NASCAR Fans Are Freaking Out About HDTV

Run for the hills! The end is near! Those mean "TV people" are going to make you pay thousands of dollars to see NASCAR in High Definition next season.

Well, HDTV is always good for scary headlines in the newspapers, but for sports fans there is very little to worry about. In fact, the future of HDTV and free sports on TV is about to blossom.

Lots of questions have been coming our way about HDTV since SPEED announced it will be changing over to HD throughout 2008. Many NASCAR fans are confused about all the things that are being said and heard in the media. Actually, its pretty simple.

Let's first talk about those of you who still receive local TV stations over-the-air. That's right, you are the few proud remaining members of the "TV antenna on the roof" club. In today's world, your club is about thirteen million homes in a universe of over two hundred million TV sets.

Your local TV station transmits over-the-air in an old style "analog" signal that has been the standard since TV began. That will end by February of 2009, which is the timeline set by the Federal Government for TV stations to change over to digital broadcasting.

Just like rotary phones that suddenly could not dial on the new digital phone systems, the same is true for your good old four hundred pound RCA TV set from 1984 sitting in the corner of the den. Take a deep breath, and make it a nice planter.

While there is a converter that can make a digital TV signal work on your analog TV, what is the point? This technology is here to stay, and is now priced in the four hundred dollar range for an HDTV set with a tuner capable of receiving over-the-air signals. That last part is going to be the interesting change for the future.

For those of you with cable TV and no antenna on your roof, only one thing changes. Your cable system will slowly start to offer the same cable networks you watch now in HD. These side-by-side broadcasts will allow you to compare the standard cable signal with HD. As you will see, format of the picture is wider and resembles a movie screen. The big change comes when you step-up and get your first HDTV set.

Then, as many of my friends have said, there is no going back. The HDTV picture is amazing, and the new "aspect ratio" of the TV is easy to get used to watching. Combined with the stereo signal delivered on most live TV sporting events, this new package is a big improvement over the previous way of watching sports on the big screen.

Cable watchers who choose not to buy a new set for 2008 will still be able to watch all the NASCAR TV events and programs, buy why not invest? Before you start telling me that money is tight, let me clue you in on a little secret that HDTV brings.

When your local station begins to transmit in HD, there is a new wrinkle that many of them are doing with great success. They can now provide to your TV over-the-air and free of charge multiple digital channels that come in clear as a bell. How about that for an interesting twist?

Remember the early days of cable TV when we had the famous "A/B switch" behind the TV set? "A" got you the cable input for those channels, and the "B" got you the over-the-air stations. Now, with HDTV, the same thing lives once again, and there is a good reason why.

Your local TV station is going to be able to send as many as four digital channels to your TV set over-the-air. As someone who has seen this technology, let me tell you that the picture is awesome and the fact that it is free also opens-up a lot of possibilities for the future.

Consider this, if you live in a market with five good TV stations, and they each decide to deliver four "sub-channels," you just got twenty free channels of digital television with no charge other than buying your HDTV set. Needless to say, this possibility has the "pay TV" guys scrambling.

What you see right now are companies like DirecTV and HDNet offering HD signals to your home by satellite dish at very low cost. Cable companies like Comcast and Time Warner are also scrambling to add HD network feeds to their line-ups to keep their product attractive. In the blink of an eye, the power has begun to shift back to over-the-air TV stations. Isn't that interesting?

As a consumer, you will soon have multiple HD channels over-the-air from your local TV stations, cable networks converting to all HD, and several new "HD only" networks popping-up on your cable TV line-up.

All of this should be enough to invest in a starter HDTV set, and I am told prices will be at their lowest in the week after Christmas. There are good information pages all about HDTV on the web at the WalMart and Circuit City websites. The bottom line is, shop around. Prices on this technology are continuing to fall.

Don't make it more complicated than it is. If you are a NASCAR fan, get an HDTV set that meets your demands for viewing and also meets the demands of your wallet.

The Daly Planet welcomes comments from readers. Simply click on the COMMENTS button below, or email editor@thedalyplanet.tv if you do not wish to be published. Thanks again for taking the time to stop by and leave your opinion.

NASCAR Images Caught In The "HD Crunch"

Back on November 13th, we talked about the on-going problems this season with several TV series being produced by NASCAR Images.

This company is the official TV production arm of NASCAR, and produces a wide range of shows from Survival of the Fastest on SPEED to Chasing Glory on ESPN2. They also produce the NASCAR programming from the SPEED Stage, including NASCAR RaceDay.

The column, which is linked here, summed-up the issues raised by the NASCAR fans who could not believe that "officially produced" programs from NASCAR were not exactly being truthful when it came to what viewers were seeing.

At issue were not the live shows, or the high-profile projects like the movie "Dale." Fans were angry about what is called "quick turn-a-round" shows. These series are shot on location, and then assembled into programs back at the NASCAR Images headquarters in Charlotte.

