Friday at Phoenix offers SPEED viewers an interesting day of programming that ends with a live race. It also offers another example of ESPN stepping away from practice and qualifying for series it has covered all season.
SPEED begins at Noon Eastern Time with a ninety minute Busch Series practice live. The network then transitions to the NASCAR Live program for all the latest news and interviews from the track at 1:30PM.
Following at 2:30PM is the quirky Go or Go Home show, which was supposed to focus on the on-track situation, but has often been just an extension of NASCAR Live.
This early programming block gives SPEED three hours live from Phoenix with no competition from ESPN. After a thirty minute break, SPEED returns to the live format.
At 3:30PM the network hosts live Busch Series practice which leads directly into Craftsman Truck Series qualifying. This block is scheduled to be over at 5:30PM, but may run slightly longer. Then, everybody gets a meal break before the main event.
At 7:30PM Krista Voda hosts The Set-Up, which is the pre-race show for the Craftsman Truck Series. Then, at 8PM the race coverage gets underway with Rick Allen and Phil Parsons calling the action. Ray Dunlap and Adam Alexander will be on pit road. I did not receive anything from SPEED about Michael Waltrip's participation.
This should be an outstanding live event for SPEED, perhaps one of the best Truck Series races of the season. With the points championship on the line, things could get very interesting very fast. SPEED has done a great job for this series, and the teams have provided great racing this year.
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20 comments:
Krista Voda's website says she is doing The Setup and the race this week and next. I assume this means she will also be on pit road which will be fine with me.
I'd like to know why the Busch practices are being televised and only Happy Hour on the Cup side? The Busch Championship is done. The Cup Championship, not so much!
I am looking forward to spending all the time with SPEED. They advertised Practice and they have actually shown cars on the track practicing. :)
Working from home this afternoon and I've been watching NASCAR Live and Go or Go Home airing during the first Cup Practice. Unless I missed something, they did not conduct a single interview with a driver or crew member until about 1:40 Central time (coverage was from 12:30 - 2 Central).
Before that it was John Roberts, Randy Pemberton and Hermie Sadler on the stage and they discussed a number of issues. Ray Dunlap and Adam Alexander were in the garage and gave regular updates from the garage with brief shots from the track and the stalls but they talked to no one. It was strange. Maybe it's very intense today and no one had time to talk during practice. (SPEED couldn't have been banned from talking to people during practice, could they?)
Around 1:40 -the last 20 minutes of practice - Jacque Villenueve answered one question (he was in his car) and about five minutes ago Clint Bowyer answered one question. Ray Dunlap just now was about to interview Tommy Baldwin but the microphone wasn't working so they went to commercial.
John Roberts apologized for the microphone failure when they came back (which was great - I personally didn't think it was a big deal at all) and Adam Alexander came over with his working microphone to interview Tommy Baldwin.
John Roberts apologized for the microphone failure again and talked about how reliable the company who works on them is and how he couldn't remember the last time they had a mike failure. I don't usually post in these Friday live threads - often not home in time -but y'all must make these network people nervous. JR did a great job today, as usual.
On the GOGH part they did try to concentrate only on those cars, although they did update us when Clint Bowyer got into the back of Tony Stewart (minor damage).
Ray Evernham and Denny Hamlin are the Trackside Guests tonight after the truck race (10:30 Eastern/9:30 Central).
Addition to above comment, as I was rewinding I noticed one additional interview 50 minutes into NASCAR Live. They asked Dave Blaney one question.
It was nice to see a little different look on the Speed Stage with Pemberton along with Sadler. I think they work well with JR.
Haven't had a chance to watch the coverage yet bit I have ALL afternoon recorded. Looking forward to seeing the shows.
Glenn
JD... The so called show "Go or Go Home today (and previous shows) was/is NOT about the Go or Go Homers.... they barely even mentioned them...... so apparently, the name of the show should be... Go or Go Ahead and talk about the gunkGordon and junkJohnson... like there is not 43-50 some drivers..........
Yep, like I said in my columm, I have not figured out the Go or Go Home thing quite yet.
It just seems to be the same SPEED show continuing most of the time.
Hey, at least its live from the track.
JD
Daly Planet Editor said...
It just seems to be the same SPEED show continuing most of the time.
November 9, 2007 6:50 PM
I don't see why that is a problem.
Wow even the sun is setting in the west in Phoenix! I didn't know that! Also, last week Punch said the sun is setting in West Texas but Dallas is actually more towards NE Texas not West Texas but maybe I'm being too critical.
Anon,
It was promoted as a completely different show with a completely different cast about the cars that had to qualify on time or where not going to make the race.
Its just a new effort by SPEED, and we are talking about it here in comments.
There is some new ESPN news up on the main page.
JD
Why is Trackside only being aired once this weekend as well as next weekend?? They usually show it 2-3 times over Friday and Saturday ...
Too bad that ESPN wouldn't let Speed show Cup practice today and the morning practice tomorrow ...
Go or Go Home started out as covering those teams that had to qualify on time ... But, now that ESPN is being a bunch of idiots & not showing Cup practice ... It seems like Speed has decided to pull the old double take on ESPN and talk about what's happening on the track during Cup practice and just decided to NOT change the name of the show to something like "We're gonna talk about what ESPN is not showing you" ...
I would take the three amigos in the Speed booth for the truck races over any possible combination ESPN can offer next year.
If you don't like Mikey, you might not agree, but I don't mind him.
What a hard hit into the concrete wall. Wonder how long that will take to repair.
I am with Waltrip, they really need to put SAFER barriers around the entire tracks.
The different angles of replay were amazing and then the one where you saw the huge crack in the wall.
@lisa hogan--yes it was *so* nice to be able to leave the TV on SPEED and have REAL coverage! Oh I know! What a concept! Showing cars actually PRACTICING and not silly music videos!
@anonymous 3:10--JR is is great! I really like him :)!
@busch series fan!--LOL! I was thinking the same thing last week about the Dallas being west comment! I'm like uhm, not quite. We're roughly 2-3 hours from Arkansas/Louisiana which on MY map are EAST. However, if you went WEST from Dallas depending on your destination you're still 6-10 hours from the WEST border!
@JD--re:GOGH--I'm trying to remember, but it seems that it did have more of a focus on the GOGHers when it first started. They'd often wrap up a story from NA$CAR Live if they were still in the middle of it, but it *seems* from my "I'm getting old" memory that they spoke more about the GOGHers.
@anonymous 8:10--I'm not sure, it really doesn't make sense to me. The Pick 'em Ups ran over about 10 minutes so if you didn't also have SOTF set to record or ran Trackside longer then you'd miss the last 10 minutes.
@anonymous 8:15--thanks for that! I thought I remembered it being *truly* about the GOGHers but your ESPN theory really makes sense!
I really enjoy the Truck races. SPEED does a great job of coverage. One thing that I have always applauded is their mentioning of every truck and every sponsor somewhere is the broadcast. ESPN should really take a hint here and do the same.
We got home last night and the Truck race was ending and Trackside was about to come on, so we watched it live instead of recording it on the VCR.
Good show, but we're going to have go back to recording it, because although Speed shows like Trackside and Tradin' Paint are great, they have too many commercial breaks. Seems like every 5-7 minutes in the latter parts of these shows, they go to a break. The Cup/Busch race coverage (practice, qualifying) seems to have normal commercial breaks, it's just the original Speed shows that have this problem.
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