Friday TV/Media Notes

Here are some notes heading into the NASCAR tripleheader weekend:

Don't forget that Rick Allen, Phil Parsons and Michael Waltrip are calling a Camping World Truck Series race from Kentucky Speedway Friday night on SPEED. Qualifying at 6PM, pre-race show with Krista Voda at 7:30PM and live race coverage at 8PM ET.

Because of the truck race, there is no Trackside on SPEED this Friday night. It can't move to Saturday because the Nationwide Series race is also at night.

Mike Joy is back in the SPEED TV booth on Saturday calling practice and qualifying for the Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series from Atlanta, GA. He will be joined by the usual suspects in Larry McReynolds and Jeff Hammond. John Roberts will be hosting the NASCAR Live shows between sessions.

College football has started, so this is the first weekend where the Nationwide Series pre-race show on ESPN2 at 6:30PM is three hours after kick-off of a game. Needless to say, be ready to see it joined in progress. Another football game is scheduled for 10PM immediately after the race is supposed to be over.

Nicole Briscoe and Ricky Craven are handling the NASCAR Now weekend studio shows on ESPN2. Shannon Spake and David Newton will be reporting from the Atlanta Motor Speedway. Show times on our TV listings on the left side of the page.

ESPN is once again having the TV team double-up this weekend. Marty Reid, Dale Jarrett and Andy Petree will call both the Saturday Nationwide and the Sunday Sprint Cup Series events. Allen Bestwick, Brad Daugherty and Rusty Wallace will be riding it out in the Infield Pit Studio. Yes, Tim Brewer and the Tech Garage will also be there!

On Thursday's edition of Race Hub, Bob Dillner said testing would be returning to the Daytona International Speedway this year. With new pavement, there had to be something done and open testing for teams in all three series seems to be the solution. Thatsracin.com reporter Jim Utter passed along that he heard January 17 - 21 are the tentative dates.

There is a new list of events available for fans in Las Vegas during the banquet weekend in the post-season. Click here for the scenedaily.com page link for the details. Hopefully, some more sponsor-driven events will be added.

There is no daytime NASCAR TV coverage on Friday. We will be live blogging the truck race Friday night, please join us then. In the meantime, please feel free to leave your comments on the topics above. Thanks for stopping by.

BET And NASCAR Debut "Changing Lanes" (Updated)

Update: Going to leave this post up to host your comments on the first episode of the show. Some folks put it on the DVR and will be watching it later. I liked the personalities of the kids and the fact that viewers got to see the parents. I did not like the choice of a voice-over announcer or the hyped drama of the heat races. I will be back next week and watch the next episode.

The NASCAR Media Group, BET network and former DEI president Max Seigel are partnering to bring a new series to TV. Changing Lanes is one of those infamous "docu-series" that allows producers to walk both sides of the street.

Part real story and part scripted competition, Changing Lanes is sure to be controversial to some. Click here to watch the official video preview.

Here is the basic premise from a recent press release:

The series kicks off at NASCAR's Drive for Diversity Combine where 30 drivers gather to showcase their on-track skills as well as their ability to conduct themselves professionally in various settings. Those that perform well continue in the competition, undergo further on- and off-track evaluations and subsequent eliminations until there are only four contestants remaining. The final group will join Revolution Racing and compete in the 2010 K&N Series as well as partake in a 50-lap head-to-head race. The winner will get the opportunity to qualify for the Toyota All-Star Showdown in Irwindale, CA.

Click here for a link to Dave Kallman of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel discussing this ten episode series. Kallman makes several very good points. The mix between the real world and "docu-drama" content edited for TV might work well in entertainment, but motorsports is a bit different.

Over at commonsensemedia.org, the website gives the series high marks in several different categories. Click here to see the review. "The series offers positive messages and role models for tweens and up," says the article.

Meanwhile, over at The New York Post the Changing Lanes headline says "NASCAR: It's not just white guys." In yet another major market publication out of touch with the sport, the Post pushes the redneck stereotype while using Danica Patrick and Wendell Scott as the best NASCAR minority examples.

