From Wednesday’s NASCAR teleconference on standardized start times:
Q. We’ve seen the ratings have dipped a little bit here, and I think the blame, obviously, can be levied against the competition. It’s tough to go up against the NFL. We can make great ideas of maybe moving some races during the Chase to this Saturday night. Have you guys talked about that idea? The possibility of more races on Saturday nights into the Chase? And I guess for John [Skipper], the difficulty that that would be for you guys to balance all your other programming?
BRIAN FRANCE: Of course we talked about it. There are lots of issues. Saturday night from a level standpoint, I think it’s the lowest night on television. It comes with other issues and you would still have college football which is pretty strong programming. So there’s that. Then you have the host track who may not want to run it at night. So David Hill [Fox Sports] said traditions, and we have a lot of traditional things that happen in terms of Sunday afternoons that worked quite well. So we’re not, obviously, when the ratings go up or down, you’re taking note of that. We are, but we’re not going to make any big, rash changes to try to chase that. We’ll just keep building our story lines and try to look at good racing.
JOHN SKIPPER [ESPN]: We could find times. We do have some nationwide races Saturday night, the Richmond races. We have multiple networks. But I don’t think there are any plans to move to more Saturday night races, but we talk about everything.(NASCAR PR)(10-8-2009)
