Bill Weber, TNT’s normal play-by-play guy, was sent home on Friday night due to an altercation in the lobby of his hotel in Manchester, NH. It is unclear what happened to cause the suspension at the moment; all we know is as a result, TNT suspended Weber for Sunday’s race and possibly beyond.
The last-minute suspension resulted in some shuffling of talent on Sunday. Ralph Sheheen, who has plenty of booth experience with short track racing, road racing, motorcycle racing, and the World Rally Championship (dubbed in from Charlotte), was tapped to move up from pit road and take Weber’s place in the booth. This left TNT with just three pit reporters (Lindsay Czarniak, Marty Snider, and Matt Yocum) instead of the usual four. Jim Noble, who typically reports exclusively for TNT’s RaceBuddy service, also helped out a little for the pre-race show.
Weber also usually hosts the popular Countdown to Green (the actual pre-race show, as opposed to NASCAR on TNT Live!, which is the pre-pre-race show). Instead, Marc Fein, who usually hosts NASCAR on TNT Live! along with Larry McReynolds, took over Weber’s hosting duties seamlessly. In fact, Weber was not even mentioned at all on Sunday — it was as if he didn’t exist. Now, I’m sure that some fans would be happy to see him out of the broadcast booth. Personally, I’ve never been a big fan of Bill Weber on play-by-play, especially knowing how he got the permanent play-by-play gig back in 2004 (Allen Bestwick broke his leg playing ice hockey, giving Weber a chance to sub for Bestwick. It quickly became permanent). I’m fine with him being on pit road and hosting Countdown to Green, but I always thought that NBC/Turner made a mistake switching Weber and Bestwick’s roles. I’ve mentioned in the past that I do not advocate people getting canned, though. I feel that I am no position to do that, having no experience in television. If I were to do that, people would just say something along the lines of “Who died and put you in charge?” and then ignore everything I’ve written.
