SPEED Falls Into The Hype Machine

How many times in sports have we seen it? Two golfers are promoted as going head-to-head on Sunday and they don't even wind-up in the same foursome. Neither one wins the tournament. One ends the day just happy to be off the course.

Two college football teams are touted in the pre-game show as being carbon copies of each other. This game could be epic. Instead, the game is a blow-out and the stands are almost empty in the final quarter.

Experienced TV networks understand that they do not "know" the story of the event in advance. No matter how hard they try, they will never "know" what will unfold once the live action begins.

It is a fundamental truth in sports TV that to focus on one match-up, to focus on one conflict, or to focus on one story before a live event will always get you burned. Friday night, it was SPEED's turn to find that out the hard way.

Krista Voda focused the pre-race show on the Hornaday vs. Skinner match-up without SPEED's normally outstanding balance in coverage. Both reporters Ray Dunlap and Adam Alexander spent the entire thirty minutes talking about seemingly the same subject.

The network's boxing theme of two heavyweights going into battle did not take into account two elements. The rest of the field and Lady Luck. Ultimately, both would play significant roles in upsetting SPEED's pre-planned storyline.

SPEED also dusted off Toyota's biggest shill Darrell Waltrip and tried to pass his presence off as bringing "the big time" to the network. Please. SPEED has invested themselves in this series for years and did not need someone who is not a Truck Series owner, participant, or TV announcer to lend a helping hand.

Before the pre-race was over, SPEED once again made a very strange decision. Instead of giving us a final season run-down of the field with additional interviews, we got a sponsor plug. Jack Roush stopped by to introduce Colin Braun as his new Truck Series driver for next season. The only question was why?

This Ford sponsored race is the last one of the year. The final one. The last pre-race show, the last starting grid, the last time for pre-race interviews. Instead of Todd Bodine, Jack Sprague or Ted Musgrave we got a live video press release.

Two of the biggest stories were Jacques Villeneuve driving in this race and Whelen Modified champ Donny Lia stepping into a Craftsman Truck Series ride. Neither were told. The network had been pulled into an off-balance focus on only one story.

Transitioning from the pre-race to the race itself really told the tale. There were a lot of interviews and a lot of news that was still sitting on the starting grid untouched. That is rare for a network like SPEED that has been delivering high-quality telecasts all season long. Why they got caught-up in this hype is anyone's guess.

Once the race telecast had begun, the story was quickly told. Mike Skinner's problems cost him the championship early, and it was over. Now, the network faced the situation we spoke about earlier.

The single story that SPEED had chosen to focus on and promote was suddenly gone. Now, they had almost an entire race to face-up to the stories unfolding on the track that the network had neglected to cover in the pre-race show.

Rick Allen and Phil Parsons have certainly dealt with a lot of situations this season, and they were up to the challenge of re-orienting the viewers to the reality of the racing on the track. Michael Waltrip continues to be a controversial figure on this series for SPEED. Like him or hate him, Waltrip brings enthusiasm and energy to the telecast that are sometimes lacking from the laid-back Parsons.

After the race ended, SPEED once again fell victim to their pre-race planning. It certainly is hard to compare SPEED even one time to ESPN, but this endless focus on the championship regardless of the overall stories of the race certainly seemed to be almost "ESPN-ish." The pit reporters and the announcers focused on Skinner, Hornaday, and the Harvicks despite the brief and mandatory race winner interview with Johnny Benson.

The strange thing is that SPEED had a lot of time available, and lots of drivers with good stories to tell. Other than the Championship trophy presentation, SPEED declined to follow-up on the very drivers that they featured all season long.

Rick Crawford finished fourth. Young Justin Marks picked up an eighth place result. Matt Crafton, Jon Wood and Todd Bodine finished in a wild race for the twelfth place. Modified champ Donny Lia finished twenty-fifth, only two laps off the pace and never got himself in the way. Lia has a huge fan following in the Northeast.

Rather than continue live, SPEED chose to join an old Survival of the Fastest show in-progress. This is not exactly the way fans wanted the network's normally excellent Truck Series coverage to end.

There was no opportunity for Ray Dunlap, Adam Alexander or Krista Voda to come on-camera to sign-off at the end of a long season. There were no final closing thoughts from Parsons and Waltrip, the race analysts. Finally, there was a rushed closing read by Allen that mentioned the TV crew and then ended abruptly.

NASCAR fans who watched The Craftsman Truck Series on SPEED deserved to have the network stay and talk to as many drivers and crew chiefs as possible. This day was not just about Hornaday and Skinner. It was time to pay-off the stories that SPEED has been following in this series all year long. Unfortunately, it did not happen.

Whether SPEED was pulled into the "hype machine" by ESPN or NASCAR or themselves remains to be seen. One thing is for sure, the "fight" promoted by the network never happened. Let's hope that SPEED took some good notes about putting all the TV eggs in the same basket for next season's finale.

There will be a Craftsman Truck Series TV season in review column on The Daly Planet during the following week. Please keep your comments on this post to the Homestead event and the issues associated with that telecast. Thanks to SPEED for a good long season of good hard Truck Series racing.

