SPEED's New Challenge: NASCAR News

Monday, we start the NASCAR TV news season for real. SPEED has one week of Race Hub before ESPN's NASCAR Now joins the mix on Monday, February 1st. This year, fans will have the choice of two TV news programs every Monday through Thursday.

ESPN has a three year jump on NASCAR news. SPEED steadfastly refused to offer any TV news during the week, opting instead to focus on the weekend activity at the tracks. Adding Race Hub late last year on the fly showed both the best and worst results of jumping into the deep end of the NASCAR TV news pool.

So far this season, everything on Race Hub has been polite, scripted and planned. In other words, the actual racing has not yet started. The PR releases have been orderly, the smiles have been easy and Mike Helton was the featured guest on the show last week.

As with any professional sport, there are a myriad of issues and stories that the Race Hub producers can choose to feature or discard. Over the past three seasons, NASCAR Now has taken topics like Jeremy Mayfield's drug suspension, Goodyear's tire failures and the COT woes head-on without blinking.

Click here for an article discussing the subject some in the media are concerned about. Despite the claims of letting the drivers police themselves this season and that rubbing is just racing, NASCAR has stepped-up efforts to blame the media for problems within the sport.

They told drivers in closed meetings that expressions of emotion and frustration on NASCAR topics were bad for the sport. Specifically pointed out that the drivers and their public statements reported by the media were directly affecting the TV ratings. In other words, despite the social media outreach and the Fan Council mentions, NASCAR is putting the clamps on free speech.

Click here for the TDP column on Jack Roush and his recent rant against the NASCAR TV partners. He pointed directly to Darrell Waltrip and Rusty Wallace as each having a personal ax to grind on the air.

Into this delightful atmosphere walks SPEED with a brand new TV series featuring NASCAR news directly from the personalities who make it. That was a key reason the network rolled out Race Hub from the North Charlotte, NC studios. Suddenly, anyone and everyone who was in the news could take a short drive and be on national TV in the evening hours speaking to NASCAR fans directly.

SPEED's on-air track record in dealing with hard news stories is anything but stellar. Monday night's TWIN purposefully focused on highlights and refrained from reporting news. The network offered no other weekday NASCAR shows until the practice and qualifying coverage started from the tracks on Fridays.

In 2009, it was sometimes ironic that the best NASCAR news coverage was offered by The SPEED Report, a show intended to cover all forms of motorsports on Sunday nights. Meanwhile, programs from NASCAR Live to RaceDay routinely avoided hard news in favor of race preview information.

One factor in whether or not Race Hub gets credible is the host. SPEED has decided to rotate its current crop of on-air talent through this assignment rather than designate a fulltime person for the position. While names like Krista Voda and Randy Pemberton are used to dealing with news, announcers like Rick Allen and John Roberts are more in tune to directing on-air traffic.

This is a big shift of gears for SPEED. The network has not done a daily NASCAR news program in a very long time. The challenge is to see past the NASCAR edict and dive into the reality of the sport regardless of whether it might be viewed as positive or negative. Studio guests should face real questions and offer more than the PR spin on an issue.

So, after a short trial run last season and some polite conversation this year, Race Hub faces the challenge of establishing itself as a credible source of NASCAR news for the fans. Rick Allen and Randy Pemberton co-host on Monday and we'll be watching.

TDP wants your comments on this topic. To add your opinion, just click on the comments button below. This is a family-friendly website, please keep that in mind when posting. Thanks for taking the time to stop by The Daly Planet.

TDP Has A New Fan Page On Facebook

Just when you thought it was cool to have Twitter and read TDP, things are getting even more interesting. At the urging of some friends who actually understand all this technology, we have started a fan page on Facebook.

Amazingly, in the first couple of days we have had over 525 people sign-up and many leave comments on our questions, articles and photos. Facebook makes it easy to post pictures and that has been a big request of many fans. We get tons of pictures from TV networks, program providers and media outlets.

