Bits and Pieces of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series news below involving Geico, the Fox Network thinking about moving some races to Speed, Crown Royal pulling out and Red Bull leaving NASCAR also.
Geico Race Title Sponsor
Everyone’s favorite insurance lizard will be sponsoring Chicagoland for the next three years. To be exact, Geico has signed up to be the title race sponsor for the Chicagoland Speedway’s fall Sprint Cup Series races for the next three years.
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Fox Pondering Moving Some Races to SPEED
In case you had not heard… it’s not a done deal that Fox may be moving some of its race coverage to SPEED. The entity of Fox/SPEED is going to be NASCAR’s partner for a long time and right now there are discussions of moving some races to SPEED but NASCAR has to make sure that their interests are met in the process.
Right now Fox is looking to move at most, six races to the race-coverage network while Fox and NASCAR are smack-dab in the middle of a their 8-year deal, this being year five of that deal.
What concerns me is moving the races to SPEED, some consumers will be losing their exposure to the race coverage. Not everyone gets the extended cable packages that they have to pay extra for to get SPEED channel and it would be a shame to lose those consumers that have been enjoying the Fox Sports NASCAR telecasts.
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On the 1-on-8 date that ended up at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway on ABC’s The Bachelor, it came out on camera then, that Brad Womack knew nothing about Emily Maynard‘s connection to NASCAR. At one point in the date, he talked one-on-one with Emily about it and he seemed completely stunned.
Here’s part of my confusion: If my memory serves me right, on The Bachelor, did Emily not mention during an earlier one-on-one date with Brad at the cheese and wine picnic that her fiancee passed away in an airplane crash and that he was a racecar driver? I could have sworn she mentioned racecar driver to him. (It doesn’t matter what kind of racing… if a person isn’t a fan, they don’t distinguish between NASCAR and other forms of racing… it’s all the same to the uninitiated.)
Which brought me to another aspect of the date and that was Emily being upset about being back at a track.
But then I made the erred judgement that maybe she had dealt with it since in the year or two after Ricky Hendrick’s passing, she worked in the auto racing industry hosting a show called Three Wide Life and hosted podcasts for Speed, which was known as The Speed Channel back then.
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3-15-11 Update: If you’re interested, you can peruse my terse take on the finale of The Bachelor.
On The Bachelor there is one girl that many are rooting for and that’s Emily Maynard. She has this beautiful air about her… regal, sincere and still simply innocent as she looks at a person with no preconceptions. She seems to have no underlying evil plan to make it big via the reality dating series.
Last week we see that The Bachelor‘s Brad Womack is very smitten with the girl. At the end of the episode he goes out of his way before the rose ceremony to make a mini-picnic for her just to let her know he’s not forgotten her. Then in the previews for next week’s episode (Mon, Jan 31), we were treated to previews where Brad takes the gang of girls to a race track to have some fun, and Emily is one of them.
We’re then shown scenes where she’s having an emotional moment because her late fiancee was Ricky Hendrick, who died in a tragic airplane crash in ’04, headed to Martinsville.
But here’s my question – As I watched the preview with Emily Maynard being upset I was a bit confused because since Mr. Hendrick’s passing, she’s worked in the racing industry since… hosting a show called Three Wide Life and doing podcasts for The Speed Channel which aired on their website.
Which brings up the question, hasn’t she already dealt with this issue?
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Just in case you don’t get enough SPEED Channel, now you can sit down to watch NASCAR on TV and cruise the internet. (As if we didn’t do that already!)
SPEED2 is coming at us in June and is said that it will complement SPEED Channel. It’s a broadband network with live, streaming events that will complement SPEED’s traditional offerings.
In June, what will be available is a beta version that will only be available to SPEED subscribers. There will be a broader release in July.
The new SPEED2 will also have some video-on-demand for international events and other enthusiast focused programming. Which means I’ll be even more confused with all the ancillary channels of data I already watch… ie: Twitter, Facebook, etc.
[Cable TMC Net]
It’s being reported that the Charlotte-area cable provider Time Warner might not be showing showing Speed, FX and a few other channels.
It seems this little situation is about money and if their resolution doesn’t resolve itself, these and other channels could go dark come January 1st. It’s January 1st because their contract comes to a close on December 31st.
In some markets in the region, this could possibly also extend to the main channel from Fox that airas Glee, House M.D. and American Idol. (Oh my… that could lead to American Riots if Idol is capped.)
Know Who To Be Mad At:
The dark channels will be a result of News Corp (Fox parent company) pulling the channels because they’re asking for more money while Time Warner is digging in and trying to save the consumer price rate increases.
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