Amazon Prime's Stellar Broadcast

 


    Amazon Prime's 5 race stretch has come to an end with NASCAR and it was a breathe of fresh air to the NASCAR world. Amazon Prime can in and exceeded the high expectations that many, including myself, put on them. Today, I want to dive into what made the Amazon Prime really good and what we should expect from the other TV partners moving forward.

The Booth

    The Prime Booth consisted of Adam Alexander, Dale Earnhardt Jr., and Steve Letarte, all of whom have experience calling NASCAR races before. Earnhardt Jr. and Letarte called races for NBC and Alexander currently calls races for the Xfinity Series on the CW. Though Alexander has not worked with Earnhardt JR and Letarte much in the past, the trio worked extremely well together. Adam Alexander felt fresh in the booth and knew exactly what his role was. He didn't get in the way of Earnhardt Jr. and Letarte when they needed to speak and Alexander did a great job of just letting the race breathe. Alexander was not constantly talking all of the time which was very much appreciated

    Earnhardt Jr. and Letarte were good as they usually are. Earnhardt Jr. brought the energy that he had from when he was first with NBC back in 2018. The slide job call with Larson and Busch's battle at Chicagoland in 2018 is one of my favorite calls to this day. Though Earnhardt Jr. didn't have that iconic call, he was still great with giving good insight into the sport as a whole. For Letarte, I thought that this might have been the best he has ever been as a broadcaster. The burn bar was executed super well and I was very intrigued to see how much fuel each driver was burning relative to each other. Furthermore, Letarte was pretty much just calling the race like a crew chief from the booth, providing insight on why drivers would choose certain strategies. There really isn't much to complain about when it comes to this booth.

The Production

    Amazon Prime shined the most in this aspect, in my opinion. When I watched the 600 at home, I was very surprised at just how crisp everything looked. The cars looked faster than I had seen at the previous Charlotte races and a large part of that is because Prime just had higher quality production. Everything was HD and looked amazing, which I can't same the same for NASCAR's other broadcast partners. Furthermore, Prime had so many cameras around the track to catch all of the action. When Hocevar nearly spun off of turn 3 at Pocono, they had 15 different angles of the save which they showed over and over again. It was amazing to see just how much care Amazon Prime put into this aspect of their broadcast.

    I think the graphics that Amazon Prime had were really solid as well. The leaderboard is similar to what Fox and NBC had, but fit the colors of Amazon Prime. The graphics that had the race updates, pit road times, and the finish results of stages worked well for me as well. Furthermore, the intervals were constantly updated, unlike Fox, who just did not want to update the intervals at times throughout their broadcasts. I could tell that the graphics were inspired by what NBC has, which isn't a bad thing as NBC's graphic game is quite solid. Overall, Amazon Prime did a really solid job on the graphics and killed the production.

Pre and Post Race Shows

    One benefit to streaming with sports specifically is that they do not have a specific time that they have to end by. These broadcasts shouldn't go on forever, but it gives these sports more flexibility with their time. As a result, we can get full pre-race and post-race shows like what Amazon Prime had. The pre-race show would be at least a half an hour long, whereas the post-race show was an hour long each time. This meant that Amazon Prime did not have to cut to another show, unlike Fox or NBC. There's more wiggle room to do stuff and Amazon Prime took full advantage of that.

    Danielle Trotta, Carl Edwards, and Corey LaJoie made these shows awesome. Trotta was probably the best host that Amazon Prime could have gotten for these shows. She made the shows engaging, but also let Edwards and LaJoie do a lot of the talking without making the show about herself. Edwards and LaJoie  did a great job of providing analysis looking into the race and what happened post race. All three created great discussions with the drivers post-race, which was very much needed. The highlight for me was the interview Bubba Wallace gave after Nashville, where we got to learn a lot more Wallace and him as a father. Seeing so much more personality out of the drivers was amazing and these three did great at doing so.

    The only downside to these is that they did feel slow paced at times, and it took a while to get to the pit road driver interviews post race. The one thing I liked about NBC and Fox more than Prime was that they got to the pit road interviews rather quickly post race. With Prime, they would take 15-20 minutes just to show the interview with the drivers who finished in the top 5. I would rather have those interviews be shown right after the winner is interviewed on the front stretch. Aside from that though, the pre and post race shows were great.

Miscellaneous Stuff

    I think I've covered most of the key areas that went into Prime's great broadcast but I'll mention a couple more things here. Firstly, the sound that Prime had for the cars themselves was amazing. The cars sounded loud and got to hear what it truly felt like going 200 MPH at Michigan and Pocono. Along with this, Amazon Prime did not rely on on-board cameras all of the time. They showed them occasionally but they were not obsessed with it like Fox was. I believe the crowd noise was also amazing as well. We could hear the crowd on the broadcasts and weren't subjected to random camera angles of them during the race. 

    Lastly, I want to talk about the pit reports that Amazon Prime had. Trevor Bayne, Kim Coon, and Marty Snider were all really solid on pit road. They did a good job of reporting what was going on with specific cars, adjustments made, and much more. None of them felt out of place a provided a good amount of analysis.

Moving Forward

    Amazon Prime took NASCAR seriously, which is a lot more than I can say for Fox especially. Amazon Prime made each race feel like a big deal which I greatly appreciate. Part of that might be influenced by them only having 5 races a year, but I think Amazon would have this same passion the entire year if they had the full schedule. They knocked out of the park for what makes a great NASCAR broadcast. I am super excited to see how they grow over the next 6 years because they are already my favorite media partner that NASCAR has had since I got back into the motorsport in 2020.

    I think Prime's broadcast speaks to what the standard should be in NASCAR moving forward. NBC's broadcasts are pretty solid all things considered. There are some smaller things that I wish could be improved upon, but NBC takes the sport seriously. The partner that needs the most help is Fox. To say that Fox's broadcasts of NASCAR races are great is not really true. Rather, Fox has some of the worst broadcasts that I've seen in sports. Fox needs to start taking NASCAR seriously and stop pretending that just because their ratings are better than Prime's, means that the general fanbase likes Fox more. That is not the case, as more people would lean towards Prime's broadcast. Fox does not take the sport seriously which is a shame, because Fox had an excellent broadcast throughout the 2000s, up until the mid 2010s. Now, Fox's broadcasts are a train wreck, and I sincerely hope that they take notes from Prime moving forward. I'd give Prime's broadcast a 9.5 out of 10 as it was amazing!


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