"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.

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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.

NASCAR Fan Council Wants To Know About "Digger"

It's never good when NASCAR has to take time to ask about an animated character during an official survey of the fans about NASCAR TV. That is, however, just what the NASCAR Fan Council did in the most recent survey sent to participants.

Click here for the page that will let you sign-up to be on the NASCAR Fan Council. You will get surveys in your email asking about all kinds of different NASCAR issues from TV to merchandise. This company is basically the marketing survey arm of NASCAR.

The latest survey asks if fans like the NASCAR on Fox animated creation called "Digger." This season Fox has been on an unabashed push to get this character on the TV screen for one single reason. That would be a new revenue stream.

Fox Sports Chairman David Hill is not shy in speaking his mind on this topic. He wants to develop "Digger" as a brand in the same way that drivers market T-shirts and caps combining sponsor and sport to make additional money.

The problem for many fans is that "Digger" is inserted into live NASCAR racing at moments that some consider inappropriate. Serious explanations of crash replays or incidents on the track now are concluded with the forced chuckles of the NASCAR on Fox announce team as the animation plays once again. Key moments in the race have to wait while the Director shows the track-level camera angle and cues the animation one more time.

Over at cawsnjaws.com, Cheryl and her gang report that "Digger" appeared 38 times in the 231 minutes of the live race coverage. The character also has an episode of an original animated cartoon series that airs during the pre-race show on Fox.

One element to keep in mind amid all this talk is that "Digger" is gone when the Fox coverage of the Sprint Cup Series is over. Recently, we saw Darrell Waltrip hawking "Digger" merchandise on QVC and then appearing on SPEED's Trackside show with a full-sized "Digger" costume character in tow.

Should Fox decide to push the "Digger" agenda over to SPEED for the rest of the season it would signal a distinct change in the agenda of that network at the race tracks. "Digger" during practice and qualifying on Fridays and Saturdays would open a whole new chapter of this retail saga.

Unfortunately, the results of the Fan Council surveys are not made public. The one thing we do know is that when a question is asked about a specific made-for-TV element, something has happened to get the attention of the sanctioning body. For better or worse, "Digger" has now made the list.

TDP welcomes comments from readers. Click on the comments button below to add your opinion. This is a family-friendly website, please keep that in mind when adding your comment.

Thanks again and happy posting.