Here are some topics and notes as the Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series teams get ready to head-off to road course races in Sonoma, CA and Elkhart Lake, WI.
NASCAR President Mike Helton will be on the Tuesday edition of SPEED's Race Hub at 7:30PM. There are lots of topics to discuss at this time of the season. Pocono winner Denny Hamlin will also be on the show.
Update: Helton will also appear on Showtime's Inside NASCAR series on Wednesday night at 10PM. This show will be simulcast online at NASCAR.com without charge. Helton will be discussing the state of the sport at length with Michael Waltrip, Brad Daugherty and Randy Pemberton. Chris Myers hosts this series.
Neither practice or qualifying sessions are going to be televised for the Nationwide Series this weekend from Road America. This event comes right in the middle of a program time crunch for ESPN that includes World Cup Soccer. There will also be no Sunday morning NASCAR Now show on ESPN2 to preview the Sunday race for the same reason.
ESPN shuffles the line-up again for the Road America Nationwide Series race on Saturday. Allen Bestwick will host the pre-race NASCAR Countdown show and then call the action with Rusty Wallace and Andy Petree in the booth. Dale Jarrett and Brad Daugherty are off this weekend. NASCAR Now host Mike Massaro will break out the firesuit and join Dr. Jerry Punch and Jamie Little to handle the pit reporting.
Darrell Waltrip returns for this second of four appearances on SPEED's Sunday RaceDay show. Hermie Sadler will be joining Waltrip on the SPEED Stage as Kenny Wallace is off racing at Road America. Wendy Venturini will be one reporter, we are waiting for SPEED to tell us who else will be joining the show.
Some fans have been asking about TNT's habit of slowly spinning the infield "rig" during the pre-race show. The network has done it every season, but apparently some fans now have new and large HD screens. The effect is much different. "HDesick" is a term one fan suggested. Those comments have been passed along.
SPEED advised on Monday that the network is on the verge of crossing the 76 million home barrier. The network also continues to roll-out SPEEDHD and will be opening the online SPEED2 broadband channel in two weeks. We will have more on SPEED2 next week in terms of programming schedules and availability. Right now, you must subscribe to SPEED TV or SPEEDHD in order to receive the SPEED2 online content.
The latest questions from the NASCAR Fan Council did not concern TV or radio, but the drivers. There were questions that basically boiled down to which drivers fans liked and which they disliked and why. In the past, this information has been used to affect many changes within the sport. It's kind of interesting that driver popularity is now the topic.
At this time, there are still no numbers available for how many homes bought the PPV live Prelude to a Dream charity race last week. The PPV money is the primary provider of the funding for the various charities benefiting from the event. We will keep up to date on this topic until we get the information.
Just like last weekend, Elliott Sadler will step aside and be replaced by Darrell Waltrip on the Friday night Trackside show. It will be Jeff Hammond who then partners with John Roberts on the Sunday night Victory Lane program. These moves are in response to Kyle Petty being gone for six races while working for TNT.
The Sounds of NASCAR series this season on SPEED has been popular. Starting next week the title of the show will change to NASCAR Hot Wired. That should be reflected in the cable TV listings.
We will update this page with any additional TV/media news that happens on Tuesday. As always, please feel free to offer your comments on any of the topics above. To add your opinion, just click on the comments button below. Thanks for stopping by!
22 comments:
DW said last week at Michigan when he got home, he was going to tell us what he thought of the race. The question I have is who cares what he thinks. Will he just never go away, and leave his big ego in the backwoods of Tennessee??
This is a mixed bag for me this week. I'm glad that Allen will be in the booth calling the race because I just plain enjoy his style, but that's offset by Rusty being there, too.
And Kenny Wallace won't be on RACEDAY this week - hooray, but DW will, so I'm guessing that I will skip it again since I am DW'd out.
Wonder if Helton will address Hamlin's post-race comments and Mikey's tweet about the "timeout" cautions? Since Hamlin will be there too, it might be interesting to see how subdued things are with the 500 lb gorilla representing all things NASCAR will be or will it be all sweetness and light and swept under the rug?
They way ESPN shuffles its cast is totally unprofessional. They build no consistency in presentation with the fans - which causes fans not to really care in response. At least it does for me.
It's only 36 weeks. If you don't want the job, let somebody else have it.
The Waltrips are the most egotistical shills on TV today. Why would anyone ever want to turn on their set when their mugs hit the cameras?
JD, I like that you give us a heads up on who is gonna do what show. This week I will not waste dvr time or personal time watching either Trackside or Raceday. Has anyone compared the ratings of shows the Waltrips are on to when they are not on them?
Thank you.
GA Red
I look forward to hearing from Mr. Helton :). Glad to know they'll been airing the show for everyone to see. Will be interesting on what he says and how it's handled w/the Hub and IN :)
DW gets on my nerves too, but no way is he going to drive me away from watching Nascar, raceday or any of it.
I would like to know what the rating are too (Waltrips on air vs Waltrips off air).
Interested in seeing what the Speed2 online is all about!
Helton and Mikey on Inside Nascar should be very interesting.
I am glad Inside Nascar can be seen online this week because I have not subscribed to Showtime...yet. Thanks for the update.