Our goal is to give you a place to check where you can always leave a comment or see something new. Once the season begins, we will be allowing Facebook users to post photos showing NASCAR TV personalities, television equipment or anything else media related from the track and other locations. That should be interesting!

We will also offer a question of the day, video links and continually updated TV and media news. If you have not stopped by, click here to check us out on Facebook and thanks for helping with this new effort.

TDP's main blog will remain as a source for a daily column, TV listings and the "Tweets of the Day" feature. Don't worry, we're not doing anything but growing!

New TV Series Changing NASCAR Landscape

The four day event called the Charlotte Media Tour is now over. Mixed in with the team and NASCAR announcements was a good amount of TV news. Let's talk about the shows and programs that were mentioned to set the tone for 2010.

Michael Waltrip got our attention by confirming that he was the third panelist on Showtime's new Inside NASCAR series. Kyle Petty's name had been put out several weeks ago, but that information proved to be incorrect. Both Showtime and Waltrip clearly loved keeping that secret until Thursday morning.

It will be Chris Myers from Fox Sports hosting the series. Myers has a long track record of hosting studio shows on networks like ESPN and The Tennis Channel. ESPN's Brad Daugherty will also appear on the show. This is a great opportunity for Daugherty to escape the confines of ESPN's structured on-air product and engage in some spirited and opinionated conversation.

The final panelist is SPEED's Randy Pemberton. While perhaps the least well known to some, Pemberton has been connected with the sport for decades. In his previous appearances on SPEED's Tradin' Paint series, Pemberton showed that he is informed, opinionated and not afraid of anyone. Those are good traits to bring to this new series.

Finally, Showtime promises to make the series available online, through cell phone streaming and on cable television Video On Demand services. This will allow those fans who cannot or choose not to subscribe to Showtime to still access the programs. The series begins on Wednesday, February 10 at 10PM ET and runs all season long. We will pass along the streaming and VOD specifics when they are announced.

Over at ESPN, things remain almost the same. NASCAR Now will return on Monday, February 1 with the same three hosts. Allen Bestwick will anchor the Monday hour program, while Mike Massaro and Nicole (Manske) Briscoe will handle the remaining duties. The only change is that due to earlier race start times, the weekend morning edition of the show will move to 9AM ET.

Meanwhile, over at SPEED there were wholesale changes in the TV line-up. Kyle Petty will replace Jimmy Spencer on both the NASCAR RaceDay and Victory Lane programs. Petty will team with Kenny Wallace and John Roberts on both shows. Wendy Venturini and Hermie Sadler also return.

Spencer moves to a Monday night 8:30PM ET timeslot with a still developing thirty minute program titled What's the Deal? Explained to TDP as an issue-oriented talk show, SPEED wants to allow Spencer to voice his sometimes controversial opinions in a different format. More to come on this topic, no doubt.

What's the Deal? will occupy the second half of the hour that used to be filled by This Week in NASCAR. After 14 years, that series has been cancelled. SPEED felt the show had run its course.

Filling the thirty minute slot at 8PM on Mondays will be a recap version of the NASCAR in a Hurry show. This program will essentially be an extended version of "Scanner Chatter." Using video and audio captured by The NASCAR Media Group over the weekend at the races, the show will feature content not seen on the TV coverage and offer the kind of emotional behind the scenes moments NMG is famous for producing. Several existing SPEED announcers will voice the show on a rotating basis.

That makes the new Monday night line-up Race Hub, NASCAR in a Hurry and What's the Deal beginning at 7:30PM. SPEED also has several program concepts in the hopper for later in the season as well as returning the fan favorites on the weekend from NASCAR Performance to Wind Tunnel.

Over the next couple of weeks, the specifics and additional information on these shows will be made available. In the meantime, let's ask for your comments on the pending line-up of studio and news programs on NASCAR TV for 2010.

To give us your opinion, just click the comments button below. This is a family-friendly website, please keep that in mind when posting. Thanks as always to you for taking the time to stop by The Daly Planet.