Darrell Waltrip "Gives Us The Business"

As we began to address the TV issues that the networks will face in the 2008 season, one of the first topics on the agenda was the NASCAR on Fox coverage of the Daytona 500.

The Daly Planet column about Chris Myers having to deal with the frustrated and disenfranchised NASCAR fans next February drew a lot of great comments and generated a lot of email. You can read it by clicking here.

It also apparently resulted in a column on FoxSports.com by a gentleman who sits next to Mr. Myers in the Hollywood Hotel. His name is Darrell Waltrip, and he was "giving us the business."

In his Friday column, DW addressed the comments fans had left on The Daly Planet that were sometimes critical of Myers NASCAR knowledge. Fans had also pointed out that Myers seems to be constantly "ill at ease" in a racing surrounding, and really does not "fit-in" with the sport.

DW responded that Myers role on the Fox telecasts was specifically to bring that "different perspective." On Myers Hollywood Hotel conversations, DW said "he asks questions and puts things into perspective that we don't consider because he's covered other sports and we haven't. So when we are talking about rules, rule infractions, officiating or any of those things that other sports have in common with ours, Chris can always ask different questions and always have a different perspective."

The focus of The Daly Planet column was that when critical eyes turn to the stellar line-up of TV personalities involved in the NASCAR on Fox coverage, Myers is the "odd man out" by default. The point was made that after the Fox gang leaves the air, NASCAR programming continues on the Fox-owned cable network SPEED.

On that network, veterans like Steve Byrnes and John Roberts continue to work all the races for the entire season. In fact, both Roberts and Byrnes have already been on the air hosting SPEED's pre-season Daytona testing programs. The bottom line is, fans know and trust Byrnes and Roberts.

When SPEED rolls-out the Craftsman Truck Series, fans see the hard-working Krista Voda, who also handles pit reporting duties for the Sprint Cup races on Fox. She is another solid NASCAR host who will work from February through November on this sport that demands so much from so many.

When things are going well, TV issues don't appear. When things are not going so well, the conversations invariably begin. Waltrip says "some of the things he (Myers) does is part of his act, that's who he is and that's part of his act when he gets ready to do these shows." Waltrip continues that Myers "is very good at what he does and we are lucky to have him." Waltrip's points are well-taken.

Unfortunately, they are also naive. What viewers were treated to after Myers part of the NASCAR season was over were one Turner-employed Major League Baseball announcer and one ESPN-employed Monday Night Football sideline reporter.

That made three-out-of-three for the number of NASCAR NEXTEL Cup "infield TV hosts" who were not involved in the sport regularly.

The fundamental problem with that situation is very simple. NASCAR fans are.

The same fans who watched The SPEED Report in the off-season for NASCAR tidbits, checked Jayski.com every day for news, and watched the first pre-season testing show on SPEED are the very ones the NASCAR TV networks desperately need to please.

As we said in our original column, no matter how funny the jokes and how wacky the antics, one truth persists. There is nothing a network can do when a fan turns-off the TV and walks away from the sport. In 2007, one out of every ten fans did just that.

It might be that those fans were just a little bit tired...of the same old act.

The countdown clock at Jayski shows thirty-six days to the Daytona 500 on Fox Sports.

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Chris Myers Steps Into Suzy Kolber's Glass Slippers

What a difference a year makes. Chris Myers and the Hollywood Hotel gang used to walk into town with the Daytona 500 as their first big show, and then "rock and roll" their way through the remaining races in the NASCAR on Fox TV package.

Normally, the memories of the previous NASCAR season on TV were not an issue. Myers, along with Jeff Hammond and Darrell Waltrip, could have their goofy fun while warming-up the viewers for the race that was "coming up next." This year, things have changed.

Myers has always been the "odd man out" on this series, in much the same way that Marc Fein was on the TNT package last year. Myers is a journeyman, who just last week was seen as a sideline reporter on a playoff football game. But, many TV viewers remember Myers from somewhere else.

For ten years, Myers was a regular on ESPN hosting SportsCenter, Baseball Tonight and his award-winning Up Close interview program. Tennis fans know Myers from his Tennis Channel interview program called Center Court.

