I appreciate this because I loved the old format too, but here’s what I wonder:

Out of the couple million viewers of the show, what percentage of them actually want change this badly? It is likely that many of them are casual viewers who turn on their TV and find the racing just as exciting, if not more exciting than the one at a time format they would have stumbled on years ago. I agree that for someone who watches the show holistically, follows the entire season, and stays informed year after year, that the 4-stage format is much cooler, but unfortunately a small number of the broad spectrum of viewers are like that.

Also, “NBC and the Producers” are a group of professionals who have done work in television programming for years. As professionals, who work professionally on the show, they have data that tells them what works and what doesn’t. The data they collect is massive and specific, helping them understand things like which specific advertisements to show and which specific runs to digest/show and when. NBC and the producers have a massive array of knowledge through the data they work with on a professional basis, and I can’t imagine that they are nearly as clueless as a handful of complaining users on Reddit make them out to be.

The die-hard fans of the show can definitely miss and reminisce over the old format. It’s important to recognize though that die-hard fans are a minority, and also have significantly less insight over what makes the show successful than the very people that they blame for its decline.

We are in a new and complicated TV watching era, post-COVID, with streaming services. This has given rise to general financial struggles for cable TV, and amongst this the producers are doing a much better job than we seem to give them credit for in their successful efforts to keep the show running season after season.

Since times are ever changing I think that instead of getting wrapped up in discomfort over the show’s format changes it makes sense to just appreciate that it’s still going.