This type of series is called "post-produced," and the pressure is on the editors and producers to meet network deadlines for delivery of these episodes. Therein lies the problem.

Even before this company was called NASCAR Images, it specialized in producing weekly shows about the sport. Some older fans may recognize the name Sunbelt Video when Inside Winston Cup Racing was the big weekly show hosted by Ned Jarrett. Alongside of Ned was his young field reporter. His name was Bill Weber.

When The Daly Planet approached those connected with both Chasing Glory and Survival of the Fastest, it was clear that some "issues" had already been discovered by the NASCAR Images management team.

Basically, several editors and producers faced a couple of situations, and made the wrong decision. Both of these series have their new footage shot with film, but require a lot of older footage edited into the programs from other sources. Add in the fact that the TV networks require programs to be in High Definition, and problems pop-up pretty quickly. The bottom line is, the pieces don't fit.

You can't take older video and "make it" into HD. As the transition to this new TV format comes around, lots of producers find themselves having a tough time with the lack of older HD footage. What this means for NASCAR Images is that they have the current footage and sound all ready to go, but still have one little problem.

They need to "fill-in" the parts of the show that are not completely current with what is called "B-roll." That is the older footage used for reference in a show. The problem NASCAR Images ran into is that most of it is not in HD, and the networks will not accept it. That leaves only two choices.

First, shoot new footage to try and bridge the gaps. Second, take some old footage that is in HD and use it, hoping no one will know it is not "exactly" the right thing. Needless to say, the reason we are writing this story is because NASCAR Images made the wrong choice.

What they chose to do was take footage of the same team, or the same driver, or the same track and pretend that is was the day or week that they needed it to be for their story. They purposefully "mis-labeled" NASCAR footage.

In the year of the COT, it seems only fitting that the NASCAR Images producers were also handcuffed by the same thing making the teams crazy. With all the COT testing going on at "non-NASCAR" tracks, the availability of the drivers was at an all time low. Add in "The Chase" format, and the fact that no driver wanted cameras following him as he rose or fell in the ten race stretch.

The NASCAR Images mess only gets bigger when you consider they are waiting on their new offices and production facility to be built as a part of the NASCAR Hall of Fame complex in Charlotte. In the meantime, over one hundred production folks are jammed into a rented office and production facilities next to the highway that was originally intended for about forty.

Needless to say, they run the editing suites and the facilities three shifts a day to turn-out the volume of TV programs, corporate videos, and pre-production for the SPEED shows that has to be done each week. If you are a regular reader of The Daly Planet, you are familiar with the "ten pounds of TV in a five pound bag" theory. This certainly fits that bill.

Unfortunately, even with all this chaos going-on there is no excuse for trying to deceive NASCAR fans with announcer audio and added graphics put over top of footage that was months or even years old. Company policy at NASCAR Images should be put in place to end this practice by individual producers right now.

This issue has upset fans, teams, and even some drivers. Not a good idea to be shown on national TV with a "girlfriend" you no longer have happily having fun at the pool. It certainly is true that these types of production decisions in any TV setting can have consequences much further reaching than any editor or producer could imagine at the time.

NASCAR Images told The Daly Planet enough to let us know they are dealing with the staff members involved. ESPN and SPEED both had no comment. As usual, the mainstream NASCAR media was to busy with other "urgent issues" to even recognize this problem existed. I really don't think too many of them watch the NASCAR TV programs anyway.

Hopefully, our discussion of this topic in a public forum can push things along for next season. Several of the key NASCAR Images folks came to that company from NFL Films, as you can tell by the style of program they produce. Somehow, I just can't believe that Steve Sabol and company would have allowed even one second of mis-labeled footage to walk out of the door and onto the air.

With many TV viewers now questioning the integrity of NASCAR Images as a result of these incidents, the management team in Charlotte needs to use 2008 to re-build the company's relationship with the NASCAR fans.

The Daly Planet welcomes comments from readers. Simply click on the COMMENTS button below, or email editor@thedalyplanet.tv if you wish not to be published. Thanks again for taking the time to stop by and leave your opinion.

38 Races In 22 Minutes Cheats NASCAR Fans Again

The season rolled out of the garage in February at a cold and windy Daytona. It ended ten months later under beautiful South Florida skies with a smiling NEXTEL Cup Champion.

Thirty-eight events and thousands of racing miles comprised the 2007 NASCAR NEXTEL Cup season. For the three TV networks covering this series, the commitment was huge in terms of manpower and logistics.

As TV packages go, NASCAR rivals tennis and golf as manufacturing hundreds of hours of live national TV coverage in a single season. Luckily, NASCAR racing is just a tad more popular than those two sports.

