Racing fans aren't fading away, they're just tuning out

RICHMOND

Colleen Lenzer loves NASCAR and Dale Earnhardt Jr., but even love isn't enough to get her to watch an entire Sprint Cup race on TV anymore.

She's found something else to do: fold laundry.

Lenzer, 42, watches the start of the races, but a sport that had her "glued to the TV" only a couple of years ago no longer is as gripping.

"I get bored with it," said Lenzer, who confesses to folding laundry or starting dinner during some races. "It doesn't seem competitive or exciting. It doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of passing."

The Scranton, Pa., resident apparently isn't alone in feeling that way. Fox's TV ratings for Cup races are down 13 percent from this time a year ago - a significant drop for a network that saw its Cup ratings relatively steady the past two years.

The ratings drop can be blamed on several things, from a rain-shortened Daytona 500 to a lack of excitement in some races to a deepening erosion of the audience for almost all television programming.

The decline worries some in the garage. They fear it could make it more difficult to entice sponsors, even though NASCAR is still expected to be the second-highest-rated sports programming of 2009, behind only the NFL.

"I know that the networks are really looking hard at what else they can do to bring the audience back up to the levels that were there," said Geoff Smith, president of Roush Fenway Racing.

TV ratings, though, can be fickle, bouncing up and down like the stock market. With more channels, there are more choices. Industry insiders noted that if a program's ratings remain even year to year, that's generally viewed as a sign of success.

Fox officials, though, aren't panicking.

"We don't stick our head in the sand. We look at the ratings every week." said Michael Mulvihill, Fox Sports vice president of programming and research. " We analyze them as thoroughly as we can, but I think sometimes, we have to step back and say, 'Look, let's not overreact to what we're seeing; this is the second-highest-rated sport on television, and the growth story of the decade.'

"I don't think we would trade places with anybody."

That mirrors what NASCAR chairman Brian France said in an interview on Sirius Satellite Radio.

Mulvihill notes that Fox's NFL ratings were down 2 percent for the 2008 regular season and 10 percent for the playoffs. He said CBS' regular-season NFL ratings were down 3 percent last year and that Fox's Major League Baseball coverage during the 2008 regular season was off 13 percent from 2007.

Mulvihill says the economy has impacted ratings, citing research showing that viewers are turning to cable news programs more often during the recession. A Daytona 500 shortened by rain, robbing fans of a finish possibly as dramatic as last weekend's at Talladega, also has affected NASCAR's TV numbers.

Ratings build as an event nears its conclusion, but the 500's finish came with about a quarter of the race left - before the largest audience tuned in. Without an exciting finish, not as many people were as likely to watch the following weeks and ratings declined.

NASCAR's problem is that a slow start could lead to a worse finish. Ratings typically slide from the beginning of the season as the weather improves and more people plan outdoor activities. NASCAR's ratings drop in the fall, as compared to early in the season, because of competition from the NFL.

Humpy Wheeler, former track president of Lowe's Motor Speedway, says the reason for lower TV ratings this year is simple. It's the racing.

"I don't think there's any question about why we've lost them," Wheeler said of TV viewers. "We lost them because of boring, dull races. That came about because of lack of a considerable amount of drama. That's what needs to be corrected. Until we do that, we could see a continued deterioration in this, and that spells real trouble."

Lead changes, often used as a way to gauge a race's competitiveness, are down by more than 20 percent from last year. Only three of the first nine races this year have had more lead changes than the same event a year ago.

It also doesn't help NASCAR that its most popular driver, Earnhardt, has just one Cup victory since the 2007 season. Both Mulvihill and Barbara Zidovsky, a former senior vice president of sports marketing at Nielsen Sports, agree that the ratings could jump if Earnhardt begins winning.

Tim Gluth, a 29-year-old Pewaukee, Wis., resident said his viewership of NASCAR races has fallen, but that it might increase if Earnhardt began performing better.

There's another factor, one that runs deeper than simply the number of lead changes or who's winning races: It's not impossible that the luster on NASCAR could be fading. One of the fastest-growing sports since the early '90s, when a majority of the Cup races moved to network television, NASCAR may be finding that some fans have simply moved on to other programs.

"NASCAR had this kind of big boost in ratings, which generated this large fan base that it hadn't had before," said Robert Thompson, founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. "There's always a fear that that kind of fan base can be fickle and fall off."

That concept stuns race fan Linda Nelson.

"I just can't imagine people are turning off the TV,"' said the 58-year-old from Moline, Ill., who watches all the Cup races. "You've got to find out what's going on."

Maybe not.