And Now, A Word From Our Sponsor - NBC Sports Blasted For Lack Of Race Coverage

We were all warned. We knew this day would come when NBC would take over the broadcast coverage of NASCAR at Daytona on Saturday night. We just weren't expecting a barrage of negative feedback of this magnitude. 

Now we want FOX Sports back.

Poor announcing, way too many commercials, and pure frustration littered the social media waves during the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona. Facebook, Twitter and other sites lit up like, well, the 4th of July fireworks most people are now enjoying. An onslaught of "memes" hit social media at record pace, most calling for Fox Sports booth announcers Darrell Waltrip, Mike Joy and Jeff Gordon to come back. 

According to a recent article from BeyondTheFlag.com, NBC made a huge error when the ticker they had running across the top of the screen referred to the race as The Daytona 500. The mistake was quickly corrected, but left a bad taste in the mouths of hundreds of TV fans (I'm actually guessing at that number...). Here is a portion of the article that describes NBC's lackluster announcing team

"Not only does Kyle Petty continue to get worse and worse behind a microphone every year, Steve Letarte, Jeff Burton and Rick Allen are almost impossible to distinguish between, leaving fans with a monotonous mix of background sound to enjoy during the race. In fact, most fans probably either mute their televisions or just hope the sound of engines will drown out the announcers when the race starts."

Ouch. Infield care center, anyone? Fans were not kind either, not pulling any punches.

Fans on Twitter did not let up during the race, after the race, and even on Sunday.

Even Jenna Fryer from AP and Jeff Gluck from USA Today Sports were not able to escape the backlash from angry viewers

Jeff had several replies to his tweet. 

L. Michael Brake, II ‏@UFLouie 18h18 hours ago  @jeff_gluck can't check replies twitter is on commercial 

Tommy Lee ‏@Tsand88 18h18 hours ago @jeff_gluck Its terrible damn shame how do you draw in new fans if they can't watch any racing???

Josh M ‏@JG_KB24fan 18h18 hours ago Wake Forest, NC @jeff_gluck I've been watching #NASCAR my entire life and it's never been quite this bad. This is insanity.

Here's a funny one from @NASCARMemes i came across while reading this SportingNews.com article 

Hey @NASCARonNBC there's something going on with your program. Some random NASCAR race keeps interrupting my commercial watching.

Bottom line is this. If @NASCARonNBC is going to continue to cover the races for the rest of the year, they have to make alot of changes to their broadcast. The sport itself has lost alot of fans, and they don't need to lose any more with terrible announcing and race coverage. 

I'm glad I will be actually attending the NH301 @NHMS instead of watching it on TV. I don't think I could handle the added stress. 

NASCAR

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nascarguy

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