The SPEED schedule begins on Saturday at 10AM Eastern Time with a thirty minute edition of NASCAR Live.
The main host for this program is John Roberts, although SPEED has multiple announcers on-site and several sets operating simultaneously.
On-track practice for Sprint Cup cars begins at 10:30AM and will be followed by another edition of NASCAR Live at 12:30PM.
After lunch, practice resumes for the Cup Series at 1:30PM, and SPEED ends the afternoon portion of this live coverage with a final wrap-up edition of NASCAR Live at 3PM.
Normally a general news program updating events at the track and happenings in the garage, today will be different. It should be interesting to see if SPEED is drawn into the media feeding frenzy about the Tony Stewart vs. Kurt Busch accident. The network did a good and balanced job Friday dealing with the events.
This post will serve to host your comments about the TV coverage. This is not a blog about racing, but the TV and media coverage that surrounds it. This should be a good example of watching a network balance the features and events they have prepared in advance with the breaking news about possible sanctions on two drivers and other teams working to prepare cars that arrived at the speedway during the night.
To add your post, simply click on the COMMENTS button below and follow the simple instructions. Rules for posting are on the right side of the main page. There will be a new post for the first edition of Raceday prior to the program airing at 6PM. Thanks again for stopping by The Daly Planet.
34 comments:
3 minutes in, and my first thoughts after yesterday are:
More Hermie Sadler, Randy Pemberton, Adam Alexander, Wendy Venturini, and Bob Dilner.....LESS Jimmy Spencer and Kenny Wallace
Hermie grows on me every day, he seems much more comfortble than last year and doing a good job at the desk with JR. Hopefully Speed keeps expanding his role this season. Ahhhhhh here comes practice more cars on the track, they did a great job last night hopefully they keep it up.
I gotta give SPEED credit for even showing these two practice sessions. It will be interesting to see how they fill the time since it is single car runs.
Well, now SPEED has adopted one of my biggest pet peeves from ESPN practice coverage (when ESPN actually covers practice).
They roll the speeds at the top of the screen but take the graphic down when they go to an interview - so basically they never get to the end of the list.
SPEED did not do this last year and ESPN did and it drives me crazy.
Disappointed that Dick didn't ask Tony about the alleged 'punch' that he threw at Kurt while in the hauler.
Jim Hunter and those folks are making a big deal of the oh-so-manly code: "Whatever goes on in the NASCAR hauler stays in the hauler", so Tony and Kurt may have been told not to say, and the networks not to ask.
Jim Hunter doesn't mind hinting about it though (or refusing to deny that it happened) to make everyone keep talking. Good PR man.
Earlier Steve Byrnes referred to Bobby Labonte as "the 2000 Sprint Cup Champion."
That rewriting of history right there is the best example of the reason the championship trophy needs to be named after the France family - the France Cup or Bill France Cup - and not the current sponsor, which keeps changing and will probably change again within the next year or two.
Other than that, great coverage today and yesterday from SPEED.
"The Sprint" cup talk is annoying...what about those other sprint cars?
Won't this cause confusion? AND with the big layoffs at SPRINT, next year could be 'name change'.
Sheesh...It's too bad it's going to change name for all the series every couple of years. I feel for the fans that simply knew it as WINSTON cup for umpteen years. :-)
Diller is doing a good job hosting this Nascar Live. It's nice having some inside info courtesy of those Pemberton boys. And how about Nascar calling Squires to correct the change/no charge to recertify a wrecked car.
Interesting choice to cover the second practice session from the Hollywood Hotel. I wonder why they aren't using the regular booth, or even using that botth above pit lane?
Maybe you can help us out with this one John.
*I ment the booth above victory lane.
Brett,
That is a shared facility that was used when the SPEED Stage was not on-site and the announce booth in the tower had not been constructed.
Now that the Hollywood Hotel is also on-scene, both SPEED and Fox will move to their full time sets.
