The Money Train

Before we turn our attention to the Daytona 500 and the new season of NASCAR on FOX, there is some unfinished business with ESPN. Jeff Gluck of SBNation reported recently on a post-season poll he conducted. After wishing Dale Earnhardt Jr. was running better, the number two thing on the wish list of NASCAR fans was the request for side-by-side commercial breaks on the Sprint Cup Series telecasts.

This first drew my attention back in 2006 when a young reporter named Marty Smith prepared this (click here) article on the topic for the NASCAR.com website. Smith did a wonderful job of exploring the topic and interviewing the parties involved in the issue.

Back in 2006, ABC/ESPN spokesman George McNeilly told Smith that the network would enjoy the opportunity to bring side-by-side coverage to NASCAR fans, but obstacles abound. It's not as easy as simply doing it.

"ESPN is on the cutting edge of technology and would like the opportunity to pursue side-by-side with NASCAR, but we are contractually prohibited at this time from doing so," said McNeilly. "We see side-by-side as an opportunity to serve sports fans so they don't miss the action and still provide great value to advertisers on the telecast. We'd like the opportunity."

Ramsey Poston was the NASCAR spokesman back in 2006 and this was his response on the topic. "We are always interested in finding the best way to showcase our racing in a manner that serves fans, sponsors and the networks," Poston said. "Up to this point we have not seen a split screen solution that accomplishes that."

Money was said to be at the heart of the matter. ESPN is NASCAR's largest TV partner and paid a hefty sum to return to the sport. This huge TV contract put ESPN in charge of not only the final seventeen Sprint Cup Series races, but made the network the exclusive TV home of the Chase for the Championship.

Fans remember all too well the significant amount of commercial inventory run in the NASCAR on ESPN telecasts this season. Many believe that this is the primary revenue source for the company and being directly used to pay the NASCAR rights fees. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The reality is that ESPN has its own money train. It delivers each and every month and is full of items that may look familiar. Those are your hard-earned dollars spent to maintain cable or satellite TV service so you can watch NASCAR. ESPN's money train is full of your cash.

Reporter Anthony Crupi of Mediaweek.com calls ESPN the Uncle Pennybags of sports broadcasting. Pennybags is the jovial type who takes your money on a regular basis in Monopoly and never hides the fact he is flush with cash. Here is Crupi's take on the current college football situation.

Perhaps nothing illustrates ESPN’s rapacity (greed) quite like the college football bowl season. After blowing Fox Sports out of the water with a $500 million bid, ESPN won the rights for the Bowl Championship Series through 2014. In so doing, it now plays host to 33 of the 35 bowl games, including the Oregon-Auburn title match on Jan. 10.

And here’s the corker. Despite the towering expenses associated with hosting the BCS games, ESPN could air the championship event commercial-free and still walk away fat and happy.

The reason is very simple. ESPN charges cable and satellite operators an average of $4.40 a month per subscriber. Multiplying that by ESPN's 99.8 million subscribers means an annual cash stream of $5.27 billion. That, my friends, is one heck of a money train.

Remember the commercials? ESPN stands to make over a billion dollars in advertising this season, but that pales in comparison to the cash flow that is ultimately from consumers. As we all know, prices for cable and satellite services have never gone down. ESPN's windfall is here to stay.

This reality check should push open the door for a revamp of the dismal failure that was the 2010 Sprint Cup Series telecasts on ESPN. If these production and commercial problems existed with another major professional sport on ESPN, a solution would have already been found.

Side-by-side commercials and less inventory is the only way to let fans watching at home actually see the final seventeen races. What ESPN hopes you conveniently forget is that you are already paying to watch it with your monthly cable or satellite bill. Add in the incredible amount of commercials, and ESPN is smiling all the way to the bank.

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SPEED Will Not Be The NASCAR TV Network

It's been lots of fun watching the changes at SPEED since former Fox Sports chief David Hill took over the day-to-day senior management of the network. He recently put veteran TV executive Patti Wheeler in charge of both the programming and production departments.

With Wheeler's extensive NASCAR background and Hill's affinity for the sport, the rumor that SPEED would become a full time NASCAR TV network was suddenly supercharged. Now we know that is not going to happen. In fact, we know a lot more about what Wheeler and Hill are planning.

Click here for the Jalopnik.com article that featured Adam Carolla, who is pictured above. It was June of 2008 when Carolla was supposed to be hosting the US version of the popular Top Gear program for NBC. Needless to say, the series wound-up appearing this season on The History Channel with SPEED's Rutledge Wood in Carolla's role. Now it appears that SPEED will be giving Carolla another chance.

Variety.com reports that Carolla will be fronting a new show for SPEED. Here are the details:

Carolla will star along with Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal auto writer Dan Neil, ex-NBA star John Salley and Matt Farah from The Smoking Tire website. Carolla has been eager to do an auto-based TV show for some time. The show has been described as a cross between Top Gear and Fox Sports Net’s old The Best Damn Sports Show Period franchise, which featured Salley as a regular. According to the pitch, the show will feature news and conversation centered around cars, as well as pre-recorded features shot on the road.

In a press release, SPEED president Hunter Nickell detailed that SPEED is not developing original NASCAR-themed programs for prime time, but more celebrity-driven lifestyle and enthusiast shows. The lone NASCAR entry is once again a highlights program.

"SPEED has a history of success with original enthusiast programming," said Nickell. "We are aggressively communicating with the production community, teaming with some of the biggest names in the category as we develop the 2011 weekday prime time lineup."

This February, here are the new shows that will debut on SPEED weekdays after Race Hub.

