Live Blogging: Camping World Truck Series In Atlanta

Krista Voda leads the troops back on the air from the Atlanta Motor Speedway. The TV production team for the Camping World Truck Series has been the most consistent and fan-friendly group for many years.

The Set-Up pre-race show airs at 1:30PM with the race coverage starting thirty minutes later. The NASCAR on Fox crew produced the last CWTS event, so the SPEED team is just now getting back into action since their Daytona debut.

Rick Allen will call the race with Phil Parsons and Michael Waltrip alongside. Ray Dunlap and Adam Alexander will cover pit road. There are lots of stories to go along with this event, including some drivers who will be racing at Atlanta for the first time.

Tires played a role during practice and the teams are worried about the same type of wear problems they have been plagued with in the past at this track. Several top teams continue to be unsponsored and are fighting for their lives to get TV time and stay in the top ten of the season standings.

The CWTS TV presentation is stripped of any bells and whistles. There is no Hollywood Hotel or infield pit studio during the event. The focus of the broadcast is on the drivers and teams once the green flag flies. As you may have noted, there are only two reporters on pit road.

This is going to be a dangerous event and that is a theme running through the garage area. The diversity of the drivers in the field and the inexperience of many running on one of the fastest tracks in NASCAR has everyone on edge. It will not only be the drivers who are "up on the wheel" for this entire event.

This post will serve to host the in-progress comments during the CWTS event. Just click the comments button below to join the TV-related discussion. This is a family-friendly website, please keep that in mind when posting. Comments may be moderated before they are placed on the site.

Thanks again and welcome back to the CWTS TV team from SPEED.

"NASCAR Now" Addresses GM Issues Head-On

The issues surrounding car giant General Motors were swirling on Thursday. CNN, MSNBC and the Fox News Channel were continually using words like bailout, bankruptcy and collapse. It was exactly what NASCAR fans did not want to hear.

Dealing with this type of issue for NASCAR's television partners could not be more tricky. Avoid it totally and a network can be accused of toeing the NASCAR party line. Present it simply as a news item and many fans will continue to be confused about what all this means for the sport.

ESPN veteran Mike Massaro was at the helm of Thursday's NASCAR Now. The production team for this show chose to jump into the deep end of the pool and face the GM questions head-on.

Massaro introduced Ed Peper, the North American VP for Chevrolet. He appeared shortly after Massaro had referenced the Thursday story in the New York Times talking about the crisis at GM as a whole. Peper was the perfect guest to set the tone and talk about the NASCAR implications of this mounting problem.

Peper answered "nothing" when asked what this latest news story meant for the Chevy interest in NASCAR. He rejected the notion of bankruptcy outright for GM and reinforced that the plan submitted to the Federal Government should allow GM to recover and eventually payback any loans given to them by the taxpayers.

As fans have heard many times, Peper reinforced that nothing sells more cars and trucks for Chevrolet than the company's association with NASCAR. While some track and associate sponsorships have been ended, Peper was strong in his assertion that Chevy is in with NASCAR for the long haul.

To gain a financial and business perspective, CNBC correspondent Darren Rovell appeared on NASCAR Now for the first time this season. Rovell has been a favorite of this show for the past two years where sports business issues are concerned.

Rovell did not disagree with Pepers, but made it clear that what the Chevy executive "wants" to do might not fall in line with what the Federal Government might "make" him do where NASCAR is concerned.

"It doesn't matter if you think your marketing works," said Rovell. "You can't do that anymore." Those are ominous words.

His suggestion was that money given to GM was going to come with the mandate to eliminate NASCAR participation. "Sports marketing has changed in the last week alone," Rovell said. "Even if you can prove that (it's) win on Sunday, sell on Monday, it doesn't matter. It doesn't look good around this time and what the country is dealing with."

What Rovell is advancing is the growing notion that the US auto makers who get Federal money may be forced to curtail any sports spending completely. This issue has already arisen with companies who sponsored everything from football stadiums to golf tournaments being forced to withdraw the funding in order to get Federal help.

"There are going to have to be concessions made," said Ricky Craven. He was the next guest on NASCAR Now and spoke to the salary issues in the sport. "Drivers will have to make concessions," he said. "We don't talk a lot about that...but they will have to make less money." Craven agreed with Rovell that the auto maker issues now on the table are going to have a direct impact on the sport.

This is the type of NASCAR TV that works for everyone. Peper stated the case from the auto maker perspective, Rovell added a sports business view and Craven closed the topic by continuing his run on ESPN of speaking plainly and honestly on a wide variety of NASCAR topics.