Putting aside the TV coverage of the practice and qualifying sessions, the Cup races alone generated over one hundred and fifty hours of live TV in 2007. Spread over ten months, it is easy to understand how this sport is very attractive to TV networks.

On this past Sunday afternoon, scheduled up against the early NFL games, ESPN2 presented their NASCAR NEXTEL Cup season-in-review program. As one might expect, it was produced in cooperation with NASCAR Images in Charlotte, the sport's official TV production group.

ESPN is the new "big daddy" of NASCAR. They televise the entire Busch/Nationwide Series, produce a daily NASCAR news program, and host the final seventeen NEXTEL Cup events live on either ESPN or ABC. This year-in-review program was a chance to look back on an incredible season that saw many first time events for both the network and the sport.

Before ESPN's Cup coverage began, they broadcast an outstanding series called Ultimate NASCAR. It gave viewers a chance to bond with Dr. Jerry Punch while he hosted a series of shows on diverse historical topics that really showed-off the best parts of the sport. The editing, sound effects, and grandeur of these programs was often breath-taking.

Now, after a year of hard work, ESPN was going to recap the entire season of the highest level of stock car racing in North America. Viewers could look forward to the ESPN and ABC TV team of Rusty Wallace, Andy Petree and Tim Brewer sharing their views.

Also, summing up their thoughts after a long year would be Allen Bestwick and Mike Massaro, two high-profile NASCAR veterans that were the backbone of ESPN's coverage of pit road this season.

Marty Smith would be there to give a good synopsis of an incredible year in NASCAR news. From Junior and Kyle changing rides to Toyota buying their way into Gibbs, this was a huge year of NASCAR news, even without the COT.

But, a funny thing happened on the way to this party. As the NEXTEL Cup year-in-review program began, there was absolutely no mention of ESPN. There were no ESPN announcers on-camera. There were no ESPN graphics. Something was very wrong.

Then, the voice heard next was the "generic voice-over announcer" that fans have come to understand works for NASCAR Images. His booming tones signaled another "NFL Films style" presentation of NASCAR action highly-edited into a set format. This was the NEXTEL Cup season-in-review show?

The 2007 footage began to zip by in a flurry of announcer voices that were never introduced, but magically seemed to be scripted for every moment. Using announcers from all three TV networks, from both radio networks, and from NASCAR Images the on-track action flew by at lightning speed. There was a very good reason it was so fast.

The entire thirty-eight race NEXTEL Cup season was going to be recapped on ESPN in twenty-two minutes. Let me say that once again. The 2007 Cup season was going to be pulverized into twenty-two minutes of video footage.

Twenty-two minutes is the amount of content that is left in a thirty minute show on ESPN after eight minutes are subtracted for commercials. Twenty-two minutes to cover one hundred and fifty hours of racing as a final tribute to the teams, drivers, and fans. Twenty-two minutes.

Regardless of the parties or the TV contract issues involved in this decision, it is completely amazing. NASCAR fans have been knocking down the email door at The Daly Planet asking about off-season TV programming. Other than this show and the Banquet...the NEXTEL Cup landscape is barren.

In the meantime, over at SPEED, NASCAR fans are being treated to daylong "theme blocks" of classics like PINKS, Unique Whips, and Payback. The NASCAR programming is completely gone from a network that basically survives because of the sport.

Can you imagine a two hour version of Inside NEXTEL Cup recapping the season?

How about a studio version of RaceDay where John Roberts leads a discussion looking back at the season with Jimmy, Kenny, and Wendy?

Maybe Steve Byrnes could lead the Trackside gang of Larry McReynolds and Jeff Hammond through a season-in-review with lots of guests on the phone and some in the studio. Viewers would not mind Junior checking in from the beach on his cell phone.

The point of this column is that NASCAR fans deserved more than just a thirty minute "generic" recap show on one cable network on a Sunday afternoon. This NASCAR Images show was a "throw-a-way" that was probably mandatory in the ESPN TV contract.

What other explanation could exist for a TV network that committed so many resources and so much time to NASCAR? Consider this, the NASCAR pre-race shows on both SPEED and ABC were longer than the year-in-review program. Does that make any sense at all?

SPEED can do a three hour RaceDay from Homestead but no three hour season-in-review? ESPN tells us they have spread NASCAR across five TV networks, an InternetTV site, and their own ESPN.com and Jayski sites as well...but they do not want to waste their time on a look back at their own efforts?

Maybe NASCAR will make a little note about an expanded post-season TV programming mix for 2008. With new sponsors, a new car, and struggling TV ratings, it just might be a good time to expand that season-in-review show to remind fans of the action over the ten months of the season. For this year...its just a little too late.

The Daly Planet welcomes comments from readers. To add your comment, simply click on the COMMENTS button below or email editor@thedalyplanet.tv if you wish not to be published. Thanks again for taking the time to stop by and leave your opinion.