With Fox Cutting MLB Pre-Game Show Is Hollywood Hotel Next?

Fox Sports has decided to eliminate the on-location pre-game show for the Sunday Major League Baseball games telecast by the network in 2009. Former NASCAR reporter Jeanne Zelasko and MLB veteran Kevin Kennedy were featured on the broadcasts.

According to LA Daily News Tom Hoffarth (click here), the Fox broadcasts will now come on the air at 1PM and the first pitch will be at 1:07PM. The thirty minute pre-game show is gone, which also means the booth announcers will have to deal with rain delays and other stoppages of play.

Several weeks ago, word came out that both ESPN and Fox were looking hard at cutting TV production costs in several major sports properties. NASCAR was high on the list for both networks. Several meetings have taken place where executives from Fox, ESPN and NASCAR discussed what opportunities were available for cost savings.

Obviously, one target for both Fox and ESPN is the custom-made TV trailers that are brought on the road to host the pre-race shows. At Fox, that is called the Hollywood Hotel. Chris Myers and Jeff Hammond are joined by Darrell Waltrip during the pre-race and then Myers and Hammond remain in the Hollywood Hotel for the duration of the event to add opinion and commentary.

This piece of equipment has become sophisticated over the years and now has all kinds of TV effects and multiple camera angles built right in. Basically, it has become a mobile high-tech TV studio.

Since Fox has now stepped forward and confirmed that they are going to be cutting the TV production on the Major League Baseball games of the week, it would seem that February's start of the NASCAR season would be next in line for the financial microscope.

ESPN also begins their Nationwide coverage at Daytona and has not said a word about the changes that it may have in store for the new season. ESPN brings the Infield Pit Studio to all the major Nationwide Series races and all the Sprint Cup events covered by the network.

That facility not only hosts the pre-race programs, but also functions to host practice and qualifying shows as well as Sprint Cup versions of NASCAR Now. Although it may be expensive, ESPN gets a lot of use from this piece of TV equipment.

ESPN also travels Tim Brewer's Tech Center, which is another expensive custom-made trailer that contains a cutaway car and lots of other racing parts. The Tech Center just might not see as many road miles next season if this trend continues.

It should be the next week or so when word comes out about the changes for NASCAR TV production for 2009. Seeing what Fox did with baseball and the recent demise of DirecTV's Hot Pass are unfortunately going to set the tone for what TV viewers will probably be dealing with shortly.

We will update the news as it happens and try to keep NASCAR fans ahead of the information curve during these very strange days.

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DirecTV's "Hot Pass" Cancelled For 2009?

We are going to be leaving this story open for your comments. New updates will be posted at the bottom of this column. Hot Pass being cancelled is now confirmed for next season.

The email is flying around the Internet, but as of Tuesday evening we are being told that DirecTV has cancelled NASCAR Hot Pass for 2009. Official word should come sometime on Wednesday. That is the Hot Pass TV production trailer pictured above. Click on the picture to see it full-size.

This service, which provided four "mini-networks" to subscribers, featured two announcers calling the race from the perspective of each driver. Fans got to hear all the in-car radio traffic, see the various in-car cameras and switch between the four feeds anytime during the race.

DirecTV had also added-in some special features like additional driver audio channels and a super-channel that let viewers switch quickly over to the network TV feed of the race itself. Any way you looked at it, this was a bold TV experiment.

Unfortunately, instead of being available to the 90 million cable TV households across America, Hot Pass was only available to the 15 million homes that subscribe to DirecTV. That was a big problem.

This idea was brought about by Fox Sports Chairman David Hill when he was actively involved in the DirecTV operations. Now, Hill has returned to his Fox Sports duties and the Hot Pass experiment is supposedly over.

In the past, we had been told that between 250 and 300 thousand DirecTV users had to subscribe to Hot Pass to make it break even. With the economy tight and times getting tougher, it seems that DirecTV has seen the writing on the wall and will not attempt to distribute the Hot Pass service in 2009.

Many of the top announcers in NASCAR worked on Hot Pass. Wendy Venturini was given the opportunity to handle play-by-play duties and veterans like Phil Parsons and Randy Pemberton could be heard on almost every telecast. The line-up of on-air talent was one of the most impressive parts of the service.

Former SPEED VP Chris Long was handling the Hot Pass service as a part of his DirecTV duties. We have an email into him and will update this post when he responds. Perhaps, he can fill us in a little better on the specifics.

Hardcore NASCAR fans loved the idea of Hot Pass, but many were confined to cable TV service through "bundled" deals with MSO's (Multi-System Operators) like Comcast and Time Warner.

Cable TV operators offer a package that includes TV, phone and Internet service for a discounted cost. That was tough for DirecTV to sell against, especially in urban areas where dish placement was not practical.

This major change in the way NASCAR race video will be distributed for 2009 puts the ball squarely in the laps of the Turner Interactive Group in Atlanta, GA. This company operates the NASCAR.com website and offers all the online audio, video and stats features for fans as the races are in-progress.

