Dale Earnhardt Jr. Opens Up About Team Shake-Up and His Popularity

Filed under: Dale Earnhardt Jr., Hendrick Motorsports, NASCAR

LAS VEGAS -- The only suspense in Thursday's announcement of NASCAR's 2010 Most Popular Driver Award rested with the winner. For the eighth consecutive year, Dale Earnhardt Jr. claimed the honor -- tops among the 1.5 million fan votes -- once again proving his popularity is soaring even if his on-track efforts have fallen flat.

"Oh yeah, I was surprised,'' Earnhardt claimed moments after accepting the award during NASCAR Champion's Week. "You just never know. There's the performance factor we've suffered from on the race track, there's the new guys coming into the sport all the time. You never take it for granted.''

The same could be said for winning.

Earnhardt hasn't won a race in nearly three seasons and hasn't even been consistently competitive in the No. 88 National Guard-Amp Energy Chevrolet, while his Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson will be crowned champion for the fifth consecutive year in Friday night's lavish NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Awards Banquet at the Wynn Las Vegas.

The juxtaposition isn't lost on the third-generation driver, son of the late seven-time champion, Dale Earnhardt. The 2004 Daytona 500 champ and 18-race winner is hoping a three-way crew chief swap at Hendrick will infuse new life into his career. And it can't happen soon enough.

 

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Allen Applegate Nelson Applegate Sam Ard

NASCAR Pictures: 5 Time Jimmie Johnson

Photos of NASCAR Driver�& Sprint Cup Champ Jimmie Johnson
Say what you will about Jimmie Johnson, the man has talent and he long ago earned the right to be respected.� Now he has achieved an unprecidented five consecutive cup championships. In those five years, he has raced clean, has never been the in-your-face-asshole type, has always [...]

Bobby Norfleet Lance Norick Whitey Norman

NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour Schedule To Feature Event In Canada In 2011

Drivers, start your engines, ehh.

The Whelen Modified Tour is heading North in 2011, and we're not talking about the kind of north that involves New Hampshire or Maine.

How about "have your passports handy" kind of north.

Officials from Delaware Speedway in Delaware Ontario announced Wednesday that they will welcome the Whelen Modified Tour to the track for the first time next season for a Sept. 3-4 show at the half-mile paved oval.

Chad Little Chuck Little Fred Lorenzen

The Money Train

Before we turn our attention to the Daytona 500 and the new season of NASCAR on FOX, there is some unfinished business with ESPN. Jeff Gluck of SBNation reported recently on a post-season poll he conducted. After wishing Dale Earnhardt Jr. was running better, the number two thing on the wish list of NASCAR fans was the request for side-by-side commercial breaks on the Sprint Cup Series telecasts.

This first drew my attention back in 2006 when a young reporter named Marty Smith prepared this (click here) article on the topic for the NASCAR.com website. Smith did a wonderful job of exploring the topic and interviewing the parties involved in the issue.

Back in 2006, ABC/ESPN spokesman George McNeilly told Smith that the network would enjoy the opportunity to bring side-by-side coverage to NASCAR fans, but obstacles abound. It's not as easy as simply doing it.

"ESPN is on the cutting edge of technology and would like the opportunity to pursue side-by-side with NASCAR, but we are contractually prohibited at this time from doing so," said McNeilly. "We see side-by-side as an opportunity to serve sports fans so they don't miss the action and still provide great value to advertisers on the telecast. We'd like the opportunity."

Ramsey Poston was the NASCAR spokesman back in 2006 and this was his response on the topic. "We are always interested in finding the best way to showcase our racing in a manner that serves fans, sponsors and the networks," Poston said. "Up to this point we have not seen a split screen solution that accomplishes that."

Money was said to be at the heart of the matter. ESPN is NASCAR's largest TV partner and paid a hefty sum to return to the sport. This huge TV contract put ESPN in charge of not only the final seventeen Sprint Cup Series races, but made the network the exclusive TV home of the Chase for the Championship.

Fans remember all too well the significant amount of commercial inventory run in the NASCAR on ESPN telecasts this season. Many believe that this is the primary revenue source for the company and being directly used to pay the NASCAR rights fees. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The reality is that ESPN has its own money train. It delivers each and every month and is full of items that may look familiar. Those are your hard-earned dollars spent to maintain cable or satellite TV service so you can watch NASCAR. ESPN's money train is full of your cash.

Reporter Anthony Crupi of Mediaweek.com calls ESPN the Uncle Pennybags of sports broadcasting. Pennybags is the jovial type who takes your money on a regular basis in Monopoly and never hides the fact he is flush with cash. Here is Crupi's take on the current college football situation.

Perhaps nothing illustrates ESPN?s rapacity (greed) quite like the college football bowl season. After blowing Fox Sports out of the water with a $500 million bid, ESPN won the rights for the Bowl Championship Series through 2014. In so doing, it now plays host to 33 of the 35 bowl games, including the Oregon-Auburn title match on Jan. 10.

And here?s the corker. Despite the towering expenses associated with hosting the BCS games, ESPN could air the championship event commercial-free and still walk away fat and happy.

The reason is very simple. ESPN charges cable and satellite operators an average of $4.40 a month per subscriber. Multiplying that by ESPN's 99.8 million subscribers means an annual cash stream of $5.27 billion. That, my friends, is one heck of a money train.

Remember the commercials? ESPN stands to make over a billion dollars in advertising this season, but that pales in comparison to the cash flow that is ultimately from consumers. As we all know, prices for cable and satellite services have never gone down. ESPN's windfall is here to stay.

