Stewart And Newman Headline Friday's NASCAR TV

What a jam-packed Friday of NASCAR on both ESPN2 and SPEED. The action begins in the morning with trucks on the track in Martinsville and the day winds-up with Tony Stewart and Ryan Newman appearing together to talk about the 2009 season.

It will be the familiar voice of Rick Allen that welcomes SPEED viewers at 11AM Eastern Time for Craftsman Truck Series practice. Joining Allen will be Phil Parsons with a possible appearance by Michael Waltrip. Down on pit road will be the usual cast of Ray Dunlap and Adam Alexander.

After an hour of the trucks, ESPN2 is next with Sprint Cup Series practice at Noon. Dr. Jerry Punch, Dale Jarrett and Andy Petree will be looking out the window of the Infield Pit Studio as the teams use this time to dial-in their cars for both qualifying and the race.

The Craftsman Trucks return on SPEED at 1:30PM for final practice. Allen and Parsons are going to be dealing with some good stories from the morning session. There are a lot of "one timers" on the 40 truck entry list for the Martinsville race. They include SPEED's own Hermie Sadler, Mike Skinner's son Dustin, Sam Hornish and Kyle Busch.

The big rumor is that fan favorite Johnny Benson has lost his team sponsorship starting this weekend even after a tremendous season of racing. How and why all this is going-on can probably be traced directly to the economy, but Benson will most certainly be asked about the issue. Bill and Gail Davis have apparently entered Benson on their own dime.

Punch and the ESPN2 gang return at 3:30PM for Sprint Cup Series qualifying. This is always an interesting affair at Martinsville and this week finds 45 cars trying to make the field. Among those to watch are Mike Bliss (#00), Sterling Marlin (#09), AJ Allmendinger (#10) and Ken Schrader (#96).

The pit road crew of Jamie Little, Shannon Spake, Mike Massaro and Dave Burns joins the ESPN2 coverage for qualifying. Tempers are a bit tight in the Cup garage and Martinsville is both a "payback track" and a fundamentally tough race to finish.

One big story will be the addition of Scott Speed to the field coming-off his ARCA disaster at Toledo. It should be interesting to see how ESPN deals with Speed after interviewing him on Wednesday's NASCAR Now.

After the on-track action from Martinsville is over, ESPN2 is up first at 5:30PM with a thirty minute version of NASCAR Now. Combining live reports from the track with highlights of the day, this should be a good wrap-up show for fans who are just coming home.

The evening ends a bit earlier than normal because of the Barrett-Jackson car auction that is on SPEED beginning at 7PM. The popular Trackside program is moving to 6PM for this week and it might be a good idea to record this one.

Host Steve Byrnes and his panelists Larry McReynolds, Jeff Hammond and Elliott Sadler have lined-up what could be a "big show." Tony Stewart will put on his Sprint Cup owner's hat and bring his driver Ryan Newman along as these two appear on the show to talk about the dynamic of rolling-out a new team in 2009.

With Stewart effectively out of the championship hunt and Newman not in The Chase, these two should be able to talk freely for perhaps the first time about their efforts toward next season and their goals for 2009. This panel always gets their guests very involved, so there just might be some memorable comments. Denny Hamlin will also appear on the show.

Our final tip for the weekend is that NASCAR.com is making Sprint Raceview free for the Sunday Cup race. Click here for the link to be taken to the Raceview page. This will be a good opportunity for fans who miss TNT's RaceBuddy to try out NASCAR's own Internet video offering. The complete TV weekend line-up is posted on the right side of the main page. Friday should be good for lots of stories by the time Trackside hits the air at 6PM.

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Manske Is Back And Taking No Prisoners

ESPN's Nicole Manske was in the studio on Wednesday as the host of NASCAR Now. Fresh off a reporting assignment in Charlotte, Manske took the opportunity to remind viewers just how far she has come from the script-reading blonde on the 2007 version of The SPEED Report.

Since her arrival, Manske has worked hard to gain credibility as a broadcaster and ESPN has given her the opportunity to do just that. Her interview skills both in the field and the studio have become top notch. Wednesday gave her the chance to handle three NASCAR interviews and work ESPN commentator Brad Daugherty for everything he was worth.

Scott Speed is quickly becoming a lightning rod of controversy. After unseating AJ Allmendinger and being tapped for the #84 Red Bull Toyota ride, Speed had one final ARCA race remaining last weekend in Toledo. Click here to see the results.

