NASCAR.com Misfires In Bristol

It's taken a little while to sort out the emails, tweets and Facebook messages sent by angry fans over the weekend. They were not about a driver, a team or even a TV commentator. They were all about the various services offered by the NASCAR.com website.

It seems ironic that NASCAR.com does not offer a live leaderboard for the Camping World Truck Series. This past week, NASCAR.com RaceView was the primary sponsor on the winning truck from Kyle Busch Motorsports, pictured above. It was the only positive night for NASCAR.com of the three racing dates at BMS.

Turner Sports Interactive out of Atlanta, GA operates the NASCAR.com website. It paid NASCAR a hefty fee to operate the site and maintain total Internet exclusivity for NASCAR video and audio content.

Trackpass is the gateway to the three pay services NASCAR.com offers. RaceVew, Pit Command and Scanner each offer various applications for a monthly or annual fee. RaceView has all the bells and whistles, including team scanners, real time data and virtual video that allow fans lap-by-lap tracking of teams.

There have been several redesigns of the NASCAR.com website and upgrades of the three pay services. The current homepage resembles many sports blogs with an emphasis on key news stories combined with advertising. Video elements have recently been integrated effectively into the site and include contributions from TNT and SPEED personalities.

The history of fans upset about NASCAR.com goes back years. It's easy to find forums online full of conversations about problems. Recently, the issue has flared again as some current technology is having trouble dealing with the Trackpass applications.

When Apple released the iPad, it did not support Flash technology. That is the basis for the Trackpass applications. While the leaderboards worked, the remainder did not. That put iPad users out of the NASCAR.com mix for this season.

The most recent problems happen when fans try to log on for a Sprint Cup Series race. This was especially prevalent at the Michigan and Bristol race weekends. Amid the bevy of browsers, operating systems and Internet Service Providers, it's understandable that some problems would arise. This situation is perhaps a little different.

A key issue repeated by frustrated fans is summed up quite well in this blog post from NASCAR fan Mark Headrick:

I don’t mind troubleshooting problems. however I do not want to do it during the actual race! It totally ruins the fan’s experience. How can you expect fans to search knowledge bases and forums, reinstall Java, plug-ins, audio and video drivers, and do whatever else might be potentially involved?

It boggles my mind that there isn’t a race simulator that we can test these applications with during the week. If I was a NASCAR website/TrackPass developer I’d scream for this. I am quite sure the NASCAR.com website team has no desire to fix the software during races. Normally I wouldn’t give a flying fruitcake about it, but I am paying more for TrackPass than I am for my webhosting.

Headrick's point is well taken. Fans experiencing problems have to step away from the race to troubleshoot the problem and often find they are in a long helpline at the website. Picking up the phone is even more interesting.

The NASCAR.com phone calls are answered by the International Speedway Corporation operators in Daytona Beach, FL. Needless to say, this is not the Geek Squad. Fans who called recently found sympathy, but little help.

One fan emailed NASCAR.com and got a nice little admission about the Bristol weekend in return. NASCAR.com customer service responded with the following:

"There was an issue for both race series with all of the Trackpass products from those races. It was actually a server issue and the technical team had to reset the servers and this was not done until the end of the Cup race on Saturday."

Well, that's mighty nice but did not actually help the situation as the races were in progress. The problem with that answer is NASCAR.com is a pay service. Ultimately, good customer service and reliable products are the only way to keep fans coming back.

Twitter has been in use by many NASCAR fans for some time now. Saturday night, I was so overwhelmed on Twitter with fans asking me for help I contacted NASCAR directly and asked what was going on. After a short time I was told by NASCAR from the track that all the online troubles were sorted out. It certainly did not look that way.

For hours on Saturday, it was easy to watch the endless tweets from upset fans missing the online part of one of the most exciting night races of the season. Add to that the fact that some key TV markets were showing NFL preseason football instead of NASCAR and the mess just gets bigger. No access to NASCAR.com's online pay service and no live TV. That is a bad combination.

Perhaps you could take a moment to tell us your experience with NASCAR.com, the customer service and the products. It would help to put things in perspective after a Bristol weekend that left some fans rather steamed.

To add your opinion on this topic, just click on the comments button below. This is a family-friendly website, please keep that in mind when posting. Thanks for taking the time to stop by The Daly Planet.

Changes At SPEED Expected To Continue

We have recently been talking about the changes SPEED has been going through since FOX Sports Chairman David Hill, pictured above, was put directly in charge of the cable TV network.

Hill's first attempt at a new Monday night line-up went down in flames. Michael Waltrip's amateur talent show, Jimmy Spencer's junkyard rants and a rehashing of NASCAR in a Hurry were eventually cancelled.

The lack of Monday through Thursday NASCAR programming on SPEED has been the hot topic for many years. Depending on who was in charge at the network, there has either been little or no effort put into creating original weekday NASCAR programs.

TV viewers who have seen Stealth Rider, Intersections or Battle of the Supercars know the current reality of SPEED all too well. Memories of former TV series like Beyond the Wheel, NBS 24/7 and This Week in NASCAR show a network that has been all over the map in terms of programming themes and genres.

Hill successfully began to make his mark at SPEED when he coordinated the Hall of Fame coverage by bringing in top-flight producers from Los Angeles. Suddenly, everyone at SPEED stepped things up a notch as it became clear this was not the good old boy approach fans had seen for years.