The rapper Ludacris, whose real name is Chris Bridges, provides the narration for Changing Lanes. Bridges is no stranger to media controversy and is certainly an curious choice. He has walked a fine line between mainstream media acceptance and public criticism for profanity, misogyny and racism in his song lyrics. Those critics have included Oprah Winfrey and President Barack Obama.

BET as the destination for this series is also interesting. SPEED sits as the de facto motorsports cable TV network right now and certainly could use some new Monday night NASCAR-related shows. There simply is not much of a cross-over between the current NASCAR TV partners and BET. That makes promotion in existing NASCAR programming for Changing Lanes tough to do.

Seigel had a rough ride in NASCAR after coming to DEI with lots of dreams and ambitions to integrate current music and entertainment celebrities into the sport through his personal connections in the industry. Now, those same connections have resulted in a reality-style TV series that will certainly open some eyes among the existing fan base.

The MaxSeigel.com website calls Seigel "one of the most influential executives in the entertainment and sports industries." This time, Seigel is walking in backed by an established production company in the NASCAR Media Group. His product is airing on a well-known TV network in BET and NASCAR has given him the official stamp of approval for his effort.

Changing Lanes is going to be a fascinating television experiment to watch. The series debuts Wednesday at 8PM Eastern/7PM Central Time on BET.

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Nationwide Series Enters The College Football Zone

It's that time of the year again. Time for our annual discussion about the impact of college football on NASCAR's number two series. The Nationwide Series was called an "unpolished jewel" by ESPN president George Bodenheimer back in 2006.

Since that time, ESPN has used the February through August coverage of the Nationwide Series to maintain the network's presence in the sport. Once college football begins, the series takes on an all too familiar position. On September weekends at ESPN, the Nationwide Series becomes the redheaded stepchild.

This week's race is from the Atlanta Motor Speedway. There is a live college football game scheduled at 3:30PM ET on ESPN2 Saturday. Three hours later, the Nationwide Series pre-race show begins on the same network. Rarely have we seen football games end in a three hour "window" over the past couple of seasons.

The actual race coverage begins at 7PM and is scheduled for three hours. At 10PM, Cincinnati and Fresno State will be ready for kick-off of ESPN's late college football game. Once again, the Nationwide Series is the meat in a college football sandwich.

At 2:30PM on Saturday, Mike Joy and the SPEED TV team will cover Nationwide Series qualifying. There is no TV coverage of practice. SPEED will handle the Nationwide Series programming and news coverage right up until the pre-race show. That's the only way to get it on the air.

Infield Studio host Allen Bestwick is all too familiar with having ESPN2 viewers join the pre-race show in progress. While some may argue that the race is the key, that's not really true this time of year. Nationwide Series sponsors need exposure and telling the stories and updating the news during the pre-race show is key to meeting that goal.

At the end of 2008, some homes that carried the ESPN Classic network switched that channel to ESPNU, the college sports network. On many systems, ESPN Classic is now part of a pay tier or simply unavailable. This network was the emergency valve for Nationwide races when college football was interfering with coverage. No longer.

As the familiar college football scenario begins to emerge, ESPN responds by trying to shift attention to the Sprint Cup Series. The resulting Chase overkill proved to be a mess last season. The Nationwide Series simply slipped away as an afterthought.

There are several more years to run on the current ESPN contract with NASCAR for Nationwide Series coverage. NASCAR content can't move to ESPN3.com due to online rights issues. ESPN has no plan to launch a third general sports channel and moving the final three months of Nationwide Series races to SPEED is not an option.

So, buckle up and get ready for three months of a bumpy ride on ESPN2. Saturdays dedicated wall-to-wall at ESPN for college football will come momentarily to a screeching halt while the Nationwide Series drivers run a race. Then, in the blink of an eye NASCAR is gone and ESPN returns to the network's bread and butter of college football.

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