Massive Post Of Chili Bowl Pics

The Chili Bowl is a fun event with hundreds of cars from across the nation. Held in Tulsa, OK at the state fairgrounds, this indoor dirt race used to be a low-key affair but now the word is out. Packed crowds and TV coverage are here to stay. Click here for a direct link to the event's website.

SPEED will broadcast this event after a lot of editing, TDP will keep you updated on the day and time. Thanks to TDP reader Boyd Adams for his hard work over the last several years providing us pictures from the event. Boyd is part of Armadillo Photo Supply, click here for that website.

Click directly on the pics to see them full-size. Right click to save them to your computer.

Tony Stewart
JJ Yeley
Brian Clauson
Billy Wilburn, Cup crew chief
Jason Leffler
Kasey Kahne
Levi Jones driving for Tony Stewart
PJ Jones makes a pass
PJ Jones out front

Thanks again to Boyd for his hard work this year. This is the third year he has supplied us with pictures from this event. There will be more pics as the weekend progresses.

The Daly Planet welcomes comments from readers. Just click on the COMMENTS button below and follow the easy instructions. The rules for posting are located on the right side of the main page. Thank you for stopping by.

"Preseason Thunder" Drifts Off Course

Let's all take just a moment and say it together. There is no testing at Daytona this season. That means SPEED's TV series called Preseason Thunder relocated from the Daytona International Speedway to the SPEED studios in Charlotte, NC for the past four days.

Normally, this series provides a wrap-up of the Daytona testing activities, an overview of the NASCAR news and a featured interview with a NASCAR personality. The program serves to get fans back into the NASCAR groove before the real racing gets underway in February.

While SPEED's new studios are pretty and it is nice to see the NASCAR announcers once again, things on the air seem to be drifting off-course rather quickly. Sometimes, this happens when there are lots of cooks on-hand to stir the pot.

So far this week, the Preseason Thunder hosts Steve Byrnes and John Roberts have followed one theme. They have asked Jeff Hammond, Greg Biffle, Ryan Newman, Jimmy Spencer, Kenny Wallace, Michael Waltrip and Larry McReynolds about the fact that there is no testing this season in Daytona.

While Byrnes and Hammond included a brief review of some real NASCAR news, Preseason Thunder has now turned into an exercise in political correctness and a promotion of SPEED programs. Nothing illustrated this point better than the Thursday evening broadcast.

It was McReynolds' turn to talk about the fact there was no testing and he did so right at the top of the show with Roberts. McReynolds effectively covered the exact same ground as the other guests from the previous three days. There was no hard news, no tough questions and no reality check about the health of the sport.

In the Wednesday program, Roberts had mentioned that veteran reporter Ray Dunlap would be on the Thursday show to finally talk about the Camping World Truck Series. This is the only NASCAR racing series carried on SPEED and recent reports in the media had as few as ten trucks with sponsorship for the season.

Fans of the truck series have been waiting for someone like Dunlap to step-up and talk about what is going to happen with the series, the TV coverage and the quality of the racing on the track. Unfortunately, those fans would have to wait just a bit longer. It was time for a "Mall Cop" movie promotion.

Comedian Kevin James was next on a satellite hook-up from Los Angeles where he talked about his new movie and tried very hard to offer as many NASCAR tie-ins as possible. He gave a great starting command in the 2008 season, admitted he was not a NASCAR fan before that moment and then tried to promote a future race by calling it "this one coming up."

James is going to be the grand marshal of the Toyota All-Star Shootout later this month on SPEED and apparently is going to make a pace lap on his Segway, probably dressed as the "Mall Cop." This looked like it was one of several hundred TV interviews James did on the "Mall Cop" satellite media tour.

Now that McReynolds had reminded us that there was no testing in Daytona and James had promoted his movie, Dunlap finally appeared to talk about the truck series. He was on location at the Germain Racing shops with their driver, Todd Bodine.

It was apparent from the start that Dunlap was there to interview Bodine and nothing more. A review of Bodine's 2008 season and a preview of 2009 was interrupted only when Bodine related that Lumber Liquidators had left as the primary sponsor and even this top-notch team was without sponsorship with Daytona only weeks away.

Dunlap said nothing about that issue and sent it back to the smiling Roberts in the studio who promptly promoted the Camping World Truck Series race from Daytona on SPEED. It was as if two different agendas were in-progress in the same TV show.

Maybe this is what SPEED wanted, to avoid the reality of a sport in crisis even as it swirls around them. Throughout this program, SPEED's own lower third "sports ticker" talked about big stories like Michael Waltrip splitting the #99 car with Scott Speed, Furniture Row Racing back with Regan Smith driving and the fluid situation at the Yates shop. These are the stories fans tuned-in to hear about, not movie promotions and fluff.

Clearly, the biggest disappointment of the day was Dunlap and his lack of any type of perspective on the Camping World Trucks. SPEED itself is counting on this series being healthy and taking to the track for another season of competition. Why this topic was not important to SPEED's only NASCAR TV show currently on the air is mind-boggling.