After short-tempered former sprint car driver Ricky Stenhouse spun Speed out, his team returned him to the track and he took out Stenhouse with a banzai move that got him parked. Speed was already on probation in ARCA, but he clearly did not care.

Manske showed the incidents and read a statement from Stenhouse basically calling Speed an idiot. Stenhouse is a Roush Fenway Racing development driver who Speed will probably being seeing on track again in the future. She then welcomed Speed to the program live by satellite.

Manske let Speed give his side of the story to start. He explained Stenhouse needed him not to finish in order for Stenhouse to win the championship. Speed's line was Stenhouse spun him on purpose, Speed's team fixed the car just to go get Stenhouse back and that is what they did.

"So, let's make this clear," said Manske. "Did you intentionally wreck him?"

"He (Stenhouse) was wrecked and he did not win the championship and that is OK with me," answered Speed.

"ARCA had you on probation for a number of incidents earlier in the year," said Manske. "You have this perception out there now that you are a hothead. How do you feel that this perception will affect your transition into the Sprint Cup Series?"

Speed looked like someone had just punched him in the stomach. "Who says I'm a hothead?" he answered. "I'm like the calmest guy out there. I think it's kind of an ARCA thing."

Manske followed-up by letting Speed talk about the fact that he had no incidents in the Craftsman Truck Series races this season. She led Speed into talking about how drivers like Jimmy Johnson and Kyle Busch have reached-out to help him as he steps into the Sprint Cup Series. She ended by letting Speed make the careful statement that his goal this Sunday was to stay out of the way and get some experience.

In the blink of an eye, she put Brad Daugherty on the spot over Speed's actions and the possible carry-over into this weekend. Daugherty's point was that retaliation happens in auto racing. Daugherty also felt that the ARCA incident would not have any bearing on Speed's Martinsville Cup weekend.

After that fast start, Manske welcomed in the familiar face of Felix Sabates. The minority owner in Chip Ganassi's NASCAR operation had done a lot of talking over the last weekend and (click here) stories all over the media had followed.

"You've publicly taken shots at Jack Roush's satellite team with Yates Racing," said Manske. "Why do you feel that way?"

This was the main point of the Sabates weekend interview and it is a good one. Simply by allowing teams from Tony Stewart to Doug Yates to operate completely outfitted and supplied by powerful owners like Hendrick and Roush Fenway, Sabates felt it would put other smaller teams out of business and fundamentally change the sport.

"You can fool some of the people some of the time," said Sabates. "But, you cannot fool all the people all the time. I'm afraid that two or three years from now you are going to have a circus with very few ponies."

Manske reminded Sabates that his team was also talking about merging. "How are you any different from Roush Fenway and Yates?" she asked.

"We have to do what we have to do to protect ourselves," said Sabates. "This business of NASCAR is monkey-see monkey-do. If somebody comes with the right opportunity, we would have to take it."

Immediately after finishing with Sabates, Manske brought Brad Daugherty into the topic with some interesting first words. She asked Daugherty to answer her questions from an ownership perspective. She had a good reason why. Daugherty's own Sprint Cup team had just recently become a satellite team of another multi-car owner.

"What are you doing to make sure your (JTG/Daugherty Racing) team succeeds?" she asked.

"We had to take the step to merge with Michael Waltrip Racing to create a technical alliance," answered Daugherty. "Felix is absolutely right, when you look at the mega-teams their tentacles reach out and they are actually eight car super-teams."

Daugherty pointed to the fact that the top four owners in Sprint Cup each have three cars in The Chase and the smaller teams have none. The bottom line according to Daugherty was that the small teams are being "out-resourced."

Manske drew Daugherty out on his opinion that the economy and attrition would shorten the Cup field to 36 cars in 2009. He further felt that the most effective way to control the rising costs in the sport would be to shorten the season.

He suggested 20 regular season races and an 8 race Chase for the Championship. This was a Sprint Cup owner and an ESPN commentator on NASCAR Now calling the season "way too long."

Manske was about to turn a doubleheader into a tripleheader when she welcomed Johnny Benson to the show live to talk Craftsman Trucks. Benson got a "Manske welcome" right off the bat.

"After leading the points for seven straight weeks, how disappointing is it to fall back to second?" asked Manske.