This season NASCAR Now has been the leader in addressing the economic issues in the sport. The TV series now seems to be far removed from the "gotcha" journalism of last season, including the Ron Hornaday public relations disaster. Massaro is in his first year as a fulltime co-host of this program and Thursday proved once again that ESPN VP of Motorsports Rich Feinberg made the right choice in adding him to the team.

Hopefully, the news being reported this season will change for the better, but at least now fans know where they can go to find it.

If you would like to add your comment about NASCAR Now this season or this specific show, please click the comments button below. This is a family friendly website, so comments may be moderated prior to posting. Thanks for your patience.

SPEED's Two Wheel NASCAR Connection

Somewhere, Greg White must be scratching his head. The former host of the popular 2 Wheel Tuesdays on SPEED saw his multi-hour primetime program cancelled without warning or explanation back in 2006.

White's show certainly had its flaws, but he presented to motorcycle enthusiasts a block of TV programming that delivered news, interviews and events. The network even created an addition to the old SPEED studios in South Charlotte to accommodate this program series. There really was a Greg's garage. That is White on the left, getting the 2006 Media and Reporting Award from AMA VP Ed Moreland for 2 Wheel Tuesday.

Now, SPEED has joined forces with the new power in American motorcycle racing to create another primetime block of programming. The Daytona Motorsports Group (DMG) is now in charge of motorcycle road racing in the US and things are about to change. They are the new face of the racing side of the venerable American Motorcyclist Association, the AMA.

AMA Pro Prime Time will be SPEED's new TV series that airs on Saturday nights for 26 weeks beginning March 21.

This featured presentation will be one to three three hours in length and will showcase recorded and edited AMA races from one or two weeks prior. Click here to read the official press release and then see just how that idea was greeted by some enthusiasts in the comments section.

There is a popular saying that sooner or later "everything old is new again." While that may apply to SPEED partnering with the AMA, behind the scenes there is a very big NASCAR connection.

DMG's driving force and partner in the company is none other than Jim France. Some hardcore motorcycle racers are calling the new organization nAMAscar.

DMG is the very same company that runs Grand-Am Racing and brought the NASCAR approach of one chassis and restrictive rules to sports car racing. France used the Rolex 24 at Daytona for the Grand-Am Series in much the same way that Tony George used the Indy 500 for the IRL. Controlling the marquee event in the series was really all the leverage each needed to force change. This weekend, another famous race will join that list.

Not surprisingly, SPEED is televising all the Grand-Am races this season. Many of them, like the Rolex 24, will be carried live. This week, the network will kick-off the AMA Road Racing series with the classic Daytona 200. This time, just like the stock cars in July, the race will be under the lights in primetime from DIS at 8:30PM ET. Ironically, the race will feature Greg White reporting from pit road.

Click here for an overview of the motorcycle content from SPEED in Daytona. The live race will serve to promote the Saturday night TV series starting later in March.

Here at TDP, we have been asking for more NASCAR TV programming created away from the track and not involving the SPEED Stage. The only answer to that is the upcoming NASCAR Wives show on TLC. No, we still do not have an air date for the first episode.

Meanwhile, DMG has maneuvered the entire Grand-Am and AMA Road Racing series onto SPEED with the latest addition being up to 78 hours of primetime tape-delayed motorcycle road racing. What money changed hands and why SPEED stepped away from the "reality lifestyle" programming genre on this big TV night will never be disclosed.

The one thing we do know is that right down the road from SPEED, the NASCAR Media Group sits on their hands with tons of great footage and production resources just waiting for the phone to ring. Not even the six episodes of NASCAR Confidential were renewed by SPEED for 2009.

Additional video clips on NASCAR.com do not take the place of weekly TV series in support of the Sprint Cup, Nationwide and Camping World Truck Series. Now, more than ever before, SPEED and the NASCAR Media Group need to get some additional weekday TV programming on the air.

It will not be much longer before the afterglow of the Daytona races and the cash that came along with them fade into the economic reality that most of us are seeing every day. NASCAR teams in all three series need additional exposure on TV to attract sponsorship and keep the sponsors that stayed in the sport.

Now that the sports car and motorcycle TV business is all done, perhaps the France family could allocate some financial resources to produce a couple of NASCAR TV series. That is, while there are still three viable national series to promote.

TDP welcomes comments from readers. Just click on the comments button below. This website is family-friendly, please keep that in mind when you add your opinion.

Thanks again and happy posting.