The one thing that Myers does not have on his resume, other than the Hollywood Hotel, is NASCAR. While on-air hosts like John Roberts, Steve Byrnes and Krista Voda slug-it-out in the NASCAR trenches each week, Myers is off to other sports once the Fox package ends. To Myers, NASCAR is a job and not a lifestyle.

Before the 2007 roll-out of the new NASCAR TV contract, this was not a problem. Myers was one of the "originals" on the Fox coverage, and basically created his own role. Now, after a disastrous season of declining ratings and fan unrest, there is no one more clearly in the spotlight than Mr. Myers. We all know the reason why.

ESPN had a devil of a time finding someone to take the Infield Studio anchor position during their first year back in NASCAR. This new high-tech studio is ESPN's equivalent of the Hollywood Hotel. During ESPN's Busch Series races, they tried Chris Fowler, Brent Musburger, Erik Kuselias, Mike Massaro and Allen Bestwick as hosts.

By the time that the network's NEXTEL Cup races had rolled around, the ESPN brass had seen enough. What they wanted was someone who was a professional TV reporter, someone who already knew the ESPN system and someone who would be "safe" on-the-air no matter what was happening behind the scenes. Enter Monday Night Football sideline reporter Suzy Kolber.

Casual fans who only watch the NEXTEL Cup races, and not the practice or qualifying shows, tuned-in to find themselves confronted by Suzy Kolber, Brad Daugherty and Brent Musburger. It was quite an experience.

Kolber openly admitted her lack of any NASCAR experience, and instead used her considerable TV skills to "direct traffic" and ask a whole lot of questions that any fan might ask if they were new to the sport. There was only one fundamental problem. NASCAR fans had been watching since February. It was now the end of July.

ESPN failed to understand that no one was "new" to the sport at that time of the season. No one was now watching just because the sport was "on ESPN." They totally dismissed the Fox and TNT parts of the schedule, and instead treated fans as if the Brickyard 400 was the Daytona 500. In ESPN's mind, the season had just begun.

Unfortunately, the person caught right in the middle of all this was Kolber. Smiling all the way to the end, she subjected viewers to a recap of the most basic NASCAR issues during her pre-race shows. Then, she put a topper on the situation by moving the ESPN pit road reporters aside and doing live "feature interviews" from the starting grid. Her questions were often unintentionally hilarious.

As ESPN's NEXTEL Cup season progressed, the network forced Kolber into becoming the object of fan anger by inserting her on-camera even as green flag racing continued in the background. Kolber promoted non-racing sports, interviewed celebrities, and offered discussions and recaps of the race even as it was still in-progress right over her shoulder.

Nowhere was that situation more out-of-control than the Pocono race in August, where Kolber closed the pre-race show with a full-length music video. "Shut-up and Drive" has become a painful reminder of the Disney entertainment influence on ESPN's NASCAR coverage. After seven months of hard racing, and with only a handful of races before The Chase cut-off, a pop music video topped the hard news from the Cup Series.

ESPN relieved Kolber of the Busch Series pre-race duties, and gave that program to Allen Bestwick, but the damage was done. For many fans, Suzy Kolber and Rusty Wallace had come to define ESPN's NASCAR coverage. As the season ended in Homestead, it was almost a relief.

Now, after an off-season that seems to get more microscopic every year, the NASCAR on Fox gang walks into a very different fan base. Viewers know that the booth team of Mike Joy, Larry McReynolds and Darrell Waltrip will bring themselves to the table prepared. Fox's pit reporters are the best in the business, and Jeff Hammond's hard work from the infield has kept both his profile and his credibility high.

Suddenly, all eyes are on Chris Myers. This season, the goofy humor and the embarrassing moments will take on a new meaning. SPEED viewers have now had an entire season of watching John Roberts and Steve Byrnes host every kind of TV show possible from the Cup tracks.

These are the two men that took the "burden" of keeping NASCAR TV credible, put it on their backs, and carried the load in 2007. Roberts and Byrnes combined to give NASCAR fans the kind of "at the track" feel that ESPN and TNT never delivered.

Byrnes hosted countless practice and qualifying shows, along with his Trackside and NASCAR Live duties. Roberts anchored the RaceDay franchise for SPEED, along with Victory Lane, Tradin' Paint and almost anything else the network needed.