"Not very," said the veteran Benson. After ten years alongside of Michael Waltrip on Monday nights, Benson does not rattle very easily on TV.

Manske worked Benson through a good interview focusing on the tight race for the championship in the Truck Series. It was great of NASCAR Now to highlight this group with the big weekend at Martinsville on the horizon.

Manske even got Benson to admit if he had to do it over again, he might not have passed teammate Mike Skinner last season as the championship got tight.

She closed out the show with Daugherty, who finally earned his money on this program. He had addressed the ARCA incident, Scott Speed coming to Cup, the Sabates comments, his own team's merger and now had to preview the Martinsville Cup race and pick a winner.

Daugherty stayed safe in picking Jimmie Johnson to win and Dale Earnhardt Jr. to continue to struggle. He detailed the physical side of Martinsville and the fact that the flat track is going to be a new challenge after Charlotte.

The background behind Daugherty for his liveshot appeared to be his North Carolina home. Once Manske was done with him, Daugherty may well have needed a nap. This was an outstanding example of the NASCAR Now production staff choosing great stories to cover on a normally slow Wednesday and putting the resources of ESPN to work.

Four liveshots from four different locations gave Manske everything she needed to work with and she certainly made the most of it. To think about where this TV series was at this time last year and look at what it is today makes NASCAR Now the top NASCAR TV story of the season.

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Off-Season TV Landscape Looking Bleak

Like most major professional sports, NASCAR has an organization that catalogues all the race footage from the season. The NASCAR Media Group has lots of Emmy Awards and lots of toys to play with where TV is concerned.

This is the time of the year when the post-season TV landscape gets the once-over from TDP. Right now, the results look pretty bleak. There will be the mandatory season-in-review shows aired for each series in November. Last year these shows were buried in bad timeslots and never really got any attention. Then, once the three NASCAR banquets finish, things slow down to a crawl.

In terms of using TV series like NASCAR Confidential or Dale Junior's Shifting Gears to handle some post-season content, the answer is no. Best of RaceDay? No. Best of TWIN? No. Best of Krista Voda's hats? That one is in development and looking for a sponsor.

It appears that there is no post-season NASCAR anything scheduled on the ESPN networks right now. After a while, the racing footage reverts back to the NASCAR Media Group. It really comes down to this group and the NASCAR TV partners planning in advance for some off-season specials. Those could range from Humpy Wheeler interviews to edited race highlights with new reactions from the participants.

SPEED stepped-up to the plate and produced some testing coverage in January, but that is not the same as long-form edited or live programming that covers the sport in the way it used to be covered.

Apparently, there will be no end-of-season roundtables with NASCAR journalists, no final all-NASCAR Wind Tunnel special and no final grouping of the TV personalities who worked all season long to bring the fans NASCAR coverage.

This is where NASCAR really misses a TV network that they can control. The current NASCAR TV partners have different agendas that include multi-network sports distribution, lifestyle programming and even primetime TV dramas. Did you know that Kyra Sedgwick was The Closer? To these networks, NASCAR is just another programming series that comes and goes.

Meanwhile, the NFL network has a full slate of programming all summer long. The Golf Channel has a blast during the off-season and the Tennis Channel takes the time to review the year for several professional series. Now, both the NHL and Major League Baseball are about to join that list with top-flight television professionals in charge of HD Networks that are going to be exciting to watch.

NASCAR is over fifty years old. Its rich history sits in one geographic area of the country as does almost all the high-tech racing shops and equipment suppliers. The stories of the Lee Petty generation may be gone, but men like Harry Gant, Cale Yarborough and David Pearson are alive and well. They are just waiting to tell a new generation of fans about how it used to be when full-size cars without power steering were wrestled around legendary tracks by real men.

This is the second season of the new NASCAR TV contract and the second time for the fans to hear the off-season excuses of all four NASCAR TV partners. No room on ESPN or ABC, Fox is busy with the NFL and TNT just does not care.

SPEED is left holding the bag, as usual. That network only ordered six NASCAR Confidential episodes, never got the Humpy Show off the ground and has a major swing to lifestyle programming as its top agenda.

So, enjoy the next several weeks as The Chase nears the finish. TDP will keep updating the TV schedule for the three banquets and the year-in-review shows. It appears that once again this season when the checkered flag waves at Homestead, it also waves on almost all NASCAR TV programming until 2009.

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