BRISTOL, TN – AUGUST 16: Grant Enfinger, driver of the #98 Champion Power EquipmentCurb Records Toyota, leads a group of trucks during the NASCAR Camping World Truck UNOH 200 at Bristol Motor Speedway on August 16, 2017 in Bristol, Tennessee. (Photo by Brian Lawdermilk/Getty Images)
What other sports would view as routine is going to be a surprising first for NASCAR on Thursday night.
It’s no big deal to find sports on prime time network TV on weeknights during the right time of the year. That’s not as true for the summer months, and since NASCAR runs its races mostly on the weekends — and increasingly these days, on cable networks affiliated with the broadcast networks — it doesn’t happen very often.
In fact it’s never intentionally happened before, but that will change when the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway airs on Fox on Thursday night.
Indeed, NASCAR races have run on a network in prime time in the past, but only as the result of rain pushing them to another day and/or time. However, the UHOH 200 is slated to start at 8:00 p.m. on Fox, something that Fox Sports PR guru Megan Englehart explained is kind of a big deal.
While no one would argue against the idea that broadcast TV is far less influential than it was in decades past, getting a race on network TV is still a big deal. All one has to do is look at ratings numbers comparing the same event when it gets switched from NBC to NBCSN or Fox to FS1 (or vice versa for either company) to see that more people watch when a race is on one of the networks instead of an affiliated cable channel.
Why this particular race? It’s kind of a perfect storm of factors: The Bristol Truck Series race always runs on Thursday night. Fox has the rights to show the trucks all season long, and the network is in the middle of the part of the year where it is desperate for programming to show in prime time. Add it all up and voila, you’ve got the first scheduled NASCAR race on prime time network television.
Given that it is Bristol (baby) and that the Truck Series has featured some of the best racing of any national series this year and it’s quite possible the UHOH 200 will deserve the relatively wider audience it will attract. Here’s hoping lots of people tune in, because what else do you have to do on an August Thursday night?
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