Despain Wanders Through The NASCAR Landscape

Tuesday night during this All-Star race week of TV programming, Dave Despain hosted a special Wind Tunnel from the SPEED Studios.

Scheduled as guests on the show were Dale and Ned Jarrett from Hickory, NC. Also on the program was Jimmie Johnson, who actually stopped by the SPEED Studios for his interview. Finally, Mark Martin joined the show for several questions by phone.

Although Despain has a long and distinguished history with NASCAR, his current relationship with the sport is prickly at best. He seems to continually be on the verge of exasperation where every NASCAR topic is concerned.

After several years of hosting Inside NEXTEL Cup with mixed results, Despain normally tolerates NASCAR on his Sunday night Wind Tunnel. What he loves is anything else. Formula 1, motorcycles, Sports Cars and the misery of open-wheel racing puts Despain in his glory.

This hour was clearly intended to be a build-up for the All-Star race, but started off with Despain asking both of the Jarretts a series of off-the-wall questions. As usual, both Ned and Dale provided the best answers that they could, but Despain's negativity about everything NASCAR was the theme of this interview.

Dale provided some great content for the show as he talked about the new chemistry with his ESPN broadcast team. It was very clear that the final seventeen Sprint Cup races of this season will be very different with Jarrett in the ESPN/ABC booth.

Dale's strongest statements came about the COT. For a network TV analyst to say that things need to be changed and changed soon to get better racing is amazing. To have Despain decline to follow-up on that point is even more amazing. Viewers have come to expect Despain to drive his "TV ship" in a very different direction.

Jimmie Johnson got a nice welcome from Despain, as Johnson is a veteran motorcycle and off-road competitor. To Despain, Johnson is not one of those "NASCAR guys." Johnson has been working very hard on his TV skills, and handled everything Despain could offer.

The best part of the Johnson interview was how he transitioned into NASCAR rather than IndyCar. The explanation of the Chevrolet connection and how that brand helped to keep Johnson in NASCAR during some rough times was fascinating. If that has been told in such plain language in the past, I certainly did not see the program.

Johnson was going to take viewer calls, which is a rarity these days for NASCAR drivers on TV. While many drivers are regularly on the radio, TV still has no interactive audience shows except for Wind Tunnel. Unfortunately, in this show Despain delivered exactly one call for Johnson from the fans.

Mark Martin wrapped-up the program with several off-base questions from Despain that wasted valuable time. Martin was forced to talk about old Dale Earnhardt Jr. fan tattoos and comparisons to other drivers. On my cable TV system, the show actually ended with Despain still talking. Somehow, that made a lot of sense.

A while back, Despain did a special program for SPEED on the history of the Daytona International Speedway. It was one of the best programs ever seen on SPEED in the history of the network. His in-depth discussions of things like AMA Pro Series politics and the demise of the Champ Car Series have been fascinating.

Perhaps, with TV professionals on the SPEED staff like Krista Voda and Wendy Venturini who spend almost all their time involved with NASCAR, a program like this would have been better-served allowing someone more informed about the specifics of the sport to interview the guests.

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Live Open Forum: Ask Your NASCAR TV Question And Get An Answer

The forum is now closed, but please feel free to read the Q&A in the comments section. Thank you to all who participated, we will do it again next Tuesday.

Due to popular demand, we are going to bring back the mid-week live question and answer forum.

Just ask your NASCAR TV question in the comments section, and we will try to get you the answer as quickly as possible. We have some friends helping out today, and should be able to respond pretty quickly.

We will keep this thread going all day long, so just check back to see if we got your question answered. TDP has not done this is a while, so with the regular season taking a break for the All-Star race, it seemed like a good time to open the floor for questions.

To ask your NASCAR TV-related question, just click on the COMMENTS button below and follow the directions. The rules for posting are on the right side of the main page. Thanks for taking the time to stop by today and participate.

"This Week In NASCAR" Looks A Lot Like "Trackside"

On the very popular Trackside show on SPEED, host Steve Byrnes has a live audience and three panelists who talk NASCAR for an hour. The result is a raucous show that features a lot of conversation on some good NASCAR topics.