Preseason Thunder takes a day off and returns on Saturday. Perhaps, between then and now, the SPEED executives can get together and decide if keeping their heads in the sand should continue or if the network should step-up and follow the critical issues underway in the sport right now.

The Daly Planet welcomes comments from readers. Just click on the COMMENTS button below and follow the easy instructions. The rules for posting are located on the right side of the main page. Thank you for taking the time to stop by.

TV Critics Getting Rough With "NASCAR Wives"

The Television Critics Association winter press tour is in full swing out in Los Angeles, CA. This year a NASCAR TV series is one of the new shows being presented as a high-profile entertainment property for 2009.

NASCAR Wives is a hybrid show that entertainment folks like to call a docusoap. That means that the people appearing in the program are real, but some of what viewers will see is staged for the cameras. The dreadful Real Housewives of Orange County is an example of this style of TV program.

This type of show was made famous by MTV series like The Real World and provides a unique but rather distorted look at a group of people who have something in common. Where the NASCAR Wives show is concerned, exactly what the actual participants have in common is not quite clear.

Needless to say, the reaction from some mainstream entertainment critics has not been very kind. Here is an excerpt from Jonathan Storm of the Philadelphia Inquirer:

TLC once stood for The Learning Channel. Now, it's just The Lousy Channel, as the network, desperate for viewers, has turned into a freak show.

President Eileen O'Neill cooed proudly about Jon and Kate Plus 8 (a family with twins and sextuplets); 17 Kids and Counting, in which Mom and Dad keep cranking out the kids (they're up to 18 now), and about dwarf-o-thon Little People, Big World.

Now the network proudly presents NASCAR Wives. "The drama on the track is nothing compared to the lives of these wives," O'Neill crowed, before she introduced three of the ladies.

One of them is Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s sister, Kelley, not his wife, but who's counting? "I've been a wife," she said, but now she's divorced, just like her daddy, who had three different wives.

TLC will probably get a show going on NASCAR divorcees any day now.

The gals spouted a lot of NASCAR propaganda while talking up the excitement of loving (and apparently getting sick of) guys who go round and round real fast.

"NASCAR has made significant strides in their safety initiatives," Kelley Earnhardt proclaimed, even if they did come a little too late for her dad, who was killed in a 2001 crash at Daytona.

"I know that my dad died a happy person because he was doing what he loved to do," she said. "So that makes me feel better."

Meanwhile, back in Mooresville, NC it has not gone without notice that camera crews are following around some local residents. Here is an update from Megan Pillow of Media General's News Service:

The Mooresville area and some of its race drivers’ wives will be featured later this month in a new cable TV series. The TLC channel will premiere a new reality series called “NASCAR Wives” on Jan. 24, following the Miss America Pageant, according to the Hollywood Reporter. A full season of the show is slated to appear sometime in the spring.

Area residents Lindy Hornaday, wife of race driver Ron Hornaday and owner of Mooresville’s Miss Estelle’s Place antique store; Kelley Earnhardt, sister of Dale Earnhardt Jr.; and Shana Mayfield, wife of Jeremy Mayfield, are all expected to appear.

Kim Saragoni, co-owner of Four Corners Framing and Gallery, said Thursday the TLC film crew was in town “with all of their booms and lights” for at least two days, following Hornaday as she volunteered to decorate Christmas trees in John Franklin Moore Memorial Garden and following Mayfield for a lunch at Soiree restaurant.

“They shadowed each of the wives for an entire day,“ said Saragoni.
The crew, said Saragoni, even stopped into Four Corners for some filming while they were in town.

Over at the popular Yahoo! Sports blog From The Marbles, Jay Busbee was already vowing to skip the first show and the entire series. His view is that this is the lowest form of TV and appeals to an entirely different kind of fan base:

Networks love this kind of “reality television” because costs are low compared with traditional series – and because viewers seem to have an insatiable appetite to watch other people engage in stunts along the lines of shopping, stammering, sighing and furiously abusing cell phones.

The NASCAR Media Group will be producing the series from the company's base in Charlotte, NC. NMG's chief Jay Abraham recently commented on the project:

"NASCAR is a family sport and a traveling road show, with a tight knit group of competitors barnstorming the U.S.," said Abraham. "Throughout a 10-month season, the drivers' wives are the glue holding together each racing family. They are strong and independent women with their own ambitions and goals who maintain their individual identities while supporting their highly visible husbands. NASCAR Wives provides an honest and emotional peek into their experience with our sport."

With all the different opinions on this type of "outside the box" NASCAR TV programming, it should be interesting to see if the general public, the hardcore racing fans and loyal TLC viewers will find this content interesting enough to make NASCAR Wives a hit.

What are your thoughts on this type of program and do you intend to watch the debut episode?

The Daly Planet welcomes comments from readers. Just click on the COMMENTS button below and follow the easy instructions. The rules for posting are located on the right side of the main page. Thanks again for taking the time to stop by.