Ironically, many times during the Fox portion of the season, Byrnes anchored his practice and qualifying shows from the Hollywood Hotel. He was sitting in the chair normally occupied by Chris Myers, and he looked good in it.

This February at Daytona when Chris Myers looks around, there will be lots of NASCAR TV veterans looking right back at him. Several of them worked non-stop for the entire racing season and hosted hundreds of hours of live national TV programs. Like the fans, they have the memory of Suzy Kolber fresh in their minds, and the reaction to her by TV viewers.

Fox needs to come out of the gate with poise and dignity to begin a big repair job with the fans. They need to fix a credibility gap they did not create, but must address. If the goofy antics and the forced attempts at humor of the Hollywood Hotel from last February surface again, fans may simply continue the trend of deciding they have better things to do.

No matter how many funny antics, no matter how many inside jokes and no matter how many electronic TV "toys" they bring, no TV network can prevent a viewer from simply walking away.

The NASCAR on Fox gang needs to remember that after they left the sport last season, that is exactly what one in every ten NASCAR TV viewers did. Chris Myers has his work cut-out for him.

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ESPN Mum On Jarrett's Role In 2008

Back in April of 2007, Dale Jarrett officially joined the NASCAR on ESPN announce team as a "part-timer." The network press release said that Jarrett would appear on ten Busch Series race broadcasts for ESPN2. As we all know, things changed drastically from that original plan.

As both Rusty Wallace and Dr. Jerry Punch struggled with their new roles, DJ was often a frequent guest on the ESPN and ABC races. Alongside Suzy Kolber and Brad Daugherty, Jarrett used his personality and his Dale Carnegie training to quietly cement himself a place in each telecast.

Often, as the race progressed, the members of the broadcast team would begin asking questions directly to Jarrett, even though he was sitting in the Infield Studio as a "guest." The entire direction of the telecast shifted when Jarrett was present.

Unfortunately, this left the flaws of the TV crew exposed for all to see when suddenly they were left without Jarrett's presence. Momentum in TV usually goes in only one direction, and it was very clear by season's end that the wheels had come off the ESPN NASCAR train.

Now, we turn our attention to the 2008 ESPN2 line-up of Nationwide races that begin in February. Several weeks ago ESPN put out a press release about their plans for the upcoming season. It was the subject of a Daly Planet column, which can be read by clicking here.

It was well written, clear and very concise. It contained the story of their continuing commitment to the series, and that once again each race would be live and in High Definition. What it did not say is who would be announcing...any of it.

Over at DaleJarrett.com the news stories talk about new crew chiefs and testing schedules as if 2008 will be a full season of racing. There is not a word about Jarrett's potential break-out year as a TV commentator for ESPN and ABC.

Last May, former ESPN broadcaster Ned Jarrett joined his son as an analyst in the ESPN2 booth for the Busch Series race at Lowe's Motor Speedway. From the start, the senior Jarrett did not miss a beat. It was clear he was prepared and had done his homework for this one single Busch Series assignment.

He did not mispronounce a driver name and remained excited about the racing action from the green flag through the last lap. Ned Jarrett is 75 years old.

This season, there is growing pressure to heighten the presence of the younger Jarrett on the ESPN and ABC races. No one is questioning Rusty Wallace's dedication, but often success or failure on TV is a direct result of a color analyst's own personality. It either works, or it does not. Rusty's intensity sometimes got him in hot water with the teams and the fans.

Wallace also suffered from being the "face" of the ESPN technology like Draft Track. Forced into races and into situations where it did not fit, Rusty was on the hook for information that sometimes seemed to be slightly less than credible.

We expect ESPN to announce their on-air line-ups this week for the Nationwide Series races. Since they do not return to the Sprint Cup events until months down the road, the choice of who will participate in the final seventeen high-profile events might be delayed. For right now, fans only want to know what personnel the network will roll-out at Daytona to greet the new Nationwide season.

These choices will either go a long way toward re-establishing ESPN's credibility, or continue their apparent problems in dealing with NASCAR as a major professional sport. Thursday, February 14th at 9:30AM Eastern Time the Nationwide Series takes to the track for Daytona practice on ESPN2.

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