Brian France began his teleconference today asking that we focus the teleconference on the championship weekend coming up, but most of what people wanted to talk about was the economy.
That, and America’s Funniest Home Videos.
"We didn’t like it," France said of ABC’s decision to move the last 34 minutes of Sunday’s race to ESPN2 to clear the airwaves for AFHV. "That was not what we had anticipated, but we have talked to them repeatedly in the last couple of days and there were lots of circumstances that they had to consider. I don’t have to agree with all of those but they had their own issues that they had to manage around. We unfortunately got the short end of that on the sport. we’re hoping to eliminate that happening in the future."
When France was asked if any arrangement was agreed upon between the network and NASCAR to prevent that sort of thing from happening again, he didn’t really give a solid answer. There probably isn’t any.
"I think what’s important is ABC, ESPN and NASCAR, our interests are in line," France said. "… They want to do what’s in the best interest of the NASCAR race fan, which they serve week in and week out. They did not like having to pull off of ABC and having to operate the way they did on Sunday. That said, it is important for us to work with them on scheduling, in this case a red flag which took them another 30 minutes out of the time they had planned. That’s a very unusual thing in Arizona this time a year. … They do not want to do anything but what’s in the best interest of the race fan and that’s what we’ll figure out."
Check back later for more of what France said about the economy and the lack of excitement at Homestead this year.