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NASCAR ban surprises RPM 2Night

By SHARON GINN

© St. Petersburg Times, published February 9, 2001

ESPN2's auto racing show RPM 2Night no longer is welcome inside the Daytona 500 -- or any other NASCAR race.

Now that Fox and NBC hold broadcast rights to NASCAR races, ESPN realized its access would be limited. But what it didn't expect, director of communications Mike Soltys said Thursday, was that its daily racing show would no longer receive race credentials.

Soltys said the network has been told RPM 2Night qualifies as a "magazine" show, and not a news show, so it could not set up shop at the speedway. Daytona 500 public relations director Glyn Johnston confirmed that statement, but said when he denied the show's credential requests he was merely following NASCAR directives. (Repeated attempts to obtain comment from a NASCAR official Thursday were unsuccessful.)

Calling it a feature-driven show is ridiculous, Soltys said.

"If Jeff Gordon says something newsworthy, RPM 2Night is the one that's feeding it to Sports-Center," he said. "That's how we get SportsCenter (autos) coverage from a news end. They argue back publicly that RPM 2Night is a magazine show, but the big news that goes on day in and day out, the leading place on television for that has been RPM 2Night."

SportsCenter was offered credentials to Daytona, Soltys said, but because RPM 2Night is primarily responsible for the network's racing coverage, that wasn't good enough. "We said we're not going to send SportsCenter either," he said. "We said we'd continue to cover the sport aggressively, but don't feel it's right the conditions that have been put on us." RPM 2Night will set up shop across the street, and rely on its good connections to get drivers to come over for interviews.

Neither party will say this, but in slighting ESPN, NASCAR is surely trying to direct fans toward Fox's new show, Totally NASCAR, which airs weeknights on Fox Sports Net. It debuts Monday.

DAYTONA COVERAGE BEGINS: Fox Sports Net fires up this year's NASCAR coverage at 10 a.m. today with the first practice from Daytona. Boring? Not to race fans. "Daytona kicks off the season, so these cars have not been on the track together for any type of situation except for testing," said Larry Hoepfner, a Fox Sports Net Florida vice president. "It's kind of like the first day of spring training. The first time they're out there is a big deal."

Fox Sports Net also will show Daytona 500 practices live Monday through Wednesday. Then at noon Thursday, the network will become the first to televise the 125-mile qualifying races live.

Fox Sports launches its NASCAR coverage at 1 p.m. Saturday with the Daytona 500 pole qualifying.

FSN, SUNSHINE FACE OFF: The state's two regional sports shows are going head-to-head. Fox Sports Net Florida's half-hour Regional Sports Report will move from 11 p.m. to 10 beginning April 2 and change its name to Florida Sports Report. It will precede FSN's National Sports Report, which is being shortened from an hour to a half-hour and pushed back to 10:30.

The move pits FSN's regional show against Sunshine Network's hourlong Florida Sports News, which airs weeknights at 10. Both shows launched last year and have struggled to find a niche and audience. The move makes sense because both shows now follow their networks' regional programming (college basketball, Orlando Magic, Devil Rays, etc.), but the 10 p.m. time slot may not be big enough for both of them.

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