Live Blogging Sprint Cup Series From Talladega (ESPN2/ESPN - 12:00PM)

Here we go with the official "big one" TV coverage. These were the buzzwords repeated endlessly by Dr. Jerry Punch when he was in the play-by-play role for three years at ESPN.

The pre-race show from Talladega will be on ESPN2. Allen Bestwick is hosting from the Infield Pit Studio with Rusty Wallace, Ray Evernham and Brad Daugherty. It should be interesting to see if they use this hour to acknowledge the controversial finish of the truck series race and discuss the danger the yellow line rule poses today with cars now running 200mph once again.

Marty Reid is going to call the race. This might be his biggest challenge yet as he makes his way through the ESPN Sprint Cup Series races for the first time. Reid is going to have to balance the action on the track with the pictures that ESPN chooses to show.

Time and time again since the Chase began, Reid has been caught working only off the monitors in the TV booth. Incidents and key passes on the track have often been acknowledged by Dale Jarrett and then caught after a delay by the ESPN TV truck.

Jarrett and Andy Petree are going to be front and center at a track where NASCAR looks very closely at what the TV personalities say on the air about the racing. Teams dropping to the back, accidents getting to pit road and last lap incidents have been hot buttons for the sanctioning body.

On pit road will be Punch, Jamie Little, Vince Welch and Dave Burns. This is the race where tempers overflow like no other. Short-track beating and banging pales in comparison to the high-speed danger of this superspeedway. It should be interesting to see the pit reporters interact with drivers out of the race and after the event is over. Tim Brewer will be in the Tech Garage.

SPEED televised the truck series race on Saturday and it was a pleasure to watch. Overhead shots and wide angles let viewers see the racing through the pack as it played-out. Pit road reporters updated the key teams and the pit stops in detail.

This race has potential to boost NASCAR TV ratings for the rest of the season. A compelling and exciting telecast will go a long way toward erasing some of the blunders from ESPN this season, including the poor coverage at Martinsville.

This post will serve to host your comments on the ESPN2/ESPN coverage of the Sprint Cup Series race from Talladega. To add your TV-related opinion, just click on the comments button below. This is a family-friendly website, please keep that in mind when posting. Thanks for stopping by.

Live Blogging Camping World Trucks From Talladega (SPEED - 3PM ET)

This is going to be a tough day for the Camping World Truck Series TV team. On one hand, they get to have fun with Halloween costumes during a pre-recorded one hour Setup show. On the other hand, they must deal with the passing of NASCAR legend Jim Hunter who was a friend of that network and those in the TV compound.

Krista Voda anchors The Setup with Ray Dunlap and Adam Alexander as the pit reporters. Once the race starts, Voda will remain and cover pit road as a third reporter. Rick Allen will call the action with Phil Parsons and Michael Waltrip.

Trucks are very different at Talladega from the Cup Series race. There are only a handful of trucks and drivers capable of running in the lead pack for the duration of the event. In the past, the trucks have run in small packs grouped according to speed.

The TV coverage on SPEED is focused on the lead pack at Talladega. Keep an eye on the scoring ticker to see just how many trucks exit the race early as it is Allen's practice to ignore passing this information along to viewers. As I was told, the focus of SPEED is the racing and the rest is not important.

Hopefully, Kyle Busch will not run away with this event and leave the pack battling for second place. The trucks are a much better show when there is a handful with the same speed at this track. Busch is always a threat to make it his own event.

SPEED's coverage is old school as we have said many times. The focus is on the racing, all the stories of pit road are updated and the announcing is exciting and high energy.

This post will serve to host your comments on the SPEED coverage of the Camping World Series trucks at Talladega. To add your TV-related comments, just click 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 Loses A Giant

Here is the official info from NASCAR on the passing of Jim Hunter:

NASCAR Vice President of Corporate Communications Jim Hunter, whose career in motorsports spanned portions of six decades as both a journalist and public relations professional, died last night in Daytona Beach, Fla. following a 12-month battle with cancer. He was 71. "Jim Hunter was one of NASCAR's giants," said NASCAR Chairman and CEO Brian France. "For more than 40 years Jim was part of NASCAR and its history. He loved the sport, but loved the people even more. It seems as if everyone in the sport called him a friend. Jim will forever be missed by the NASCAR community. Our sympathies go out to his entire family." Added NASCAR President Mike Helton: "Jim was a uniquely talented man that cannot be replaced. He was a great friend and mentor to so many in the sport. His influence will remain with and be carried on by so many of the people he touched. This is a sad day for Jim's family and his extended, NASCAR family." As a young man growing up in his native South Carolina, Hunter was a football and baseball player at the University of South Carolina. Those years preceded a future of being immersed in the sports world, primarily motorsports. Hunter learned motorsports from "both sides" by working as a newspaper reporter/editor and a public relations representative. As a member of the media, Hunter was sports editor of the Columbia Record newspaper; he had an award-winning stint at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution; he was a columnist for Stock Car Racing magazine; and he authored a number of books, including a widely-read biography on NASCAR great David Pearson, entitled "21 Forever". On the public relations side, Hunter broke into that business in the 1960s, with Dodge's motorsports operation. He handled public relations for a number of top IndyCar drivers before going on to become the public relations director at his beloved Darlington Raceway and Talladega Superspeedway. In 1983, Hunter was named to his first executive position in his first NASCAR stint, becoming NASCAR's vice president of administration. In 1993 he was named president of Darlington Raceway and corporate vice president of the International Speedway Corporation. He remained at Darlington until 2001 when he accepted an offer from then-NASCAR Chairman and CEO Bill France Jr. to return to Daytona Beach to lead an expanded public relations effort aimed at responding to the needs of burgeoning media coverage. Hunter won numerous awards during his career, including: the Hugh Deery Memorial Award in 1988; South Carolina Ambassador for Economic Development in 1994; South Carolina Tourism Ambassador of the Year in 1997; the National Motorsports Press Association's Joe Littlejohn Award in 2005; and the Buddy Shuman Award in 2006. Hunter is survived by his wife of 48 years, Ann Hunter; his children, Scott Hunter and Amy McKernan and his grandchildren Dakota Hunter, and Hunter and Luke McKernan. In lieu of flowers the family asked that donations be made to The NASCAR Foundation or Hospice of Volusia/Flagler County. Funeral arrangements will be announced later.