Beginning in 2003, Speed Channel bought out the rest of ESPN's contract and became the exclusive broadcast home of that series.
The biggest criticisms include an increase in commercial breaks, emphasis on the more popular drivers and teams to the exclusion of others, and the de-emphasis of actual racing coverage in exchange for more fluff and hype.
NBC was paying $2.8 billion for six years of Sunday night telecasts of the National Football League starting in 2006.
Both the new NFL and old NASCAR deals overlapped in 2006, which forced some postrace coverage at NBC races to air on CNBC.
NASCAR on CBS broadcast the final races of its twenty-two season partnership, ending with the Pepsi 400 at Daytona.
NASCAR on TNN and NASCAR on TBS ended their time in the Winston Cup Series; the former's run of ten seasons came to an end at the Checker Auto Parts/Dura Lube 500 at Phoenix, while the latter's abruptly ceased at eighteen seasons following the UAW-GM Quality 500 at Lowe's Motor Speedway (TBS had initially won rights for the new deal, but were replaced by TNT).
Fox carried the first part of the season beginning with Speedweeks at Daytona, and continued coverage up through the June race held at the Dover International Speedway, with Fox-owned Speed Channel carrying the Gatorade Duel at Daytona qualifying races and the Nextel All-Star Challenge/Nextel Open doubleheader.
TNT covered six mid-season races in June and July dubbed the "NASCAR Summer Series" including the Pepsi 400.
The commentators included announcers Bill Weber and Wally Dallenbach Jr. Kyle Petty replaced the late and great Benny Parsons, and also drove and did commentary from his car during the June 24 race at Sonoma, which turned out at the outset of the race to be rather embarrassing as he uttered "fuck" in a replay of how he was involved in an accident.
TNT used Hinder's cover of the Steppenwolf classic rock anthem "Born to Be Wild" as part of their race broadcast.
Rock group Aerosmith kicked off each broadcast with a live version of their big 1970s FM hit "Back in the Saddle" that was filmed in concert in Las Vegas.
[35] The biggest changes involved ESPN and ABC, as Dale Jarrett became the network's lead race color commentator and Rusty Wallace became the pre-race analyst.
Dale, who completed his driving career with the Sprint All-Star Race XXIV, followed in the footsteps of his father, Ned, who worked with ESPN through most of the 1980s through the 2000 NASCAR season.
Another innovation was TNT's "RaceBuddy", an internet application that showed multiple views of the race and radio feeds from drivers (using NASCAR.com's RaceDay Scanner).
New to Fox telecasts was 3-D CGI animated adventures of "Digger", the network's gopher cam mascot and his friends, Annie, Marbles, Grandpa and rival Lumpy Wheels (named after former Lowe's Motor Speedway chief Humpy Wheeler).
Hours before the July New Hampshire race on TNT, Bill Weber was removed from the broadcast booth and replaced by Ralph Sheheen for undisclosed personal reasons.
But ESPN continues to face heavy criticism from NASCAR fans who complain of bored announcers, bad camera work, excessive commercials and lack of post-race coverage.