What A Week Of Stories

Thanks to the guys over at Rowdy.com for featuring me on the December 12th podcast. To listen, just surf over to Rowdy.com and click on the "listen now" link on the Rowdy Podcast.

To listen once the Dec. 13th podcast is up, just click "listen now" and then "past shows" on the pop-up window. Choose the 12-12-08 selection.

Here are the featured TDP columns for the week. Click on the title to read and comment.

The Sprint Cup Series banquet in NYC was not exactly as "live" as ESPN made us think.

Good old "Digger" from NASCAR on Fox made it all the way to The New York Times.

Toss Marty Reid's name into the ESPN rumor mill for NASCAR next season.

DirecTV officially cancelled NASCAR Hot Pass for 2009 to the dismay of many fans.

Fox Sports announced it would be dropping the live on-location Major League Baseball pre-game show starring former NASCAR reporter Jeanne Zelasko. Does this mean the Hollywood Hotel could become a victim of the cost-cutting at Fox?

Veteran NASCAR reporter Mike Mulhern joined the ranks of the unemployed. Several other members of the traveling NASCAR press corps will also not be returning for 2009. What does this mean for fans?

This certainly has been an amazing week for all the wrong reasons when it comes to NASCAR and its various media components. Please feel free to add your comments to this post on any of the topics listed above. Thanks again for the kind words about the Rowdy.com podcast, always fun to work with Buck and Bass.

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NASCAR Press Corps Starts To Dwindle

This column is updated at the bottom of the story.

The talk has been about the TV coverage of NASCAR and cost-cutting here at TDP for the last couple of days. Now, the reality of the economy has been extended to the NASCAR press corps.

There are several high-profile reporters who will not be returning to the Sprint Cup Series beat next season. Mentioned in this article (click here) in the Winston-Salem Journal is a name that is also familiar to NASCAR TV viewers.

Mike Mulhern was great on TV. He brought an attitude and a demeanor that was able to draw the best out in others because they were often suddenly on the defensive. Love him or hate him, Mulhern was a presence on SPEED both during his Tradin' Paint appearances this season and his semi-regular presence on the earlier Pit Bull program.

It was back in 1974 when Mulhern first began to patrol the NASCAR garage and eat the Infield Media Center food. His distinctive voice could often be heard by fans watching the post-race press conferences live on ESPNEWS.

His questions were sometimes hilarious and often outrageous. Mulhern is one of those independent-spirited reporters who is fun to read and even better to listen to when he is talking NASCAR.

Click here for his goodbye video. After reviewing the Homestead race, Mulhern does a great goodbye about two minutes in with some tips for fans. While this may be his final season at the Winston-Salem Journal, it appears Mulhern may be joining the Internet gang with his own website in 2009.

Over on Jon Lowder's blog (click here), he wonders why this had to happen.

"Although any cuts by the paper come as no surprise, I'm wondering why they'd cut the one guy covering a professional sport that actually makes sense here in Winston-Salem? Obviously there's no need for pro basketball or football coverage here, but NASCAR's an institution and Mulhern is one of the old hands covering it."

"Maybe the folks at the paper figure Mulhern will have as easy a time finding a job as anyone given his knowledge of, and connections to, the racing industry. Maybe, but I think they missed one of their best multimedia opportunities by letting him go. I suspect they could have made a pretty penny finding ways to get his expertise syndicated to other outlets as those folks cut back their non-core assets."

I completely agree with Mr. Lowder. Rather than saving money on one reporter's salary, the Journal is losing an asset that it cannot replace. Mulhern was great on paper, fun on the radio and just getting good at his video skills. This combination is exactly what the reporters of the future must possess.

In a couple of weeks, when the 2008 budget year is officially over, we will recap the changes in the NASCAR media landscape. Some of the names who will be either leaving the NASCAR scene completely or trying to venture out into the Internet-only world in which we live are very interesting.

But, for right now we are just sorry to see Mulhern move away from a newspaper that was as deeply intertwined with NASCAR as the Charlotte Observer or the Daytona Beach News-Journal.

Keep an eye on MikeMulhern.net during the off-season. While it is under construction now, there is little doubt Mulhern will make himself heard one way or another before the engines start for Speedweeks.

Update #1 - Click here for the link to the final blog post for Yahoo! Sports Jerry Bonkowski. Yahoo! is downsizing the NASCAR presence and Bonkowski is moving on.

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With Fox Cutting MLB Pre-Game Show Is Hollywood Hotel Next?

Fox Sports has decided to eliminate the on-location pre-game show for the Sunday Major League Baseball games telecast by the network in 2009. Former NASCAR reporter Jeanne Zelasko and MLB veteran Kevin Kennedy were featured on the broadcasts.

According to LA Daily News Tom Hoffarth (click here), the Fox broadcasts will now come on the air at 1PM and the first pitch will be at 1:07PM. The thirty minute pre-game show is gone, which also means the booth announcers will have to deal with rain delays and other stoppages of play.

Several weeks ago, word came out that both ESPN and Fox were looking hard at cutting TV production costs in several major sports properties. NASCAR was high on the list for both networks. Several meetings have taken place where executives from Fox, ESPN and NASCAR discussed what opportunities were available for cost savings.

Obviously, one target for both Fox and ESPN is the custom-made TV trailers that are brought on the road to host the pre-race shows. At Fox, that is called the Hollywood Hotel. Chris Myers and Jeff Hammond are joined by Darrell Waltrip during the pre-race and then Myers and Hammond remain in the Hollywood Hotel for the duration of the event to add opinion and commentary.

This piece of equipment has become sophisticated over the years and now has all kinds of TV effects and multiple camera angles built right in. Basically, it has become a mobile high-tech TV studio.

Since Fox has now stepped forward and confirmed that they are going to be cutting the TV production on the Major League Baseball games of the week, it would seem that February's start of the NASCAR season would be next in line for the financial microscope.

ESPN also begins their Nationwide coverage at Daytona and has not said a word about the changes that it may have in store for the new season. ESPN brings the Infield Pit Studio to all the major Nationwide Series races and all the Sprint Cup events covered by the network.

That facility not only hosts the pre-race programs, but also functions to host practice and qualifying shows as well as Sprint Cup versions of NASCAR Now. Although it may be expensive, ESPN gets a lot of use from this piece of TV equipment.

ESPN also travels Tim Brewer's Tech Center, which is another expensive custom-made trailer that contains a cutaway car and lots of other racing parts. The Tech Center just might not see as many road miles next season if this trend continues.

It should be the next week or so when word comes out about the changes for NASCAR TV production for 2009. Seeing what Fox did with baseball and the recent demise of DirecTV's Hot Pass are unfortunately going to set the tone for what TV viewers will probably be dealing with shortly.

We will update the news as it happens and try to keep NASCAR fans ahead of the information curve during these very strange days.

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