A short time ago, Hill made another major programming move. He decided to revamp Race Hub and make it a flagship news and interview series. He persuaded Steve Byrnes to come off the road and into the studio as the fulltime host. The show was expanded to one hour in length, a new studio set was created and a fulltime field reporter was hired.

SPEED finally had a solid weekday NASCAR presence that made sense. The production staff is only into week two and the changes have already paid dividends. Monday, Byrnes had Kyle Busch in studio for an extended interview that covered lots of topics and let fans see a very different side of this controversial driver.

While SPEED can create its own studio shows, it must purchase other NASCAR programming from the NASCAR Media Group (NMG). This downtown Charlotte company already produces the programming from the SPEED Stage as well as Race in 60 and NASCAR Hot Wired. NMG controls all NASCAR footage.

Hill's new agenda has to ultimately include exploring a merger between SPEED and NMG. A partnership would finally put these two rival fraternities on the same team. NMG would have direct access to an already successful cable TV network while SPEED would get the keys to the NMG footage vault, a treasure chest of historic NASCAR content.

Remember, SPEED was originally moved from Stamford, CT to Charlotte, NC in order to become a fulltime NASCAR TV network in a partnership between NASCAR and FOX. Those plans never worked out, but changes in management at both companies may now have set those wheels in motion again.

This is a critical time for both parties. NASCAR needs a very different television companion than the sporadic weekday coverage in place for the past three seasons. SPEED needs to shake the bipolar rap of catering to race fans on the weekends and teenagers on the week nights.

However Hill and NASCAR work it out, look for substantive changes at SPEED where NASCAR programming is concerned to continue at a rapid clip. Don't be surprised if a 24 hour fulltime NASCAR TV network is in the future. The very near future.

We welcome your comments on this topic. To add your opinion, just click on the comments button below. This is a family-friendly website, please keep that in mind when posting. Thanks for taking the time to stop by The Daly Planet.

NASCAR Preempted By Nothing

It's been a tough couple of weeks for ESPN2's daily NASCAR Now show. Weekday episodes have been preempted or moved by tennis and Little League Baseball. This Monday, the situation takes a turn for the worse. The show has been preempted by nothing.

It was season four of Seinfeld when Jerry and George had a discussion at the coffee shop about bringing a new TV show idea to NBC. Here is a slice of the conversation.

Jerry: So you're saying, I go in to NBC, and tell them I got this idea for a show about nothing.
George: Yeah, I think we really got something here.
Jerry: What do we got?
George: An idea.
Jerry: What idea?
George: An idea for the show.
Jerry: I still don't know what the idea is!
George: It's about nothing!
Jerry: Right.
George: Everybody's doing something. We'll do nothing!
Jerry: So, we go into NBC, we tell them we've got an idea for a show about nothing.
George: Exactly.
Jerry: They say, "What's your show about?" I say, "Nothing."
George: There you go.
Jerry (After a moment of pause): I think you may have something there.

This Monday after English Premier League Soccer ends and before Little League Baseball begins there is a full hour from 5 to 6PM available on ESPN2. This is the normal time for the one-hour edition of NASCAR Now to air.

The series has been on ESPN2 six days a week since 2007 as the only regularly scheduled support programming for NASCAR. Due to the hard work of those behind the scenes and the tireless efforts of host Allen Bestwick, the Monday version of NASCAR Now has become the finest discussion of the weekend events in the sport currently on the air.

Last week, there were four races at the Bristol Motor Speedway. Kyle Busch won the three races in which he was entered. Storylines are swirling as NASCAR is in the heart of the season and The Chase is looming. In 2006, ESPN paid hundreds of millions of dollars for the rights to show the final seventeen races of the season.

Early on Monday the trio of Rusty Wallace, Ricky Craven and Ray Evernham will be arriving at ESPN. They are this week's expert panel, a term coined by Bestwick a long time ago as he hosted another iconic TV series.

There is no way to overstate the importance of getting the Monday hour of NASCAR Now out to the fans this week. The Kyle Busch topic is sizzling. The Bristol racing across the sport's top three series was outstanding. The Hendrick Motorsports saga is unfolding. In short, what's happening in NASCAR right now is everything.

It's unfortunate that on this Monday, ESPN's programming priority is nothing. The network's version of Seinfeld is called SportsNation. It's a series created by ESPN for ESPN and is generally about ESPN. If features ESPN personalities, is produced in the ESPN studios and is absolutely the epitome of a full hour of nothing.

Co-hosts Colin Cowherd and Michelle Beadle spend sixty vapid minutes aiming trendy comments at their teenage audience, showing funny videos and reading tweets. ESPN wraps the wholesome sex appeal of Beadle and the "can't get a date" loser charm of Cowherd into a show that accomplishes nothing, discusses nothing and leaves no lasting memory. In the new world of ESPN, it's perfect.

So, it is ESPN's choice this week to preempt the 5PM Monday original airing of NASCAR Now and instead move SportsNation into this timeslot. NASCAR fans across the country arriving home ready to view the show they recorded at 5PM are in for a surprise.

Instead of Rusty, Ricky and Ray talking about NASCAR, the wild and wacky world of SportsNation will be in full effect. NASCAR Now will air once at 1AM Eastern, 10PM Pacific time. This choice by ESPN is a very clear indication of where priorities lay at the network.

We welcome your comments on this topic. To add your opinion, just click on the comments button below. This is a family-friendly website, please keep that in mind when posting. Thanks for taking the time to stop by The Daly Planet.