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NASCAR on TV Pre 2001

O

oldvnewschool

I know that NASCAR's current deal is great.

FOX gets the first half of Nextel Cup with 2 Craftsman Truck Series Races

TNT gets 6 straight which is my opinion a waste of time to get only 6 Nextel

Cup Races.

And ABC/ESPN/ESPN2 gets the remainder of the Nextel Cup and the entire

Busch Series Schedule which is the best of the three package.

This leads me to think since ABC was an early player of NASCAR

with Wide World of Sports (CBS broadcasted the Twin 150's on it's Sports Spectacular Show in 1960)

How many races did WWOS covered between 1961 and 2000.

Also there was a book I read that CBS covered the World 600 on a tape delay basis

from 1975 to roughly 1978 on the Sports Spectacular along with the

summer, now fall, talladegga race. How many did CBS cover?

Again this before the 2001 FOX/NBC/TNT deal which centralized the sport.
 
Going strictly from memory, CBS had the Daytona 500, Texas 500, and I think the Michigan 400. ABC initially had the Brickyard 400. TBS had the World 600 and a couple others. The bulk of the races were on ESPN and TNN.
 
The key to this is that it was individual tracks/promoters making their own deals. There was no central "NASCAR contract" as there is with MLB or the NFL. That changed with the Fox/NBC deal of a few years ago. So ABC had an in to cover the Brickyard race as it carried the Indy 500.
 
Buddy Hayes said:
Going strictly from memory, CBS had the Daytona 500, Texas 500, and I think the Michigan 400. ABC initially had the Brickyard 400. TBS had the World 600 and a couple others. The bulk of the races were on ESPN and TNN.
Click to expand...

CBS also had the fall race (then the Winston 500, now the EA Sports 500) at Talladega and I believe California as well.

SportsChannel had both Pocono races in the 80s, which meant that I couldn't see them because our cable system didn't carry it and never did until long after it became FSN.

TBS had the Coca-Cola 600 and I think they also had the spring Atlanta race.

ESPN carried the rest. When did TNN carry any Cup races? I know they aired some truck races in the early years of that series when ESPN was airing something more important and they also had ARCA before it moved to Speed, but I don't remember any Cup or Busch races on there.
 
TNN had Rockingham events in the mid 90's.

Wide World of Sports ran live segments as part of their anthology. 20 minutes or so of racing between some of their other events; nothing flag-to-flag.

CBS has often touted the 79 Daytona 500 as the first full-time live NASCAR race covered in its entirety.
 
Yes, and there was a snow storm and crazy record cold weather that weekend of the CBS telecast in 1979, as I recall. All cooped up, nuttin' else to watch...
 
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