JD
Is anybody else getting "hurky-jerky" video feed and misagligned audio/video?
Thanks,
Jeff
Not noticing anything, am not HD
anon...Every once in a while the audio has dropped out for a few seconds at a time and the video feed has also frozen a few times, but it hasn't been much.
Yes, my video is freezing on the HD channel, although I can hear the audio fine. I've had to switch to the non-HD Speed Channel. Glad to hear it's not just me!
ATTN: SPEED Production Folks:
I understand that you are justifiable proud of your HD efforts.
HOWEVER, many, many millions of us still have 4:3 SDTVs.
You cannot simply put everything in 16:9 format from now on. (Example: The Daytona 500 qualifying cartoon).
You must encode it with letterboxing for 4:3 viewers, or the video is cropped left and right for us.
Please, show you know what you're doing and fix this problem immediately.
Here in Michigan Comcast doesn't carry HD channel of Speed, but I am so elated to have NASCAR back I don't mind at this point!
I re-booted my Directv boxes and now Speed HD is fine. May be a Directv issue and not Speed. You may want to try that if you are having problems.
My impressions of the Speed coverage on Saturday:
- Rutledge Wood needs to go. I'm sick and tired of the ridiculous goofy garbage! There is no point to any of this crap... and it's not even funny! Speed's not helping the cause for getting other media outlets to take NASCAR more seriously when one of the on-air 'talent' roles during their NASCAR broadcasts is a guy that runs around all day acting like a clown for no conceivable reason or purpose.
- The first practice session coverage was good. It was simple and they just kept the cameras and the talk focused on the track.
- I didn't like the second practice coverage. They seemed to replicate some of the poor elements of the ESPN practice coverage from last year. The announcers should be in the broadcast booth so they can see the track, not in an infield pit studio. Secondly, there was WAY too much on-camera time for the announcers in the pit studio while cars were practicing on the track. Practice coverage should not be about seeing Joy, McReynolds, and Waltrip's faces all day long. It should be about seeing what is going on on the track. It was especially noticeable during the one part where Darrell was trying to describe what he was seeing on his monitor about the attitude of Kyle Busch's car. Unfortunately the director was showing us Darrell's face on the entire screen and the viewers had no clue what he was talking about.
Speed, please keep it simple and just show us and talk about what is going on on the race track. There's plenty of time for full-screen camera shots of the announcers and reflections upon events of past days and years during the dozens of hours of NASCAR Live programming that takes place while the track is empty.
I really enjoyed the SPEED coverage I was able to see this AM and early PM - in particular Ken Squier with Dave Despain. However, the first thing that came to mind every time Dave D. showed up on screen was where has WINDTUNNEL been for the last 9 weeks or so. I do not recall anything SPEED aired in WINDTUNNEL's Sunday night spot that was worth watching. I can understand and appreciate some time off for Dave D. - but when Jay Leno is off, the Tonight Show is still on. Some of Dave's interviews have been almost classic, were right there available, and, in my view, would have been a perfect bridge between racing seasons.
Do not have any HD feed on DishNetwork, though I hear DirecTV has it. Has anyone heard whether Dish plans to add this to their programming?
I have been debating switching to DirecTV to get Hotpass anyway. if Dish doesn't have plans to add, this might be the deciding factor for me.
Major thanks to Speed Channel by the way for televising this ARCA race at Daytona. I just wish you could provide a similar commitment to the rest of the ARCA schedule. Unfortunately most of this year's races will not be televised, and many of those that are televised will be done with the dreaded tape-delay. It's a shame that we could see more ARCA races on TV 15 years ago in 1993 than we can today in 2008.
This ARCA race started out well but the inexperience of drivers caused a big one with 12 drivers that seemed to go on forever.
Still, I love the ARCA races and agree, it's a shame we will see LESS this year...blunder that decision.
I also hate to agree but SPEED IS ADOPTING some PeeSPU practices we have all griped about. I am stumped about why they would do that...guess I will not praise SPEED until I see a few races.
