Thursday TV/Media Notes

Here are some items from the week of interest to NASCAR fans:

Darrell Waltrip returns to SPEED this weekend as he joins the Trackside crew on Friday night for a one hour show that airs at 11PM ET. Krista Voda will be the show host. Marcos Ambrose and Martin Truex Jr. will be the guests.

Elliott Sadler steps aside to make room for DW. This is the only SPEED program for Waltrip this weekend, Kyle Petty is working Race Day and Victory Lane with Kenny Wallace.

SPEED's Randy Pemberton is going to have a memorable Thursday. This was his most recent Facebook posting:

OK, Surgery at 7:30 am on Thursday. Spinal fusion of S1-L5-L4. Rods, screws, the whole nine yards.without it I can't walk 25 yards without kneeling down. Can't wait! A few days in the hospital n home. It's not a slam dunk so, if you feel inclined, a little prayer tonight could be the difference! Thanks all....

Good luck to Randy on his surgery and recovery. Hope to see him back on SPEED soon.

Ray Evernham joins the ESPN team this weekend for both the Nationwide and Sprint Cup Series races. He will be in the Infield Pit Studio with Allen Bestwick, Rusty Wallace and Brad Daugherty.

Update: Thanks to all the readers who passed along the information that Dover was in fact the first race after the 9-11 attacks. SPEED was just a bit off in the media release. The feature will be on how NASCAR regrouped after that fateful day. Thanks again.

Thursday, the final edition of Race Hub on SPEED this week, will feature a Tony Stewart interview and Hermie Sadler will update activity from the Richmond International Raceway. Pretty stellar job by Steve Byrnes of taking this series and making it his own over the past several weeks.

Unlike last weekend, ESPN2 has all the practice and qualifying coverage on Friday. The breaks between sessions will be filled with "NASCAR Now" programs, but with the Nationwide Series race that night it is going to be a very long day for Marty Reid, Dale Jarrett and Andy Petree.

There will be more channel flipping for fans this Saturday as the Sprint Cup Series race is once again on ABC. Mike Massaro and Ricky Craven will offer the 9AM preview edition of NASCAR Now on ESPN2. Race Day on SPEED hits the air at 5PM and the ABC pre-race show begins at 7PM ET.

The ABC schedule has 11PM to 11:30PM scheduled as a post-race show. The wrap-up edition of NASCAR Now on ESPN2 airs at 12:30AM ET. To make matters even more complicated, SPEED is going to try Victory Lane at 11:30PM. The TV schedules could get very interesting should the race go just a little bit long.

Any additional TV or media updates will be posted right here. Check back for updates. In the meantime, please feel free to leave a comment on any of the topics listed above. Thanks for taking the time to stop by The Daly Planet.

Social Media Silence Speaks Volumes

About a month ago, we wrote about the news that NASCAR had secretly fined driver Denny Hamlin for comments he made on Twitter. It was AP reporter Jenna Fryer who broke the story. The amount of the fine was substantial and NASCAR presented Hamlin with a log of his offensive Twitter comments.

The interesting thing is that in this case the fans got to see the evidence. Hamlin was one of many drivers from all three series who got hooked on Twitter and used it effectively in several different ways.

This week, the Sprint Cup Series is headed for perhaps the biggest race of the season in Richmond, VA. There are multiple storylines playing out in the sport as the final race before The Chase for the Championship gets set to run under the lights on ABC in primetime.

Twitter is interesting. It costs nothing to join, is easy to use on any online device and has become the breaking news source for almost any topic worldwide. NASCAR uses Twitter every day to offer official news and updates. On the weekends, live race tweets chronicle every Cup, Nationwide and truck series race.

In this "have at it boys" season, NASCAR actively encouraged the drivers to speak their minds and deal with issues on the track among themselves. It sometimes takes a very thick skin to be a Sprint Cup Series driver in 2010.

There has been a whole lot of talking going on among the drivers that is dutifully reported by the media corps, the NASCAR TV partners and the radio networks. But, now there is one place where almost no talking is going on. That place is Twitter.

Click here to read "Did NASCAR Crush Social Media" from the August 4 edition of TDP. The story was updated on August 9 with comments on the topic from Hamlin.

NASCAR fans on Twitter had access to all of Hamlin's tweets. Many looked back and saw a very different situation than the one NASCAR determined needed 50 thousand dollars to resolve. In this case, it appeared that the thinnest skin belonged to NASCAR.