Car Warriors (Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET, 60 minutes) – This hyper-charged automotive build show will pit a team of eight "all-star" builders against a team of average Joe's from local garages in a 72-hour challenge to turn a basic car into a work of art. Judges include iconic car designer George Barris, hot rod craftsman Jimmy Shine and electronics wizard Mad Mike Martin.

American Trucker (Thursdays at 10 and 10:30 p.m. ET, two 30-minute episodes) – Hosted by designer/artist and fanatical truck expert Rob Mariani, a finalist on HGTV's Design Star, this new show introduces the audience to iconic trucks, the famous routes they followed and the cargo missions that made history.

Car Science (Wednesdays at 10 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. ET, two 30-minute episodes) – The producers of the popular franchise series Sports Science and Fight Science bring a mad-cap scientific approach to the world of automobiles.

Speed Makers (Thursday at 9 p.m. ET, 60 minutes) – Speed Makers takes a look at the iconic builders and epic innovators of acceleration. From celebrated mega-structures like Daytona International Speedway to behind the scenes at Aston Martin, this show celebrates the masterminds of engineering power.

Ticket to Ride with Dan Neil (Tuesday at 8:30 p.m. ET) – Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal automotive writer Dan Neil takes viewers inside the business of cars, offering insightful test drives, interviews and commentary with a trademark wit that has made Neil a must-read for car lovers. Adam Carolla and others are along for the ride.

The 10 (Wednesday at 8 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. ET, two 30-minute episodes) – A fast-paced list program, highlighting the best of the best from the world of NASCAR. First season topics include Most Bizarre Finishes, Throw-downs, Talladega Moments, All-Time Races, Closest Calls and Earnhardt Moments.

Hunter's only comment on any sort of original NASCAR-themed programming is that there are some projects still in development. Well, being in development at a time when other shows are signed, sealed and delivered is not exactly a good thing. There was a time when SPEED worked very hard on creating NASCAR content, but it seems those days are over.

On January 24, the network returns Race Hub Monday through Thursday at 7PM with host Steve Byrnes and reporter Danielle Trotta. This weekday NASCAR news series took SPEED years to finally produce amid failure after failure of enthusiast and lifestyle shows. Now, ironically, it is the cornerstone of SPEED's prime time line-up.

It does seem amazing that SPEED will not support its own coverage of the Camping World Truck Series with a weekly show. Also, original programming concepts from NASCAR Wives to a Humpy Wheeler interview show seem to have fizzled once again.

Meanwhile, click here for the story on CWTS driver Jennifer Jo Cobb's new TV project titled The Ride.

Recently, we saw The History Channel produce a season of Madhouse, Max Siegel create Changing Lanes for BET and Showtime offer Inside NASCAR every Wednesday during the season. Even Hendrick Motorsports got into the act with Jimmie Johnson 24/7 on HBO.

It's a bit of a surprise that SPEED is going to focus on the weekend coverage from the tracks and Race Hub as the primary NASCAR offerings. Monday nights on SPEED used to have a big NASCAR theme and serve as a wonderful platform to attract fans still buzzing about the races from the weekends.

It seems that once again programs connected in some way to actual racing have given way to made-for-TV entertainment as SPEED continues to push what it calls enthusiast programming in prime time for another year. My take is that the identity crisis at SPEED continues.

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.

Time For Some Daytona Streaming

We don't normally see tracks streaming NASCAR content online because the rights to footage and interviews are actually owned by other companies. Thursday, the Daytona International Speedway starts the season off right by streaming a press conference for all the fans through the track's own website.

At 12PM ET from the Infield Media Center, track president Joie Chitwood will be joined by NASCAR's Robin Permberton live online. Drivers attending will be Jeff Burton, Kurt Busch, Jamie McMurray and Bobby Labonte.

Click here for the direct link to the webcast. The address is daytonainternationalspeedway.com/tiretest for you folks who prefer to type.

Although it's only an hour long, the reason I am so excited about this is because it moves slowly toward breaking down the technology wall for NASCAR fans. Normally, we hear reporters ask questions on webcasts but it would be just as easy to get some fan questions live on the phone or from Twitter or Facebook.

Letting down the walls and streaming from the various track websites in advance of races would allow fans to begin to feel involved behind the scenes. SPEED and the various NASCAR partners deliver the on track action and some news recaps, but social media and online streaming is different. It's portable, it's personal and it's interactive.

Right now, there is absolutely no opportunity to use a laptop, iPad or desktop to access NASCAR video content from the tracks. Sure, TNT gives us RaceBuddy but I mean the meat and potatoes of the Friday practices, qualifying and live news.

Turner Sports is the online audio and video rights holder for NASCAR. The website they operate, NASCAR.com, does not even provide a live garage cam with sound for the racing weekends. It just might be time for the tracks to step-up and get in the game.

It should be interesting to see the fan response to the press conference tomorrow. There is no NASCAR Now or Race Hub, so there is only a slight chance some video might leak onto SportsCenter or the FoxSportsNet recap show. Slight being the keyword.

Since all the Sprint Cup Series tracks have professional PR folks who are very familiar with online technology and social media, it would be great to have them open up the online window for the action at their respective tracks with a garage cam, some live streaming of media events and even hosted news updates.

TV might be the big dog on the block, but after what the tracks have been through with attendance over the past season, it might be worth the risk to get some active streaming and social media interaction going early and carry it through the racing.

Let's get the fans back by getting them involved long before they have to tune-in to a TV network at a set time to watch something once again that excludes any interaction and instead sandwiches NASCAR content between all too frequent three minute commercial breaks.

Thanks, Daytona for starting the ball rolling. Let's hope it picks up speed once the season starts. You can click on the picture above or any of the testing pics below to see them fullsize. Right click to save to your computer.

We welcome your comments on this issue and the live press conference on Thursday. 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.