The first two events of the 2011 NASCAR on FOX season both posted increases over last year. On Saturday night, the Bud Shootout delivered a 4.5/8 (7.8 million viewers) nationally, a +2% gain over last year’s 4.4/8. The next day, Daytona 500 Qualifying earned a 2.0/5 (3.3 mill.) in a return to its traditional Sunday afternoon window. Those figures represent gains of +25% on rating and +40% on viewership compared to last year (1.6/4, 2.4 mill.) when the qualifying was run on Saturday to avoid competing with pre-Super Bowl programming on CBS. Although the Bud Shootout and Daytona Qualifying were both up over last year’s performance they also both fell short of 2009 levels. SPEED is posting increases for some of its key NASCAR programming. The Bud Shootout edition of Victory Lane was up +23% over last year (0.38 vs. 0.31 on a SPEED coverage area basis). Sprint Cup practice sessions are up +90% on Speed (0.78 vs. 0.41, coverage area). Last week also saw the premiere of The Day: Remembering Dale Earnhardt, a documentary chronicling the day of the 2001 Daytona 500 in which Earnhardt was killed in a last-lap crash. The Friday night premiere of The Day averaged 805,000 viewers and ranks as Speed’s highest-rated non-race program in two and a half years. The only major NASCAR programming on Speed that trailed year-ago performance this weekend was the pre-race show Race Day (-15%, 1.59 vs. 1.87, coverage area).(2-19-2011)
