Evernham and Rudd Make TV Moves

When SPEED released the TV line-ups for 2012 earlier this week, one name that was missing was Ray Evernham. On the racing weekends, Evernham had been driving over to SPEED's North Charlotte studios and working as a NASCAR analyst on the SpeedCenter shows.

This concept was created and Evernham was employed during the time Patti Wheeler was in charge of SPEED's programming and production departments. Wheeler left the network in December amid a senior management shake-up. Now, Evernham has followed her out the door.

SPEED confirmed that Evernham is out and that former Sprint Cup Series driver Ricky Rudd is in. This name came from out of the blue, as Rudd has never been active in NASCAR TV. He has no website, no Facebook page and no Twitter account. Perhaps, that is exactly the kind of "old school" mentality that some fans might embrace.

"Anytime you add someone with Ricky’s credentials, you give the viewers a voice and a perspective that has real impact," said SPEED President Scott Ackerson in a media release.

"I’m really looking forward to the next chapter," said Rudd, the 1977 Rookie of the Year. "It’s going to be a lot of fun working with the gang at SPEED." His first show in the studio with host Adam Alexander will be this Sunday.

Evernham continues to be just as interesting away from the track as he was in his crew chief and owner days. Click here for ESPN reporter David Newton's story on Evernham settling his lawsuit with former partner George Gillett.

In the last paragraph, Newton adds that Evernham has not ruled out a return to TV. We believe that is exactly the case. The buzz is that Evernham will be back on ESPN starting with the Daytona coverage.

"Evernham Issue Getting Tougher" was a TDP column from September of 2008. Evernham's star was rising at ESPN, but there was an issue that remained. It wasn't very hard to imagine what that topic might be.

This from the 2008 post:

Many things have changed since February and one of them is now very tough to take. When Evernham is on ESPN, the questions and issues that he deals with involve everything about NASCAR except one topic. That topic is Gillett-Evernham Motorsports (GEM).

Over the last couple of weeks there has been a nasty GEM lawsuit involving Robby Gordon, rumors of GEM buying another race team and also GEM moving to Toyota for 2009. This week, Patrick Carpentier has been told by GEM that he is out at the end of the season. Tuesday, Mike Delahanty, the Sr. Motorsports Manager at Dodge actually jumped-into a NASCAR media conference call to try and quell rumors of problems with Dodge and GEM.

While Evernham might talk about his cars and his teams during the race highlights, there is a code of silence at ESPN where Evernham is concerned that is simply not fair to NASCAR fans. Like all the other owners, Evernham should be fair game and he is not.

Now with the GEM issue behind him, Evernham's words during a recent interview with veteran NASCAR journalist Steve Waid seem to become even more clear. Click here for the full story. This is an excerpt.

"I still stay away from the motorsports side over at Hendrick Motorsports," Evernham said. "The less I know about what is going on in motorsports there, the easier it is to keep potential conflict out of it in regards to TV. I never want the teams to worry about what I might say on TV after I might have seen what they were working on. The best thing to do is keep that separate."

"Hopefully we’ll announce a new TV package in a little bit," Evernham added. "I’m going to do some TV stuff again."

Out of the pan and into the fire might be a better term. There is little doubt that Evernham's current employment at Hendrick Motorsports is going to be a hot topic in his return to TV. Even with his current involvement limited to the Hendrick Performance (non-racing) side of the business, its sure to raise some eyebrows.

Evernham has lots of irons in the fire including his ownership of East Lincoln Speedway, a car restoration business and a TV project focused on classic cars with his wife, Erin. That means his TV time will probably be limited on the NASCAR beat.

Amid the news about Evernham and Rudd, SPEED slipped in the fact that the network had hired former Miss Sprint Cup Monica Palumbo as a social media reporter. Rather than continue to rely on information from TV personalities sent whenever possible, Palumbo's challenge is to create an information stream on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube that continually offers current NASCAR information to fans.

There you have it. Rudd debuts on SPEED this weekend, Evernham's official announcement of rejoining ESPN is still pending and Palumbo better get a bigger battery for her Sprint phone. As always, we welcome your comments on these topics.

To add your opinion, just click on the comments button below. Thank you for taking the time to stop by The Daly Planet.

"Race Hub" Takes It On The Chin Again

The saga of the TV series created to offer NASCAR news, interviews and features on weekdays at SPEED is fascinating. Race Hub started as a thirty minute show with a rotating cast of hosts and reporters.

"SPEED Jumps In The NASCAR News Game" was the TDP column from September of 2009 when Race Hub suddenly sprang up on the network from out of the blue. Lots of things about this show didn't make sense in terms of timing, but for NASCAR fans frustrated by the network's excuses, any racing show was welcomed.

The suggestion still lingers that the odd start date of Race Hub was due to the new NASCAR Hall of Fame. SPEED was trying to become the official NASCAR Hall of Fame TV network, but that was a tough sell.