I personally like how ESPN changes the round table members week to week. Different perspectives and points of view, although I really like listening to Ricky Craven as his insights are always new and very interesting.Ray Evernham also gives info and insight others never do.Unprofessional is not the correct word for the change in personnel on ESPN. Unprofessional is exactly the correct word for the Walmouth brothers, I know when they are on I'm not watching, as I have joined the growing numbers turned off by them.
Agree with you Zieke. These 2 Hillbillies must have loads of money to pay the networks to allow them on all these programs, because I have to believe any network in their right minds would not hire or pay these 2. They are as annoying as scratching a blackboard.
Well I'm a little P****D with ESPN, but what's new.
I know absolutely nothing about Road America and have been looking forward to the coverage.
I guess we get what "coverage" is in the TV contract, not an ounce more.
Really a great way to grow the fan base, race on a different track with no priming of the pump. As usual, ESPN could care less about the Nationwide series, they're only in the business for the cup series.
SO SAD!
Gotta echo Glen here. Thought a new track would draw interest from BSPN...guess not. And disappointed that Speed didn't step in...:(
So where is it? I can't find anything but old video clips on nascar.com
Wednesday night at 10PM ET.
Thanks JD. I'm not sure how I'm going to master the internet if I can't figure out what day it is.
Road America + Mickey Mouse = WE LOSE!!
2 days of practice (5 1/2hrs on Thurs & 2 1/2 hrson Fri) ... plus qualifying on Sat ... plus the race on Sat ... And a number of NEW to NASCAR drivers ...
And Mickey Mouse chooses to air ONLY the race ... SAD SAD SAD!!
NASCAR hasn't been to Road America since August 12, 1956 when Tim Flock won ...
Mickey Mouse has known about this race since late December ... You would've thought that they might be able to squeeze MORE coverage into their pea-brained schedule ... But, noooooooo ...
I looked at the track schedule for "when" the practice & qualifying sessions are ... then compared to the tv sched for ESPN/ESPN2 ... The bovines at Mickey Mouse COULD show the practice sessions AND qualifying on a combo of both channels ... They'd have to dump their precious "sports center" ... But, they won't ... There's only about 30 minutes that overlap with golf coverage during the start of Friday's Happy Hour ...
14 turns and 4.048 Miles of race course ... Just how much of the good racing are we gonna miss ?? I'd say quite a bit ... They can't even get cameras in the right spots at the tracks they visit twice a year ...
I think the Monday N-Now is always improved when it has a crew chief on to explain strategy - and I wish they would put Brewer on more often since he has the same irreverent view as Randy Lajoie.
I haven't looked at it in months, but I wish EESPN would at least run qualifying on EESPN Classic if it is not being carried elsewhere. IF EESPN really cared about ensuring quality coverage for a new track, it would seem that carrying qualifying at Road America would make sense.
JD, who does have the broadcast rights for the pre-2000 races that were carried on CBS, TNN, and TBS?
Doesn't NASCAR have essentially all the re-broadcast rigts to all the unified contract races?
i think that speed should use the great randy pemberton as the reporter for raceday since hermie is on the speedstage
Several things to address:
1) NN Roundtable discussion of the so-called "TV cautions", mostly in line with my opinion of it (DON'T EVER DO IT) but Ray E hinted from old conversations with BillF Jr, it's something NASCAR has been doing for years. Scary.
2) On RaceHub Mike Helton reiterated that NASCAR throws cautions for safety reasons only (THIS IS OK) and no further discussion.
3) Saw a whole episode of Inside NASCAR for the first time, thanks NASCAR.com for streaming it. Unfortunately I was not impressed, certainly didn't sell me any reason to subscribe to Showtime. Maybe it's because I see & hear these panelists all the time elsewhere, and their opinions don't change. Or maybe this particular episode was intentionally "bland" because it was free. Liked the SHR pieces. Waltrip was spouting his "TV caution" nonsense straight off, but when Mr Helton came on set and once again said his piece about cautions for safety only, Waltrip didn't say anything back to him. Came off cowardly. Hamlin kind of retracted what he said before about "TV cautions", and he hoped fans appreciated the sport more than the show so that they wouldn't ever be needed.
4) TERRIBLY disappointed that there's no NNS TV coverage of Road America beyond the race. Thought they had plenty of time to prepare, but I hear from some ESPN crew that they didn't. Awful shame, this is one of the best tracks there is, there would have been alot of interest.
5) Question for NASCAR Media Group. Why is the race footage on their productions (ie Inside Headsets, Sounds of NASCAR) different from that of the TV networks? Aren't they all filming from the same sources on race day? Or do they have better people picking shots? Saw plenty of debris shots on the Inside NASCAR show race highlight reels, but these same shots couldn't make it to TNT's live telecast?
Donna, my impression of what was streamed on nascar.com last night was the same as yours. Pretty bland and certainly not worth spending additional money on.
I had to laugh a little at Hamlin backtracking on his post-race comments and of course, Mikey would sit there like a lump when the 500 lb gorilla is in the room.
Helton must think NASCAR fans are so stupid. Safety? Really? Why have multiple green white restarts at restrictor plate tracks if they are worried about safety?
why dont they stream the practice and qualifying on nascar.com, the espn crews are there why don't they do that
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