INDIANAPOLIS — Bob Jenkins may not have been the first voice of auto racing on television, but it was his voice that introduced the sport to the masses as a weekly television product.
It was in the early days of ESPN when Jenkins, along with Larry Nuber, were the voices race fans waited to hear all week. ESPN had just started as a 24-hour-a-day cable channel with an acronym that stood for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network in 1979.
Motorsports Broadcaster Bob Jenkins, 73
The only problem was outside of some college football and college basketball telecasts, the cable network did not have the rights to televise much else. Much of its lineup in the early days included a hefty dose of Australian Rules Football, tennis tournaments and softball.
At the time, NASCAR and IndyCar races were seldom on live television. ABC televised the Indianapolis 500 on same day, tape-delay, and from the early 1960s to 1978, the Daytona 500 as part of “Wide World of Sports.”
Both CBS and NBC infrequently showed a few races a season, even after CBS was the first to show live, flag-to-flag coverage of the Daytona 500 beginning in 1979.
The voices of auto racing at that time were Jim McKay, Jackie Stewart and SPEED SPORT’s Chris Economaki on ABC, Ken Squier and David Hobbs on CBS and Charlie Jones, and later Paul Page, on NBC.
ESPN saw potential in televising auto racing on a weekly basis, particularly NASCAR, CART and USAC.
When the first auto race appeared on ESPN, it was Bob Jenkins and Larry Nuber in the booth. Throughout the 1980s, Jenkins and Nuber were the “John Hall and Darryl Oates” of auto racing, an inseparable duo working NASCAR, USAC and CART events.
Later, as NASCAR races in the 1980s and 1990s boomed in popularity, Nuber was replaced by Benny Parsons and Ned Jarrett. When Jenkins called a CART race in the 1980s and early 1990s, he was often paired with Derek Daly and later with Larry Rice.
It was USAC’s “Thursday Night Thunder” and “Saturday Night Thunder” — a weekly series that featured USAC sprint car and midget races — and ESPN’s “SpeedWeek” and “SpeedWorld” that established Jenkins as the voice of auto racing from the 1980s until he retired from television as the voice of IndyCar races on NBC Sports Network in 2012.
The Indiana University graduate began his career as a news reporter at Indiana stations in Fort Wayne and Valparaiso, before landing a job at WIRE Radio in Indianapolis as a co-anchor of a nationally syndicated farm news show, “AgDay.”
Although Jenkins’ voice was the soundtrack of NASCAR during its booming glory days of the 1980s and 1990s before ESPN and ABC lost the television contract to FOX and NBC beginning in 2001, the Liberty, Ind., native was actually an IndyCar fan at heart.
He attended his first Indianapolis 500 in 1960 and missed only two — 1961 and ’65 — throughout his life.
He joined the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Radio Network in 1979 as “backstretch announcer” and when the anchor of the Indianapolis 500, Page, moved over to become lead announcer for ABC’s Indy 500 telecast in 1988, Lou Palmer took over for two years before Jenkins became chief announcer from 1990 to ’98.
After his television career came to an end, Jenkins’ voice was heard over the Indianapolis Motor Speedway public address system from 2012-’20.
Famed motorsports journalist Robin Miller recalled the early days of Jenkins career when the 73-year-old Jenkins was awarded with the “Robin Miller Award” on Carb Day at this year’s Indianapolis 500.
“The first time I heard Bob Jenkins voice, he was giving the Farm Market Update on radio station WIRE at 12 noon,” Miller recalled. “He had a very distinctive voice, but I didn’t care about the hog prices, so I went on. Paul Page and Terry Lingner were two of the biggest people in Bob’s life. Paul knew Bob’s passion for racing, so he tried to get him a job as a backstretch reporter on the IMS Radio Network.
“That was the first time I heard Bob’s voice on the radio as a racing guy.
“In 1980, I was still trying to kill myself driving USAC midgets and we went to Whitewater Speedway. Larry Rice and I were unloading my car. Here comes Bob and Larry Nuber and a guy that had a camera that said ESPN on it.
“He said, ‘There’s this new network that started up and they are going to start doing some USAC midgets and sprint car races and things like that. “I don’t know if this will ever air, but at least we’ll have something in the can.’
“We’re driving home that night and Rice askes me, what do you think of that channel? I said, ‘Are you kidding me, that channel doesn’t have a shot. A 24-hour sports channel, c’mon.’”
Miller missed the mark on that one, but also told of how Jenkins along with Benny Parsons became the face of NASCAR during ESPN’s glory days and NASCAR’s success skyrocketed.
“As time progressed, he got more and more comfortable and he knew IndyCar was his favorite and he did the best at it,” Miller said. “I don’t know that there is anybody that has more respect than Bob Jenkins.
“When you put the talent together and combine it that he is so humble, so personable and so likeable, it should probably be the Bob Jenkins Award.”
Jenkins died Monday after battling brain cancer. He came down with a severe headache on Christmas night and doctors discovered two malignant tumors.
On Carb Day, Jenkins told SPEED SPORT in a hushed voice as he had difficulty speaking because of the cancer, “I’m going to beat this thing. Mark my words, I am going to beat this.”
Despite his best efforts, however, Jenkins lost his battle to cancer and auto racing lost its soundtrack to an age when auto racing as a weekly television program was introduced to the masses and became a mainstream sport.