The Daly Planet welcomes comments from readers. Simply click on the COMMENTS button below and follow the instructions. Thanks again for stopping by and leaving your opinion.

In-Progress At Homestead: Truck Series Race

This is the final Truck Series race for SPEED, and they begin their afternoon and evening coverage with qualifying at 5PM Eastern Time.

Then, Krista Voda hosts the final edition of the pre-race show called The Set-Up at 7:30PM.

Rick Allen, Phil Parsons and Michael Waltrip host the race itself beginning at 8PM. Adam Alexander and Ray Dunlap will provide the reporting from pit road and also offer news in the Set-Up.

SPEED has been a consistent and strong partner for NASCAR, and the network hopes to go out on a high note with this championship deciding race.

NOTE: There will be a full column on the Truck Series race available for comments on Saturday morning. Please use this comments page until that time.

This page will host your comments about the coverage on SPEED. To add your opinion, please click on the COMMENTS button below and follow the instructions. Thank you once again for taking the time to add your opinion to The Daly Planet.

NASCAR Fans...Make Your TV Demands

It was February of this racing season when The Daly Planet published the first column about the performance of the NASCAR TV partners. This was the first year of a new NASCAR TV contract that welcomed ESPN back to the fold, and moved NBC Sports back to the stick-and-ball world.

Now, we find ourselves with only one more opportunity to watch a weekend trio of NASCAR races in 2008. Somehow, there has to be a way to communicate to the TV networks involved exactly what the millions of fans nationwide expect to see. So, NASCAR fans, its time to make your demands.

You have braved some absolutely awful television this season to continue to this point. NASCAR announcers who had never been to a NASCAR race, ending four hour races by showing only the winning car and of course...Draft Tracker.

This experience of watching every race since February has empowered you to be the best judge of what the TV networks should show this weekend in Homestead. You have written your thoughts about the races, what you wanted to see in the pre-race shows and how much post-race activity should be on TV.

You have listened to various talking heads tell you about the racing action, the cars on pit road, the gossip in the garage, and the NASCAR news. They have hosted you, analyzed you, and told you their opinions....endlessly.

Who are the people that you want to hear from in these Homestead broadcasts? Which announcers from the three races do you trust and which ones have you learned to take with a grain of salt at tough as the COT splitter?

No one paid a lot of attention to this little site when we first started. But, that changed for one reason and one reason only. That reason was you. The NASCAR media laughed at us, the ESPN guys got angry, and my former friends in the TV business thought I was absolutely crazy.

But, one group did not laugh. It was you, the NASCAR fans. You kept showing up, kept reading my columns, and kept coming back and adding your opinions. The best part was, you told me that if I kept going you would keep coming back. And, you did.

Now, we can look back on hundreds of columns, thousands of comments, and hundreds of thousands of users who viewed this site since February. We can also look back on the one thing we both wanted to do this season. We made them pay attention.

Now, I get all the ESPN press releases and they respond to my emails inside of an hour. Now, the SPEED PR folks email me almost every day and tell me what is going-on in their world. Now, I get emails from journalists all over the country telling me that they like this site. Then, they tell me that they use your comments to create and reference their story material.

We have a high-school teacher who uses your comments as topics for his TV classes. We even have young TV announcers who read your comments as tips on what to do as they chase their dreams of being in the big time.

The best part is the quiet emails with the hotmail addresses that tell me things that stop me in my tracks. The Daly Planet is on the laptop computers of the reporters in the Infield Media Center at Charlotte...Texas...Daytona. The Daly Planet is on the laptop computers in the ESPN office trailer inside the TV compound in California...Kansas.

The best one of the season was from a certain driver of a certain car who told me he was feeling down and then he found this site and spent all night reading your comments. Now, things have changed for the better for him. Just maybe, your comments helped him understand that there were people who wanted the racing back and the hype and "TV junk" gone forever. You might already own his souvenirs.

So, here we are at the end of the line. SPEED is about to roll-out their final Truck Series race under the lights on Friday night. What do you want to see them do? ESPN is going to present the struggling Busch Series on Saturday. What can they do to bring you back when Nationwide steps into the sport?

Finally, the first season of ESPN on ABC concludes their NASCAR coverage with the final race in the Chase for the Championship. You talked about the announcers, talked about the music videos, talked about the pit reporters, the updates and the countless other "things" you dealt with this season.

Now, take a minute on this Friday to tell them very clearly and squarely what you want and do not want to see in this critical final broadcast. This power is the result of your relentless energy in expressing your love for this sport. You ideas aimed to make this sport better, to build for the future, and to cherish the past.

We invite you one last time to leave a comment that will be read by the networks, the reporters, and your fellow fans. Tell us what you want this weekend, what will leave you happy, and what you will not tolerate the networks missing. Let it fly... because you earned it.

The Daly Planet welcomes all comments. Simply click on the COMMENTS button below and follow the instructions. There is nothing to join, and we do not want your email address. We just want your opinion. This would be a good time to take a moment and leave us a comment.