. Showtime is going to show a highlights show for the first time.

Fox

Fox Sports broadcast the first 13 races, including the Budweiser Shootout, the 52nd Daytona 500, and the Coca-Cola 600. With Dover moving to mid-May, Fox ended their coverage with the 51st Coca-Cola 600. The Sprint All-Star Race XXVI along with the Gatorade Duels, practice sessions, and all qualifying and practice sessions (except for Daytona qualifying, which aired on Fox) were all broadcast on Speed. The network's Gopher Cam mascot, Digger, returned for on-screen displays.

TNT

Time Warner's Turner Sports division (through TNT) broadcast the next six races, including the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona in its limited commercial interruption wide open coverage format. That race will also be telecast in 3-D on both NASCAR.com and DirecTV. TNT's coverage will begin with the June Pocono race and end with Chicagoland. Qualifying and practice sessions will remain on Speed. Adam Alexander will be the new lead announcer, with Lindsay Czarniak hosting pre-and-post-race shows, replacing Bill Weber and Marc Fein respectively.

ESPN/ABC

ESPN carried the remaining races, beginning with the Brickyard 400. ABC, which formerly carried the last 11 races of the season, will carry the Saturday night races in Bristol, Richmond, and Charlotte. Although previously races could not be moved from ABC to ESPN, early start times and ABC's plans to expand its Sunday morning political shows meant that NASCAR had to allow most Chase races to move to ESPN. This was met from criticism from most of ABC's southern-based affiliates, who had originally counted on NASCAR on those Sundays for ratings gains against the NFL.

Most qualifying sessions will air on ESPN2, practice sessions and some qualifying will be shared by SPEED and ESPN2. Qualifying for the Pep Boys Auto 500 and AMP Energy 500 air on Speed because they are Saturday afternoon sessions during the college football season. Additionally, Jerry Punch was replaced in the play-by-play position by Marty Reid; Punch will return to the pits where he worked at ESPN until 2000.

Showtime

CBS-owned pay cable premium service Showtime now carries a weekly one-hour highlight show titled Inside NASCAR every Wednesday at 10 pm ET/PT, with the series premiere on February 10. Chris Myers, who also hosts FOX's NASCAR coverage, will serve as host, joined by SPEED's Randy Pemberton & Michael Waltrip, and ESPN's Brad Daugherty, with the shows taping at the NASCAR Hall of Fame Studio 43. 38 episodes are planned, covering the season.

Radio

On radio, Sirius XM Radio will carry all races in the series. Terrestrial radio rights are being handled as follows:

  • Motor Racing Network will carry races at tracks owned by their corporate sibling, International Speedway Corporation as well as the races at Dover and Pocono and the All-Star Race at Charlotte;
  • Speedway Motorsports, Inc.-owned Performance Racing Network will carry events from those SMI tracks, and will joinly produce the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Radio Network.

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