For years the network had been peddling endless "lifestyle" shows on weeknights and offered nothing but excuses to the fan base about the lack of NASCAR programming. Race Hub was perhaps the result of a mad scramble to get something on the air and fill that void in order to accomplish a bigger goal.

While Krista Voda and others did an admirable job of hosting Race Hub in 2010, several things quickly became clear. First, the show needed a full time host to establish a presence and personality. Secondly, covering the NASCAR shops and facilities in the area required a full time reporter. Finally, the show needed to be an hour in length for all four Monday through Thursday programs.

Steve Byrnes made a big decision and changed the strategic direction of his TV career by accepting the role of full time series host. It was the right decision. Byrnes combined with reporter Danielle Trotta to cover an incredibly diverse landscape of NASCAR personalities and topics.

The show settled into a 7PM Eastern timeslot with a 9PM Pacific re-air. Now, NASCAR had a weekday TV platform in primetime on a major cable network to feature the activity in the sport away from the track. Perhaps, it was too perfect.

"Puzzling TV Changes At SPEED" was a TDP post from last September. Just as strangely as it had arrived, Race Hub was now the victim of an incredibly poor programming decision in the heart of the 2011 NASCAR season.

In mid-September, Race Hub was moved to 6PM Eastern time and the re-air moved to 11PM Pacific. 6PM is the traditional hour of TV news on the East Coast. It is also the time for the featured SportsCenter show of the evening on ESPN. In 2012 the NBC Sports Network also rolled out SportsTalk, an hour of national sports news and interviews, in the very same timeslot.

Where NASCAR fans are concerned, this move by SPEED overlapped the final hour of the powerful Sirius Speedway show on SiriusXM NASCAR with Dave Moody and Angie Skinner. Moody has a wide variety of guests, many of whom are on the show after making news that day or being involved in ongoing NASCAR issues.

At the end of the day, pushing Race Hub out of the early primetime cable window was a tough decision to swallow. Fan feedback on moving the West Coast re-air to 11PM was also overwhelmingly negative. Well, fasten your seatbelts because SPEED has done it again.

The network has confirmed that Race Hub will remain in the 6PM timeslot this season, but the West Coast re-air has been effectively cancelled. Instead, the show will only re-air the following morning at 7AM Eastern time. Lets look at these two issues.

As we mentioned, the 6PM original air time puts Race Hub up against powerhouse sports and news programming of all kinds that has been firmly entrenched in that timeslot for many years. Although SPEED now has Byrnes host the show live, that makes little sense if many viewers are forced into other choices at that time.

The real head-scratcher comes with the end of the West Coast re-air. This season, NASCAR fans from Seattle to San Diego can only catch Race Hub at 3PM and then 4AM the next day. As one California viewer emailed, she will be working for the first airing and sleeping for the second.

This isn't an issue about DVR's and recording devices. Networks want their premier products to be seen as they air and that is the entire science behind TV program scheduling. The science behind these recent decisions may still be unexplained.

The original idea was that Race Hub would run at 7PM followed by three hours of primetime programming. Then, that four hour block would re-air at 11PM, which is 8PM Pacific. Regular viewers of other cable networks see the same type of pattern which allows multiple timezones to be served with a single satellite feed.

SPEED's new interim president is Scott Ackerson, a FOX Sports veteran joining the network from Los Angeles, CA. Ackerson is in the process of making changes throughout the company, but is once again saddled with a variety of worthless "lifestyle" shows that flopped.

Ackerson spoke to the Charlotte Business Journal's Erik Spanberg recently about the network's NASCAR agenda. "I’m hoping that we’re able to personalize the drivers a bit more, so that the viewers get a chance to know these people better," Ackerson said. "If they know people better, the more apt they are to watch."

Ackerson told Spanberg that SPEED will call on drivers to sit for more extensive interviews and features, using the material on multiple shows in multiple airings across the network. Click here to read the entire story.

Those words seem ironic for a network that purchases its weekend Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series TV coverage fully-produced from the NASCAR Media Group. One key reason SPEED created Race Hub was to finally put an in-house network production stamp on a NASCAR product.

So, there you have it. Race Hub will be at 6PM ET with a single re-air the next morning at 7AM beginning next week. It's a shame to see this series move from "must-see" to just another title on the recorded program list for many fans. Good luck to all those involved in Race Hub as the sport heads to Daytona.

We welcome your comments on this topic. To add your opinion, just click on the comments button below. Thank you for taking the time to stop by The Daly Planet.

Carl Edwards Talks ESPN Future

Now into the month of February the vast majority of on-air personalities working on race coverage for all four of the NASCAR TV partners are well known. We still need a TNT host to replace Lindsay Czarniak and wonder what Marty Reid's future holds, but there is one other big ticket item that seems to be still pending.

