SPEED steps-in on Saturday morning to handle the Nationwide Series qualifying from Kansas. The TV gang hangs around to continue with Sprint Cup practice.
Steve Byrnes will be hosting the telecasts, with Larry McReynolds and Jeff Hammond alongside. Wendy Venturini and Bob Dillner will handle the driver interviews.
SPEED has a very laid-back style that borders on "old school" for this type of telecast. Byrnes is a host that continually puts the focus on the cars, drivers and teams throughout the programs.
There is a very interesting mix of drivers in the Nationwide group in Kansas. Dillner and Venturini have the ability to move easily between the NASCAR series and look for the stories that are breaking in the garage.
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10 comments:
This abbreviated, tape-delayed version of Nationwide Series qualifying just plain sucked!...
33 cars had already made their run at the track when Speed came on the air on a tape-delay basis.
Of 17 go-or-go-home teams, only the runs of Greg Biffle, Denny Hamlin, Stanton Barrett and Matt Kenseth were shown while most of that segment of the coverage was focused on Kyle Busch's steering problems.
Even the starting lineup shown at the end of the broadcast was wrong, positions 31 to 43 were incorrect.
I expected a different style when SPEED was trying to take well over an hour of qualifying and squeeze it into 45 minutes of program time.
In TV land, this is called a "quick turn-a-round."
JD
While I appreciated the interviews and information I was surprised at the actual coverage. Very unusual for Speed but I guess the small time slot explains it.
JD was Speed always suppose to air this session or was it one of the extras they picked up late in the season. If it's an extra I'll forgive them since we would have gotten nothing but if it was a long term plan I'm not very happy.
Very odd qual for SPEED. Was this a last minute deal from #$%^ because of College football?
Well this explains why we saw only the Cup drivers qualify and only a few NWers. We was robbed.
Wow. I knew the Nationwide qualifying show was going to be rough with only a 60-minute tape-delayed window to work in but that was brutal beyond belief.
I found it very disappointing to see the production truck choose to show 17 of the 30 locked-in cars (including Scott Gaylord and Brandon Whitt) and only show 4 of the 17 go-or-go-homers (not just with commercials, but also with prolonged full-screen interviews/garage shots). The worst part of it all though was completely skipping all of the 'bumping'. Matt Kenseth qualified 41st out of the 47 cars. After his run Speed went to commercial, came back with a full-screen garage area report, went to commercial again, came back and said "qualifying's over". WHAT!!??They just completely skipped the final 6 cars and all of the bumping - the most important part of the entire session!
There's plenty of time until 3:00, I wish Speed would have shifted everything back so we could have seen real qualifying coverage and Sprint Cup practice as an immediate lead-in to staring at the "NASCAR Countdown is currently on espn360.com" message on ESPN2 at 3:00, waiting for the final 12 minutes of regulation in the college football game to be completed.
Granted Speed gave this production truck very little to work with, but they could have done MUCH better than that, even with those constraints.
It sure would be nice to have a NASCAR Channel to go with NFL Network, NHL Network, Golf Channel, Tennis Channel, NBA TV, all those MLB Team Channels like YES, all those college football conference channels, etc. In my opinion it's time for NASCAR to step up to the plate, catch up with the times, and follow the lead of every other major sport in this country and get their own network.
Even Speed Channel can't be there every time to bail out NASCAR fans from deadbeat ESPN. They have other live commitments too, and NASCAR fans lost out big time today as a result.
Blaming SPEED's incompetence on ESPN ... that is a new one. SPEED just failed to deliver in this situation. No excuses. SPEED should have done better.
Since this whole production had the ESPN look, I have to guess that ESPN was in charge in the truck and the SPEED crew did the best they could with what they were given.
Thanks to all the SPEED crew!
This was absolutely the worst coverage of happy hour that I have ever tried to watch. Too much pre-recorded and too little of the cars on the track. ESPN continues to pander to the supposed newbie and throws the true Nascar fan to the curb. Well, we can always hope for better next year.
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