Saturday brought the NASCAR Xfinity Series to Phoenix Raceway to battle for 200 laps around the one-mile tri-oval. TV-wise, this race will likely be remembered best for some highly localized issues. I wanted to talk about this situation since it's relevant right now and I don't see it going away anytime soon.

In Atlanta, one of the country's largest markets, the broadcast on WPCH (Peachtree TV) hard cut to a commercial break just as the white flag came out. Once four minutes of commercials were complete, it did not return to Phoenix. Instead, they went to live coverage of the Atlanta Hawks-Indiana Pacers NBA game at State Farm Arena. It should be noted that they didn't go straight to the game. There were approximately 15 minutes of pre-game coverage before the tipoff.

Needless to say, there were some angry fans in the Atlanta area Saturday evening. That whole situation bites. I'm happy that I didn't have to deal with it, but I wouldn't be surprised if you see more of this later in the year, especially once college football starts up.

For the most part, The CW takes a laid back strategy to issues with their programming like this. In this situation, the network would not want your complaints at first.

On the support page on The CW's website, they specifically state that this is an issue that should be reported to your local station and/or service provider. Effectively, it is outside of their control. If your local provider is unreceptive, then contact the network.

Admittedly, a situation like this is fairly rare with the full-service networks, but it can happen. For example, when NASCAR started their first series-wide TV deals in 2001, a number of Cup races were outright pre-empted or moved to different stations off of FOX in New York City.

Why did this happen? At the time, WNYW FOX 5 was the over-the-air TV home of the New York Yankees. They'd primarily show games on weekends while the rest of the games were on MSG (it was the final year before the YES Network launched). So, there were a few occasions in which the race got bounced for baseball. In 2002, the over-the-air games moved to WCBS (CBS' owned-and-operated flagship affiliate in New York), ending the conflict.

In the past, local affiliates had substantial control over what aired on their schedules, especially during the daytime hours. The "Big Three" networks had fairly expansive daytime schedules. Wikipedia maintains daytime TV schedule pages for each year based on the Eastern time zone. For example, here's the schedule from the 1974-75 season.

Affiliates were under no obligation to air seemingly any of it. It was common in those days for affiliates to pick and choose what aired based on popularity, time slots and more. There were two "death slots" in the schedule as well. Those were Noon ET and 4 p.m. ET.

Noon ET was a death slot because a lot of affiliates were starting to create midday newscasts and they would preempt whatever was scheduled there to air it. At 4 p.m. ET, affiliates might air syndicated game shows, talk shows, sitcom reruns or even local programming in place of whatever the network scheduled.

The programmer at each affiliate had a lot of power here. The feelings of higher-ups on the grounds of morals or even on race could affect what got shown, either on a one-time basis, or full-time.

On this schedule linked above, CBS aired a game show at 4 p.m. ET called Musical Chairs. This was a music-based game show hosted by Adam Wade, the very first African-American game show host.

Being at 4 p.m. ET clearly didn't help the show as it lasted only 19 weeks (there's literally one episode on YouTube and it's unclear whether or not the master tapes of the series even exist today). However, there was a real chance that programmers in more conservative parts of the country refused to air the show simply because Wade was hosting.

A similar issue occurred with Temperatures Rising, a comedy that aired in prime time on ABC from 1972-1974. That show had Cleavon Little (best known as Bart, the sheriff in Blazing Saddles) in an expansive role as a hospital surgeon. This led to the show being preempted off of a number of ABC stations in the south and the midwest.

In 1987, WNYT, the NBC affiliate in Albany, N.Y., refused to air an episode of Valerie (this was a family sitcom that starred Valerie Harper that eventually became The Hogan Family after Harper was fired) entitled "Bad Timing." Why? Because it used the word "condom." At that time, condoms had never been referenced on prime time television.

More recent preemption issues happened when IMSA was still with FOX Sports. They would air a couple of broadcasts a year on FOX and there would always be some affiliates that refused to air it. One of the biggest offenders was WSVN, the FOX affiliate in Miami. They would literally preempt races for infomercials, which was exasperating. If you lived in South Florida and wanted to watch IMSA on FOX, you had to drive across the Everglades to Naples.

For years, The CW was prime time-only with their shows that mainly targeted the younger demographic. Now that they have their sports division, they're expanding the amount of programming that they're offering to their affiliates. A number of them really aren't ready for that since they could be operating under deals agreed to before CW Sports launched.

The situation bites, but it's what we have to deal with. With time, the communication between the network and affiliates should hopefully improve. 

However, the likelihood of preemptions for local sports is likely to be a problem going forward as Regional Sports Networks bleed money. The past few years have seen a number of pro sports teams gravitate back towards over-the-air TV to air games instead of cable-exclusive local sports channels. Affiliates of The CW are prime candidates to land these rights.

A way for The CW to alleviate these issues would be for them to actually stream the races on their website or The CW App in addition to airing them on their affiliates. However, they have chosen not to. It is unclear whether this is a personal choice, or if it was written into their TV deal with NASCAR that they couldn't do so. They stream practice and qualifying there (affiliates can choose to pick that up, but my affiliate here in Albany, N.Y., WCWN, has chosen not to so far), but races are only available the next day.

Regardless, this is an issue that I will continue to watch over the next few months. I don't think that this is the end of the problems. It's really sad since it overshadows what should be good news in that viewership was up 13% on Saturday over last year's race. The Xfinity Series has their highest viewership in years despite these issues.

Phil Allaway is the Frontstretch newsletter manager. He can be reached at phil.allaway@frontstretch.com. Photo is courtesy of our own Danny Peters.