"Roush Says Edwards Headed To ESPN" was a TDP story from September of 2011. Jack Roush was addressing the media in the infield after a Nationwide Series race at Iowa Speedway. In an ironic twist, the speedway staff had put a live video feed of that interview on UStream.com.

In response to a question about the growing tension between Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Carl Edwards, Roush gave this response to the media and the UStream live audience.

"I think he's (Carl) made his decision," said Roush. "I think he is going to become a sportscaster for ESPN for the Nationwide Series races. I'm not sure if he is going to just do the companion races or all the races."

Although the small group of assembled media never followed-up on the topic, the fact that Roush confirmed Edwards would not be returning to the track in the Nationwide Series was news. The fact that Edwards would supposedly be joining ESPN was big news.

It had become quite clear in 2011 that ESPN had fallen in love with Edwards. In a "man crush" that rivals ESPN's current fascination with Tim Tebow, Edwards seemingly was invited to be on ESPN's NASCAR telecasts as much as possible.

Edwards often appeared as an ESPN pre-race guest from the Infield Pit Studio. If he fell out of a race, he would then appear on TV. Unlike other drivers, he was not being interviewed from the garage by a pit reporter. He was now back in the Pit Studio as a guest analyst. Edwards was also the only Sprint Cup Series driver selected to offer post-race analysis on ESPN for all the Chase races.

The Roush comments made even more sense when it was publicly confirmed just two weeks ago that Edwards will not run any Nationwide Series races in 2012. Edwards told Dave Rodman of NASCAR.com that he wants to concentrate on his Sprint Cup Series efforts, especially since a full time Cup driver can no longer win the Nationwide Series driver's title.

This week, Edwards continued to work on his television skills. Edwards was at the Tournament Players Club in Scottsdale, AZ on Wednesday, where he served as a roving reporter for the Golf Channel during the Pro-Am tournament leading up to the 2012 Waste Management Phoenix Open.

Luckily, NASCAR reporter Becca Gladden who writes for Insider Racing News lives in that area and was able to sit down with Edwards for a one-on-one interview. Since Edwards was there to work on TV, it only made sense for Gladden to ask him about his NASCAR television plans for this season.

Gladden: Will you be spending more time in the broadcast booth on ESPN in the Nationwide Series this year?

Edwards: We haven’t made a final deal and there’s really no ‘deal’ – you know, it’s not a money deal or anything like that. It just basically comes down to time. If there are weekends where I can go up there and help the broadcast and they’ll let me do it, then I’d love to do it, but I don’t know if I’ll do one race or ten races …

Gladden: There was a rumor out there that you were cutting back on driving in the Nationwide Series in order to do more TV broadcasts.

Edwards: No, that was not my intention. Number one for me is to win the Cup championship. But, I do think – after thinking about it a little bit – I think that I might actually be able to learn some things being up there in the broadcast booth, to be able to watch the races that closely. Sometimes you see things up there that you don’t see either on television or in the race car. So, if it turns out to be something like that, I might do a lot more of them.

Gladden's entire interview will be posted at Insider Racing News Thursday evening.

Love him or hate him, Edwards is a master at leaving doors open for for things to "just suddenly" develop. In this short interview excerpt, he does just that once again.

This is the first time we have heard Edwards reference a perspective he has not experienced and one that has not been discussed. He speaks about being up in the TV booth and looking down at the racing. As veteran NASCAR fans know, folks just don't "show up" in the broadcast booth and work a race on national TV.

ESPN's current partnership is Dale Jarrett and Andy Petree for the Nationwide Series races. While Petree is an ironman, Jarrett takes a good bit of time off and his TV replacement in the booth is Rusty Wallace. Ricky Craven also filled that role last year on occasion.

Live NASCAR TV telecasts require an incredible amount of coordination long before the network even arrives on-site. Conference calls, meetings and assignments start the sequence of assembling the production elements, equipment and manpower that results in a race being produced for TV.

Of all the NASCAR TV networks, ESPN is by far the most organized and buttoned-up when it comes to who is on the air and what they are going to say. The ESPN announcers in the TV booth have to be prepped on many production elements inside the telecasts and the entire on-air team has to coordinate their efforts to make things work.

In a few short weeks, ESPN will unveil the network's NASCAR broadcast team for the 2012 season while the NASCAR media is assembled in Daytona. In the past, the network has used this occasion to offer some surprises. Ray Evernham showing up out of the blue to work for the network a while back is a good example.

This year, it should be interesting to see if Edwards puts on his suit and tie and takes a position alongside Jarrett, Petree, Wallace and Brad Daugherty. Judging from his most recent words, he is certainly leaving the TV door wide open.

We welcome your comments on this topic. To add your opinion, just click on the comments button below. Thank you for taking the time to stop by The Daly Planet.