There have been many, the sky is falling stories about the NASCAR TV ratings so far in 2009. While the TV numbers are down from 2008, and way down from their peak in 2004 and 2005 the sky is hardly falling. IN fact NASCAR Sprint Cup, Nationwide, and Camping World Truck racing remain a very valuable TV property. However, the numbers are down and many older NASCAR fans are not happy with the current version of NASCAR or completely sold on its current class of drivers.

On average over TV broadcasts on Fox, TBS, ESPN, and ABC the TV ratings are down 12% from 2008. Since attendance is also down it seems to paint a picture of a sport in crisis. However each Sprint Cup race of the 2009 season is averaging just under five million TV viewers. Nationwide series races, predominantly shown on ESPN2 are averaging about 1.6 million TV viewers. TV ratings for the Truck series are actually up, and up significantly even though they are broadcast on Speed TV and average around 450k TV viewers.

All together that means around 7.5 million people are tuning into watch NASCAR TV broadcasts each week. Of course many of the TV numbers get skewed when a race is rained out and has to be run on a Monday afternoon. In 2009 it seems that there has been a lot of races moved or delayed because of the weather, while that hurts the TV numbers it does not truly show how strong of a TV product NASCAR is.