On Saturday evening TNT introduced a partial commercial free coverage for the Coke Zero 400, but it was not quite what I had expected.
Personally, I came out of the night with very mixed emotions. I actually felt like I had to watch twice as many commercials as usual. I thought it was sort of annoying, but there was so much action in the race, especially early, I liked it.
But then TNT started mixing in "90 second" breaks, which started just during commercials, which I was fine with, but later had the nerve to mix full commercials during racing action. So were we swindled into actually watching more commercials than usual?
PROS
1. For the most part, the fans are able to see non-stop action.
2. Caters to the average income fan who does not have a wide screen LCD to make the picture better and the action wider.
3. No downtime or frustrating commercials (Yes, you have to listen to the commercials, but you can still see thing you would never see during full screen commercials).
4. TNT has the fans in mind, and coverage like this will only increase the ease of future race coverage.
CONS
1. Despite the non-stop viewing, TNT still does not keep the camera on the best action and are always behind on accidents where we only catch the absolute end of the accident.
2. The advertisement area at the bottom of the screen takes up half the television, although they give an old TV a wider view I can't imagine what this race looked like on any non- wide screen TV under 40 inches.
3. At least two times during the pop-up corner commercials, something significant happend where all I wanted to hear was the broadcast and what was going on.
4. Why are you showing full screen commercials during action? There is nothing wide open about that...
Anything else? I would love to hear what other people think. I understand I should not be complaining about the one or two "90 second" breaks during the action when it could have been 15, but I was very excited about the race being on the entire time and was a little disappointed, especially with how large the bottom half of the screen was.
On the upside, this is a good sign as to where we may be heading with race coverage. Fox is not a station who sits back, they like to be innovative, so I see a feature such as or similar to "Wide Open Coverage" only improving.
TNT Wide Screen Coverage...Yes or No?
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3 months ago
Personally, I'd rather see a few commercials and skip the "This portion of TNT's Wide Open Coverage is brought to you by..." every five minutes. I know that's an exaggeration, but it got tiring by the end of the race. In general, ESPN does a much better job of prioritizing the race itself with their Side-by-Side coverage of IRL races. Maybe TNT should copy some of what they do.
3 months ago
I was fine with it for the most part... It was difficult to adjust to all of the stuff being on the bottom where I am used to watching the race... It might be a little beter if they move it back to the top...
3 months ago
I actually miss FOX sports, TNT lacks in so many areas and I will not take up the readers times commenting on them. But back to the subject at hand:
When I watched the Side by Side indy 500 race coverage by ABC/ESPN I was impressed, and wished for NASCAR's Media outlets to follow suit. TNT gave it a shot with its " wide open coverage", OMG! I was actually praying for it to end!
Barndon (shown 2 spots above)is not exaggrating every 5 minutes " This wide open covergae is brought to you by Blah Blah!" SHOUT UP ! Already.... TNT if your reading this scrap the format it is painful to watch. oh and another thing get Wally out of the booth, and put Larry in. Having two drivers (and I use that term loosely)... Kyle P / Wally D. in the booth at the same time is overdoing it. Wally is fine in pre race stuff, but Kyle dominates the commentary & Wally hardly gets words in (not that he has a whole lot to say). Larry Mac, did a superb job during Fox's Stint in the booth competeing against Boogied-Boogied-Boogied Waltrip.
Anyone who can handle that deserves to be in the booth not thrown next to the Bill Engvall (another commercail) cut away car to tell the home viewer where the gas goes in the car. Well time for me to shout up too!
from 3 months ago
I completely agree...TNT has the worst commentators, I feel like I would be better off muting it and putting MRN on the radio, sometimes i feel like I don't know what's going on because the commentators have no idea where the action is...it was a failure, but it can only get better!
3 months ago
With Tnt's wide open coverage I have no choice but to rely on PitCommand, Raceview and MRN and Tivo the race to see what I want to see. I have always bounced from the diffrent media, however tnt now has made the viewing of the race secondary. Hey remember when we all were introduced to cable, for a price, you did not have commercials? Now we not only pay the price but get all the junk mail with it. I would actually rather pay nascar for my own feed to the race instaed of the cable company's. Or NASCAR fans should pour their money into PBS for the proper coverage, you don't get crap in the middle of the perfomance at the MET. Respectfully, John Z, Alaska
2 months ago
TNT is my favorite show and the cameras show all of the cars. The cameras turn fast too and it's fun to watch. I don't miss FOX at all and the cameras don't even turn, that's why it's boring. They brag about their show and they keep showing baseball. Matt and Darrell are the only good ones in that channnel. Espn is bad too and what is Rusty talking about, he talks about things that are not important. When the race starts on ESPN the fans sound the same every week so I guess that sound is fake. They can't be cheering every restart like that. TNT has a lot of cameras so we can see every angle of the cars. It sucks that they are only doing 6/six races insteas of the whole 2nd half. Before 2005 NBC and TNT were a lot better back then and they are still good now but better back then.
I GOT A QUESTION ARE THERE ANY TNT FANS I HOPE SO.?
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