Internet users saw the future when they enjoyed the online RaceBuddy feature during the six TNT summer races. Now, with Hot Pass ending there may be an opportunity for some innovative thinking from the Turner Group that can result in additional video and audio choices for the NASCAR fans.

This column will be updated on Wednesday morning with the latest information. While we have still not seen an official media release from DirecTV, the word is that the company has decided to cancel the entire Hot Pass service for next season.

Update #1 - As of 8AM Eastern Time on Wednesday, still no comment from either DirecTV or Hot Pass Executive Producer Chris Long.

Update #2 - Confirmed: Thanks to our friend Ray Dunlap for this link (click here) to his personal website that contains his tribute to Hot Pass and confirmation that it has been cancelled.

Update #3 - Click here for the Wednesday story from Jim Utter at thatsracin.com comfirming the cancellation.

Update #4 - Chris Long from DirecTV was kind enough to offer that NASCAR and DirecTV are working on a solution for some additional race video and audio to be made available to DirecTV subscribers free of charge for the upcoming season. What form that would take and what would be offered will be disclosed in a couple of weeks. No doubt this has been a tough time for all concerned.

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Put Marty Reid's Name In The ESPN Rumor Mill

This season, it has been veteran ESPN announcer Marty Reid who has stepped-in to handle the substitute NASCAR play-by-play role. When the Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series are racing at different tracks, it has been Reid and Randy LaJoie who have provided the commentary with good success.

Allen Bestwick has also filled this role for ESPN since Reid has been assigned to the IRL TV package for the last several seasons. In order to move Reid over to the IRL, ESPN removed him from its very popular NHRA coverage and replaced him with Paul Page.

As television motorsports contracts continue to shift, the latest victim of the ESPN space squeeze is Tony George and the IRL. After a long relationship, ESPN told the IRL that it wanted the Indy 500 for ABC and only a few other races for ESPN. Take it or leave it was the offer.

In an ironic twist, George needed to keep the ABC coverage of Indy as the anchor of his entire IRL franchise. So, he took the ESPN offer. The entire remaining IRL schedule wound-up moving to the Versus TV Network. Owned by Comcast, it used to be called the Outdoor Life Network.

What this essentially did was free up Marty Reid from his 2009 TV commitments. This left the door open to include Reid in the upcoming NASCAR efforts on ESPN and ABC.

Before the 2008 season, ESPN VP of Motorsports Rich Feinberg made a series of bold moves. Almost all of them paid-off in spades. Moving Dale Jarrett into the announce booth as the Lead Analyst proved to be just what ESPN needed to stabilize that position.

Rather than release Rusty Wallace, Feinberg shrewdly put him downstairs in the Infield Pit Center. In order to give Wallace the type of professional TV support and structure that he needs, Feinberg brought-in Allen Bestwick as the full-time infield host.

The results were great as Bestwick used Wallace and Brad Daugherty all season long to handle everything from the pre-race show to red flags and rain delays. Having this element handy changed the tone of the coverage.

Now, Feinberg is going to have to handle the one change he did not make before last season. That is addressing the play-by-play assignment for both the Nationwide and Sprint Cup Series coverage. This one is going to be tough to tackle because unlike the other changes, this one has an odd man out.

Should Marty Reid step-in for Dr. Jerry Punch, it would mean removing a long-time friend of NASCAR and a future NASCAR Hall of Fame broadcaster. The problem is that Punch is primarily a reporter and struggled with the lap-by-lap call of the races.

What ESPN desperately needs is a versatile play-by-play announcer who can breath life into the live races. It appears that may well be Marty Reid.

What role Punch would fill leads us into a very interesting discussion. ESPN produces the final seventeen Sprint Cup races, including all ten Chase races for ABC. The high-profile Sprint Cup Series events certainly demand an Infield Pit Studio and a Tech Center. The question is, does the Nationwide Series need the same level of TV production?

Word is that ESPN is trying to cut NASCAR production costs for next season to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars per event. While the NASCAR Media Group controls the TV compound at the races, the TV networks bring-in their own TV trucks and specialized equipment like the Tech Center and Infield Pit Studio.

When Feinberg looks over at SPEED's coverage of the Truck Series, he sees only five announcers with no TV toys. SPEED has no Tech Center, cutaway car or infield studio. The pre-race host stands alone with one camera to set-up the race.

It should be interesting to see what changes Feinberg makes for next season. As TV logistics go, those changes are actually being made right now. Contracts, schedules, travel, crewing and other duties have to be buttoned-up before the new year.

While Fox and TNT produce their slice of the Sprint Cup pie and then leave town, it is really ESPN that bears the deepest production costs in terms of producing the entire Nationwide Series and the final seventeen Sprint Cup races.

When February rolls around, TV viewers may see some new faces and less of the bells-and-whistles that have come to define the ESPN coverage over the last two seasons. TDP will keep you posted if and when any on-air changes become official.

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