Who Is Televising Indy Qualifying This Year??

[billt460]

This seems to be getting harder to find every year. I know ABC always has the race, and they used to carry all the qualifying as well, but not any longer. I went through the next 14 days on both my ESPN channels on my TIVO Box, but found nothing. Same deal with NBCSN. I'm looking for pole qualifying, as well as "Bump Day". Does anyone have a line on this?

 

[skyactiv]

2015

Saturday May 16
4 pm - 6 pm
Day 1 of Qualifying
ABC
Sunday May 17
1 pm - 3 pm
Day 2 of Qualifying
ABC
Friday May 22
11 am - noon
NBCSN
Friday May 22
12 pm - 1pm
Indy Lights Freedom 100
NBCSN
Saturday May 23
5 pm - 6:30 pm
500 Festival Parade
NBCSN
Saturday May 23
6:30 pm - 7 pm
Snake Pit Ball Red Carpet
local ABC
Sunday May 24
11am - 12 pm
500 pre-race show
ABC
Sunday May 24
12 pm
The Indy 500 Mile Race
ABC
Monday May 25
8pm - 11pm
Victory Banquet
local ABC

 

[mjk]

MSNBC, since nobody watches it anymore...

Just kidding.

 

[billt460]

Thanks.

 

[bdcardinal]

I bet something will be streaming on indycar.com also. Seems like ABC is doing everything in its power to crush IndyCar. All they want is the 500, they don't care about anything else and it shows in their broadcasts.

 

[Garak]

Maybe Indy needs to "borrow" Bernie for a while to straighten the TV rights out.

 

[bdcardinal]

Originally Posted By: Garak
Maybe Indy needs to "borrow" Bernie for a while to straighten the TV rights out.

They just need to let NBC do the whole season. IndyCar is stuck in an old contract that Tony George setup where ABC is the only network that can show the series on regular broadcast TV. This was setup where Versus showed the races not on ABC. Now that Versus is NBCSN they actually have money to spend on the broadcast and can have real broadcasters and have a quality broadcast. Plus as the viewer, we don't have to listen to Eddie Cheever spend the entire race talking about how much better he is than everyone else at everything.

 

[Garak]

I see. I don't get to see a lot of Indy. I do like the road courses, so I watch a few of them, but had little idea how their television rights work. I know that the WEC TV rights have straightened out now that SpeedTV across North America has gone the way of the dodo (up here at least, it was repackaged down your way).

Maybe Bernie could straighten it out. He was complaining that F1 commentators don't dumb it down enough and only cater to enthusiasts. I'm sure he'd have an opinion about Eddie Cheever, too.

 

[Whitewolf]

Originally Posted By: Garak
Maybe Indy needs to "borrow" Bernie for a while to straighten the TV rights out.

Not unless you want it moved to a Far East location!

 

[Garak]

...and have the Indy 500 cancelled because it's not that important.

 

[bdcardinal]

ABC is doing an awesome job at screwing up this race broadcast. They barely got the green flag drop on camera for both the race start and the restart.

 

[bdcardinal]

Interesting qualifying session. Typical IndyCar they change the rules and don't give the cars enough practice time. Also the bump session was a joke and seemed the only purpose was to show Buddy Lazier's mechanics furiously work on the car. A Fast 9 shootout would actually have made for better TV.

If they play with boost settings again, IndyCar needs to give the teams ample track time to get the car dialed in.

 

[billt460]

Originally Posted By: bdcardinal
Interesting qualifying session. Typical IndyCar they change the rules and don't give the cars enough practice time. Also the bump session was a joke and seemed the only purpose was to show Buddy Lazier's mechanics furiously work on the car. A Fast 9 shootout would actually have made for better TV.

If they play with boost settings again, IndyCar needs to give the teams ample track time to get the car dialed in.


All I got to see was the morning practice because some network nit wit decided to televise the qualifying on some ESPN channel my cable company doesn't get. Most likely because they didn't want to upset women's college softball fans. Chalk it up to yet another screwed up year of Indy 500 qualifying.

If anyone could post the starting field, it would be appreciated.

 

[A_Harman]

Indy is just not what it used to be. It used to be that they got 220,000 spectators for pole day qualifying, and 450,000 for the race. Now they do well to get 250,000 for the race. It got to the point where they just didn't need 4 days on two weekends to do qualifying. And they only had 34 entrants this year, and they used to have ~100. That was when bump day was exciting. Buddy Lazier was probably only there to create artificial drama for bumping, and is a case of living in the past. Why not just let him run? They have had more than 33 starters at least one time that I can remember.

 

[bdcardinal]

Here is the starting grid: http://www.indycar.com/News/2015/05/5-17-Pole-Day-qualifying-grid

For once I actually felt bad for ABC, they had a time slot all set up both days and didn't get a single qualifying run on network TV. Saturday rain did not cooperate, and Sunday was just a cluster. Luckily my cable provider gets every ESPN channel so I was able to watch it all, but I really wish ABC would dump Eddie Cheever. He brings literally nothing to the table as far as a broadcaster.