Sunday night’s Cracker Barrel 400 (7:15 p.m. ET estimated green flag) from Nashville Superspeedway marks the second of five Cup Series races this year carried exclusively by Amazon on their Prime Video service. The streamer’s debut at the Coca Cola 600 last week drew high praise from many fans, and that included for the primary booth of play-by-play voice Adam Alexander and analysts Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Steve Letarte. Ahead of that, Alexander spoke to media on a conference call and said he was thrilled to be paired with those voices.
“We obviously know that there’s no better analysts than the guys that I’ll be working with. When it comes to NASCAR on Prime, Dale has tremendous passion and history in the sport, and Steve is someone who obviously understands strategy and the history side as well. For me, I think my job stays the same: just be a setup guy for two analysts that obviously know it inside and out, and we’ll be able to relay the message to the fans of what’s happening on track.”
It’s notable to hear Alexander talk about how his job remains the same even in this new territory (which will include calling races with this booth for both Prime Video and TNT). He’s worked in an incredible array of motorsports broadcasting roles over the years, from PA announcing to radio play-by-play to TV play-by-play, pit reporting, show hosting, and more. But he said he approaches each new role the same way, with a focus on creating great conversations with his on-air partners.
“I wouldn’t say the approach is any different. The one thing that I’ve learned over the years is the best way to present the product is in a conversational way. The time that Dale and Steve and I have been able to spend together in rehearsals, and not even when we have a headset on, just the time that we spend together in a meeting or just creating ideas or at lunch or dinner, we just talk racing, and we try to take that same philosophy to the booth. And that’s what I’ve always done.”
Alexander said his varied experience over the decades has been quite helpful there, exposing him to analysts that approach racing in different ways.
“Over the years, I think I’ve grown in that area just because I’ve worked with so many different analysts. And some of those analysts in recent years are ones that weren’t part of our regular group, and so they weren’t in the meetings and maybe they didn’t have all the details that I had as far as preparation. And so the easiest thing to do was for me to just facilitate the conversation and set them up and let them be the experts that they are.”
There can be a challenge in working with anyone new on air for the first time, but Alexander said his past interactions with Letarte and Earnhardt in other roles made this a smooth transition.
“We have hit it off great. One benefit for me is is having worked with both Dale and Steve as competitors, so those relationships were there. Even though we haven’t worked together, we all have tremendous experience working in the business and doing a live TV broadcast. I think each of us have a feel for what we want it to be. And I would say that our ideas and thought process for a successful broadcast are very much aligned, and that we pick up where the other leaves off.”
And he said their experience with each other helped them come together more quickly than he’s seen in other cases.
“It’s been very interesting to get together, how quickly we picked it up,” Alexander said. “It doesn’t always work that way. But there’s a ton of mutual respect in the booth amongst the three of us, and the time that we’ve spent together in our rehearsals. That respect factor is huge when you go to put on a successful broadcast. So I feel like that we’re in a really good place and have a great foundation.”
That view certainly was echoed by many fans in the positive response to last week’s broadcast. We’ll see if the booth continues to grow together on air, and how it continues to be received. We’ll also see how the ratings go for Prime Video this week; last week saw them down 16 percent versus last year’s Fox numbers (certainly within good expectations for a shift from broadcast TV to a paid streaming service, especially when a six-year decrease in viewer median age is factored in). Maybe the ratings grow as fans get used to where to find this, or maybe they drop off now that this is no longer a novelty. But the main booth (and the telecast overall) has received high praise thus far, and Alexander’s discussion of the chemistry they built even before their first broadcast may illuminate part of the reason why.