Also what good is practice and quals if they show the yapping heads all the time.
Shame
This race is going to run past 6:00 so I'm hoping they stick around and at least do a winner's interview.
Hey Stricklanfan
Were you as disappointed as I was they did not show the cars crossing the finish line? Once again the stupid camera producers (and ALL networks do this) CHOSE to go to the winning pit crews a few shots rather then show me where everybody else finished?
VERY disappointing.
Guess all JD's yapping and our seconding such bad camera was lost on SPEED. :(
They simply showed the unofficial results but I would've liked to have SEEN the other cars VISUALLY finish the race. Oh, well.
Well, at least SPEED gives us a winning interview when the race goes overtime. :)
Which is way, WAY better than ESPU.
Still the "one or two cars" crossing the finish line is HORRIBLE camera work.
Thank you Speed Channel for sticking around for a winner's interview and showing the final results of the ARCA race instead of rushing off to NASCAR Raceday immediately after the checkered flag. That extra 5 minutes or so they stuck around after the race didn't hurt anything so I hope other TV networks notice and do the same when they face similar situations later this year.
Sophia,
I totally agree with you about the finish of the ARCA race. They zoomed right in on the leader from turn 4 to the finish line and then showed the flagman waving the checkered flag from the flagstand... what's that all about?
Plus no graphics running down the finishing order as the cars tripped the line and they didn't show anyone other than the front few cars cross the line at the end of the race.
I guess we shouldn't be surprised though because this was probably the same Fox production crew that did the same thing all year in 2007. To them only the leader/winner matters on the final lap. SIGH.
thanks SFan
It can ruin a race after a couple hours of investment.
Like you I am glad they stayed for the interview but SOMEBODY at SPEED MUST BE TOLD and understand WE WANT TO SEE ALL THE CARS on the LEAD LAP (At least) go across the finish line. And DAYTONA is a gorgeous track.
A simple wide angle shot for a few seconds could have sufficed along with the finishing order grid.
Sigh....baby steps. I hope JD was watching this race.
I am afraid how the Shoot out will finish.
But I will have an opinion as I am sure you will!
I recorded the whole day just so I could stay far enough behind to FF through all the commercials. I just about got a blister on my finger from the FF button. Run a car, run a commercial, run a car, .....you know how it went. Too many commercials in that second practice session.
Way too much Despain today. Even though I respect Ken Squire, his dramatic style makes it seem a little overboard at times. He also learned NASCAR is listening to what he says and had to make an on camera correction.
Overall, it was still a great day just to have racing activities back on my TV. They did blow the finish of the ARCA/Remax race by not showing cars crossing the line. Still, so much better than ESPeeN.
If SPEED can wase time showing those stupid Rutledge tricks, then they need to shorten their air time. Too ad to se Speed using so many tight shots of only one or two cars for so much of the race, as it (just as with ESPN) gives you no sense of how the race is unfolding.
I am happy to see SPEED evolve their practice coverage. I am sure they have sound reasoning to do so. There is much more going on during those sessions than just cars circling the track. The only issue I have is they are overplaying the Busch / Stewart incident.
Sadly, SPEED is 'picking up habits we hate from ESPU' which leaves many of us scratching our heads. :(
Wonder how many cars will cross the finish line TONIGHT.
Maybe we all need to chant/pray/burn candles/ smudge the house (Native American practice) to ask SPEED/Fox camera guys.
PLEASE more WIDE ANGLE SHOTS!
That's all we ask.
AND show the cars FINISHING the race. I know for a fact ther will be more than 1 or 2 cars in the Shoot out.
I've been a little out of the loop lately, but seeing Randy Pemberton and Ken Squier today felt like "old home week" for me. I remember the two of them from race broadcasts back in the late 80's or early 90's//. 1992 Daytona 500 to be exact. I'm thrilled they're back, or perhaps they never went away....
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