The NFL may have a dancing robot, but NASCAR has a mischievous gopher.
FOX has announced that Digger, an animated gopher that serves as the “alter-ego to FOX?s Gopher Cam,” will be the subject of a series of vignettes that will air prior to the network’s NASCAR telecasts this season.
The two-minute vignettes will be entitled “The Adventures of Digger & Friends“, and will feature Digger, “his girlfriend Annie, best friend Marbles, Gramps and arch-nemesis Lumpy Wheels.” The series’ theme song will be sung by country star Keith Urban, who says of the theme: “I just hope that Digger likes it.”
The series makes its debut during the NASCAR on FOX pre-race show prior to this Sunday’s Daytona 500.
Digger and his associates will also “appear throughout NASCAR on FOX broadcasts as animated wipes, billboards and bugs,” akin to what the network did with its robots during NHL coverage in the 1990s.
FOX hopes to use Digger & Friends to cultivate future fans. The network notes that “roughly a third of the FOX NASCAR audience” is made up of homes with children.
This is not the first time FOX has tried to make their telecasts palatable to the younger set. Earlier this decade, the network used Scooter the talking baseball on MLB telecasts, a move that was widely derided. The network also uses Cleatus the robot on its NFL broadcasts.
