TV Ratings: Watkins Glen NASCAR, Seattle NHRA

NASCAR's return to road racing brought another step backward in TV audience, as last Sunday's Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race from Watkins Glen scored a 2.0 rating and 3.3 million viewers on NBCSN. That's down some 13% from last year's 2.3/3.8m telecast, which aired on the USA Network due to NBC's commitments to the Summer Olympics. According to SportsMediaWatch, this year's Glen telecast was the lowest rated for the New York road race since at least 1999.

Even with NASCAR's overall trend of year-on-year declines, though, it's worth noting that it continues to lead all sports programming in midsummer. The Watkins Glen Cup race was the highest-rated sports telecast of the weekend (the fourth straight time NASCAR has held that distinction), with its closest rival being the Bridgestone Invitational golf tournament on CBS, which scored a 1.8/2.7m.

The NASCAR Xfinity Series fared a little better, scoring a 0.79/1.2m on NBCSN compared to a 0.67/1.0m last year, although that race was also exiled due to the Olympics, in its case to CNBC.

After a disappointing ratings showing last time out, the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series was back up to its more typical numbers for live coverage of the finals from Seattle on FOX. The broadcast network telecast scored a 0.55 rating and 883,000 viewers – more than double that of last week's finals on FOX Sports 1 – despite once again going head-to-head with NASCAR on Sunday afternoon.