Here are some fan comments on the topic:

"The reason I finally got a Twitter account this summer was to be able to hear directly from the drivers. It was cool. But now all we get is just plain silence." (from Vince)

"NASCAR moves one step closer to pro wrestling than pro sports. It's less and less about the competition and more and more about the show and about rivalries. Stick and ball teams and leagues have "you can't badmouth us" rules too but they don't make it rain in the top of the 8th or throw towels on the court with 20 seconds to go." (from Tripp)

"I remember reading Denny's tweets that night and even gave my thoughts on it to him and to Gluck at the time. I didn't see anything at the time where I really thought Denny said anything out of line or that hadn't been said by other drivers and by fans over the last few years about the late cautions." (from PJ)

Hamlin's online conversation with SBNation blogger Jeff Gluck on the topic of "mystery debris" caution flags was apparently the key issue for NASCAR. It's ironic that other drivers, team owners and NASCAR personalities at the time were also actively engaged in tweeting on that same topic.

One well-known Sprint Cup Series owner with a long history in TV engaged in an extended Twitter debate where he defended NASCAR's right to make the race more exciting by purposefully throwing a caution flag. He called it a "TV timeout." To even have this discussion, the assumption by all was that "Jacque Debris" had visited once again.

At a time when NASCAR is looking for new fans, Twitter has over 145 million users around the world. Twitter is viewed over 180 million times per month and is signing up more than 250 thousand new users every day. In the US, Twitter has over 20 million users and many of them are directly in NASCAR's target audience.

Hamlin's fine and NASCAR's strong words about policing social media have effectively ended the Twitter participation of many drivers, crew chiefs and owners. Now, public relations staffers offer official stories and pictures from teams while journalists chat with fans. Some drivers offer happy talk while linking to merchandise offers and sponsor sites.

The Twitter universe is huge, growing by the day and becoming the most effective way to transmit information in a timely fashion to a targeted audience. In much the same way that NASCAR's drug policy used to be based on "reasonable suspicion," the sanctioning body has not defined for personalities within the sport a social media line that should not be crossed.

It's time for NASCAR to re-open the door and tap into the fastest growing global communications technology. Instead of direct conversations with fans around the world, the NASCAR drivers stumble into Richmond in the middle of a social media blackout.

Where Twitter is concerned, "have at it boys" failed miserably. Perhaps, one simple and clearly stated official policy would assist in bringing back the rapidly growing interaction between fans and NASCAR personalities that ground to a halt in spectacular fashion.

We welcome 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.

"NASCAR Now" Preemptions Continue

Monday should have been a huge day for ESPN's NASCAR Now. Host Allen Bestwick has worked very hard to put together a 5PM Monday hour of solid NASCAR TV. Normally, Bestwick and three panelists review the weekend, preview the upcoming races and talk with a NASCAR newsmaker.

This Monday, ESPN2's time-shifted coverage of the NHRA US Nationals was scheduled until 6PM. Instead of airing NASCAR Now at that time, SportsCenter crossed over from ESPN and took the 6PM timeslot. SportsCenter then jumped over to ESPNEWS at 7PM and ran for three additional hours.

Once again this week, the Tuesday through Thursday 5PM editions of NASCAR Now have been preempted. The US Open tennis tournament also pushed NASCAR Now off the air last week. Tennis has not been kind to the series this summer.

ESPN switched most of it's Sprint Cup Series races from ABC to ESPN in order to deliver a more focused audience, be more flexible with time issues and keep NASCAR content on cable.

ESPN2 is home to the only "support programming" that NASCAR gets on the ESPN family of networks. The single TV series that has aired in support of the sport since 2007 is NASCAR Now. There are no other regularly scheduled NASCAR programs on the ESPN networks.

In 2006, ESPN became the major TV rights holder for NASCAR in a multi-year contract that exceeded a billion dollars. ESPN was back and NASCAR was elated. Just last week, NASCAR media executive Paul Brooks spoke to reporter Dustin Long from Landmark Newspapers.

Brooks told Long that the cross-over promotion on ESPN programs will really help the TV ratings for the actual Sprint Cup Series races. "They're turning the dial up at a time when we need it most," Brooks said of ESPN. "We've worked pretty hard with ESPN to get this to a pretty good place. We're anxious to see the results of this."

Well, Brooks is going to have to stay up late to see his results. The Tuesday through Thursday NASCAR Now shows air at midnight Eastern Time or later with no re-airs. The Monday show was cancelled.

After racing since February, this is the week leading up to the final race before The Chase for the Championship. The entire point of ESPN returning to the Sprint Cup Series was to provide a comprehensive multi-network media platform for NASCAR content.

Once again preempting the original airing of ESPN's daily NASCAR TV news program at this critical time does not seem to fall in line with "turning up the dial."

We welcome 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.