Since the transformation of Inside NEXTEL Cup to This Week In NASCAR, Byrnes has been leading a show still looking for its identity. Normally, two panelists and Byrnes sit alone in the NASCAR Media Group studio and divide their time between previewing the next race and reviewing the past racing weekend.

On this Monday, SPEED stole some elements from the Trackside format to offer a very different version of TWIN. Byrnes hosted an expanded panel of four from the Speedway Club at the Lowe's Motor Speedway. The show was even taped before a live audience.

Joining Byrnes were Michael Waltrip, Kenny Schrader, Chad Knaus and Greg Biffle. These four comprise the panelist that normally rotate through the TWIN programs two at-a-time. On this day, SPEED used the All-Star race as the feature of this show.

TV viewers might have raised an eyebrow when the cameras first revealed the temporary set for this program. It looked a lot like the Monday NASCAR Now show on ESPN2 with the on-air announcers casually seated on high stools in an open set.

As usual, this program began with a preview of the next event despite the fact that several key people involved in the stories of Darlington were seated on the panel. Byrnes dutifully led the panel into an extended conversation about the All-Star race and its history.

Unfortunately, over the last several years SPEED has chosen to emphasize the crashes and suggest that "fisticuffs might ensue" because of the high level of excitement. The actual racing and the format gets lost in this hype, which is something not normally seen in most SPEED shows.

While SPEED tried to create a background behind the panelists, the same was not done for Steve Byrnes. He spent the evening hosting the show with two audience members heads poking over his shoulder. By the end of the evening, this had gone from distracting to aggravating. It was a problem that could have been easily fixed.

Schrader brings a dynamic to the show that is always self-effacing and in good humor. When he is present, everyone can take a deep breath and relax. Several times during the All-Star segment, Schrader stepped-in and brought things back into perspective very quickly. He really is key to this program in several different ways.

Eventually, the panel turned their attention to the action from Darlington. This led to Waltrip and Schrader returning to their conversational relationship that they had developed from years on the "old show." This put Greg Biffle trying to fit-in and Chad Knaus completely off his game. Both three other panelists and a live audience must have been a very new experience to Knaus in his rookie season on this program.

Biffle has worked hard on his TV skills over the past several seasons, and has improved tremendously on-the-air. It is clear that he is frequently not amused by Waltrip's antics and both Biffle and Knaus tend to take things very seriously when they are answering a question.

Byrnes did a good job of following-up with Knaus by asking him specific questions, especially the ones that could have used a crew chief perspective. Knaus is going to have to learn to jump-in without being called on if he is going to work in this TV format.

Most interesting in this show is the disparity between the "haves" and the "have nots." Waltrip and Schrader were not in the Darlington highlights and will not be in the All-Star race. Biffle and Knaus both were key stories in Darlington and their teams will both participate in the All-Star race. It made for an interesting dynamic as the conversation flowed.

Byrnes is also still finding his way, and this show is not responding to the kind of hosting he has done so well for SPEED over the years. The success of this program depends on the panelists to get the attention and have the last word. Byrnes is used to putting the cap on the conversation and is challenged by this new dynamic.

There is no doubt that the on-air talent is following the directions of the production team. Ultimately, Byrnes and company must do what they are told. This program was a stripped-down version of the "feature heavy" shows from the studio and left more time for conversation. If this movement continues, SPEED may find that the most essential element of this show cannot be written, edited or placed on a format.

They key element of this program is the interaction between personalities that are involved in the sport. That interaction has to be allowed to continue for more than thirty seconds or a minute. The less edited features and interviews the better, as veteran fans can attest.

If Byrnes had just thrown-out topics and allowed the panelists to simply talk, it would have resulted in the same kind of free-wheeling conversations that put this original TV series on the map. The highlights have already been seen by the fans, and few are captivated by an extensive preview of an event five days away.

If TWIN wants to continue to tweak the format, they need to look no further than the veteran personalities on their set. Byrnes and company have a lot of racing knowledge that does not need fancy editing or pre-recorded interviews. It was nice to see this show go on location, but fans deserved a little more spontaneity and a little less controlled agenda.

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