NBC drew a 12.3 overnight rating for the race portion of the Belmont Stakes on Saturday from 6:15-7:15pm ET, which saw American Pharoah secure horse racing's first Triple Crown since '78. The overnight is down 5% from a 12.9 last year, when California Chrome failed in his bid for the Triple Crown, but up sharply from a 9.5 overnight on ABC in '08, when Big Brown attempted the feat. The 12.3 is still the third-best overnight on record for a Belmont Stakes race telecast (records go back to '88). The Belmont Stakes also was the best Saturday afternoon sports telecast since the Jan. 10 Patriots-Ravens AFC Divisional Game on NBC. Louisville topped all markets with a 24.2 local rating for Saturday's race, while host-market N.Y. finished fifth at a 16.6 local rating (Austin Karp, Assistant Managing Editor).
SILENCE IS GOLDEN: SI.com's Richard Deitsch wrote NBC’s work on the Belmont Stakes "was strong overall, especially the moments leading up to the race and the immediate post-race coverage where producer Rob Hyland and director Drew Esocoff were on point using the images and audio of the crowd and the track as part of the narrative." Hyland: "Overall, I was very pleased with the telecast. ... When American Pharoah crossed the finish line, the production philosophy was very simple: document the moment and let the moment speak for itself. When Larry Collmus finished the race call, there was very little said by the announce booth (Tom Hammond, Jerry Bailey and Randy Moss). Director Drew Esocoff and I had discussed the sequence of images as the horse crossed the finish line and I think we captured the scene very well. It was simple but it worked -- nothing needed to be said and nothing else from a production standpoint needed to be introduced. ... By remaining silent in the broadcast booth, I think we provided the viewers with a similar experience to what the 90,000 screaming fans at Belmont were relishing: the deafening noise from a celebration 37 years in the making" (SI.com, 6/7). In N.Y., Richard Sandomir writes NBC "did not miss anything from angles behind, above, to the side of and in front of the field of eight horses." As soon as American Pharoah "crossed the finish line, NBC quickly cut to a lovely reaction shot" of trainer Bob Baffert and his wife, Jill. Meanwhile, the pre-race programming lasted nearly 2 1/2 hours, and "despite the quality of the broadcast, it felt too long." But perhaps it was "appropriate given the 37-year wait for a Triple Crown winner" (N.Y. TIMES, 6/8).
