TV Ratings: Rain hits Bristol, Pocono numbers

The weather gods played havoc with American racing last week, with resulting knocks to the TV audience.

NASCAR Sprint Cup was forced to turn its Bristol "Night Race" into a Sunday afternoon show – not too bad a move for fans, perhaps, but unfortunately it also necessitated a shift to CNBC, where it earned a 1.5 rating and averaged 2.7 million viewers. By comparison, last year's Saturday-night race from Bristol on NBCSN scored a 2.1 rating and averaged 3.6m viewers.

The NASCAR Camping World Truck Series scored an 0.22 rating and averaged 308,000 viewers for the Sunday afternoon replay of Wednesday's night's race from Bristol on Fox Sports 1. That was on top of the 345,000 viewers that the live broadcast – also interrupted by rain – had scored, also on FS1.

The NASCAR Xfinity Series race from Mid-Ohio on Saturday, Aug. 13 scored an impressive 985,000 viewers despite being consigned to the USA network by the Olympics.

The Verizon IndyCar Series also had its Pocono 500-miler rained out on Sunday, forcing a move to Monday where, although it was able to stay on NBCSN with the Olympic Games now concluded, only an estimated 143,000 viewers turned in (the overall rating was not available). Last year, Pocono averaged 635,000 viewers.

The NHRA wasn't affected by rain this week, but drag racing still took a hit in viewers, too. Live coverage of the finals from Brainerd scored a 0.3 rating and averaged 452,000 viewers on Fox Sports 1 Sunday afternoon, which was down from a 0.4/591,000 last year when it aired on a tape-delayed basis on ESPN2.