This reality check should push open the door for a revamp of the dismal failure that was the 2010 Sprint Cup Series telecasts on ESPN. If these production and commercial problems existed with another major professional sport on ESPN, a solution would have already been found.

Side-by-side commercials and less inventory is the only way to let fans watching at home actually see the final seventeen races. What ESPN hopes you conveniently forget is that you are already paying to watch it with your monthly cable or satellite bill. Add in the incredible amount of commercials, and ESPN is smiling all the way to the bank.

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.

Glenn Jarrett Jason Jarrett Ned Jarrett

SPEED's "Race Hub" Fills A TV Void

There was a time when executives at SPEED simply laughed when we brought up the concept of adding a weekday NASCAR news program. Primetime on weekdays was dominated by "lifestyle" shows that had absolutely nothing to do with real racing or sometimes any type of motorsports at all.

Over the years, the network has towed trucks in Chicago, served beer to bikers in Texas and created a phony drag racing franchise right out of central casting. Through it all, SPEED had a NASCAR news void from Monday through Thursday every single week during the racing season.

Officially, no one is saying exactly how the Race Hub series began in 2009. It was October and SPEED had just been named the official TV network of the new NASCAR Hall of Fame. The rumor was that NASCAR was not very happy with the weekday "void" we mentioned earlier.

Suddenly, from out of the blue, word came that SPEED had added a weekday half-hour of NASCAR news on Monday through Thursday at 7:30PM. In a flash, the scramble was on to put SPEED in the NASCAR news business. This was not another NASCAR Media Group production either, it was all SPEED.

Kyle Petty is fond of using the term "cluster" when things are not going well and the ramp-up to the original version of this show certainly fit that bill. Krista Voda was the original anchor along with appearances from some of SPEED's other on-camera regulars.

OK, so the make-up was bad, the sound was awful and the studio was corny but who cared? After years of being told NASCAR would not work in primetime on SPEED, there it was. Voda tried her best to make the early shows go and the series showed enough promise to return for 2010.

Once things got rolling this year, it was apparent that there were some problems to be fixed. Thirty minutes works for ESPN's NASCAR Now, but it was clear that SPEED had a lot more content available and often the shows seemed to leave a lot on the table.

Voda also split time with multiple hosts and the lack of a consistent presence was not good. The series needed a full time host who knew NASCAR and had a comfortable relationship with TV viewers.

This summer, SPEED answered a lot of these questions with one press release:

SPEED unveils its new NASCAR Race Hub set Monday, Aug. 16 at 7 p.m. ET with Steve Byrnes as the new full-time host. Byrnes, a veteran NASCAR broadcaster with more than 25 years of experience, has served as a rotating host of the one-hour nightly NASCAR news and information program that premiered last October.

In much the same way that the show had appeared from nowhere, SPEED expanded to one hour and inserted Byrnes as the host right in the middle of the NASCAR season. It took a lot for Byrnes to come off the road after many years of hosting Trackside as well as practice and qualifying sessions for SPEED.

Race Hub also added a full time "local reporter" since the SPEED studios are only a short drive away from most of the team shops. Danielle Trotta was the rookie with only limited TV experience who was thrown into the mix with Byrnes.

After a few tweaks to the set, the new line-up began to get some momentum going. NASCAR personalities now had access to national TV with only a short car ride to the SPEED studio or they could arrange for Trotta to come to them. In addition, the show had access to Larry McReynolds and Jeff Hammond who also live in the area.

In just two short months, Race Hub has proven itself to be a solid provider of interviews, features and NASCAR news. Very different from NASCAR Now, Byrnes has been able to build a comfortable studio environment that has seen a wide variety of guests since October.

Last week, SPEED confirmed that Byrnes, Trotta and Race Hub would be returning for 2011. The series will remain one hour in length and run Monday through Thursday. During the NASCAR on FOX weekends, Byrnes will also be returning to his pit road duties. That should make for a busy spring season.

With new management at SPEED, we can only hope that Race Hub will provide a platform on which to create additional NASCAR-themed programming. A Monday NASCAR version of Wind Tunnel, a weekly Camping World Truck Series show and an extended interview program like The Humpy Show are all ideas that have been kicked around for a while now.

Race Hub was a great first step toward turning the focus of SPEED away from entertainment programs and bringing it back to motorsports of all types. We should know exactly when Race Hub is going to return and what other NASCAR programs may be coming to SPEED before Christmas.

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.

Bob Burcham Bud Burdick Rich Burgess

Mallory Race Report July 2010

Mallory Race Report July 2010
A slightly reduced field of Peter Besters took to the track as guests of the Morgan Sports Car Club at Mallory.
The Morgan drivers consisting of several Tarquins and Ponsonby-Smythes were a little taken aback as the Peter Besters consisted of Browns and Joneses.
Nevertheless they let us race anyway.

As predicted of the [...]

Dennis Setzer Morgan Shepherd Reed Sorenson

CFM: Clay Regazzoni ? A Tribute

Published at Chequered Flag Motorsport on 20th December 2006 Gianclaudio Giuseppe ?Clay? Regazzoni 1939-2006 On December 15 we lost one of the great characters of 1970s Formula One. Clay Regazzoni was killed in a car accident in Parma, Italy. Regazzoni?s career started at Zandvoort in 1970, and ended in unfortunante circumstances at Long Beach in [...]

Robert Brown Russell Brown Slim Brown