The Dale Jr. Download - 466 - Business of Motorsports Part IV - Sam Flood

Episode Date: June 27, 2023

Class is back in session as Kelley Earnhardt Miller joins co-host Mike Davis for another edition of Business of Motorsports, this time with the President of NBC Sports Sam Flood. After tackling team ownership, race promotion, and the souvenir industry, Kelley and Mike were eager to learn more about the world of television broadcasting and media rights. Sam explains how an unexpected sports injury in college led to him filling in as a commentator, which opened his eyes to a career path in broadcasting. After spending time at ABC Sports, he found his way to NBC covering the 1988 Seoul Olympics as a researcher and has worked for the network ever since. Sam goes into what he looks for as an executive producer working on the content side of some of the biggest sports broadcasts in television. They also discuss the rise of digital streaming and how cable television has had to adapt and will continue to transform. Finally, he breaks down his philosophy for broadcasting a race and what his days at the racetrack look like. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What do you make? I'm getting in. I am weird. Yeah, you are weird. What? Wrong. Mr. Dallan Hart Jr. Bye.

That family techniques sometimes. Gives you more than just a tomato salad. That's the voice of my co-host. One of my best friends in the whole wide world. Mike Davis. We're screwed. What was that me? No, we're not standing in that box together in our underwear.

Are you kidding me, Mike? Oh, my God. hilarious. Hey everybody, it's Dale Jr. back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. Download is Tuesday, June 27th. And I'm here with my co-hosts Mike Davis in the Bojangles studio, looking out across this table of Lionel die casts. And we got a great show for you today.

We got a unique show for you on this Tuesday. Yeah, yeah. A lot of pre-taped stuff, but we're eager to show everybody and roll it out. Yeah, so we got a little ass junior coming up. Andrew is in the studio. we've compiled some great questions to answer. I love this part of the show. We're doing it a little bit unorthodox on a Tuesday

at the very top of our episode. And after the Ask Junior will be an episode of Business of Motorsports with guest Sam Flood, who is my boss. Yes. So I'm a little nervous. Are you? Well, sure, he's my boss. When your boss is in the room, things get tense.

We do talk about you. I know that for a fact. I may leave the room when that. that happens. But anyways, we got some great questions. Andrew, you're here? I am here. He made it. Yes. I apologize for the tardiness. Oh, he was late. Anyways, Andrew, you got the questions. Let's get started. Let's do it. Let's kick this off. This is Ashton, you're presented by Xfinity. And this first question coming from Rodney, are there any big names to keep a lookout for in the future in terms of cars tour races?

Big, like drivers? Big, yeah. Well, the cars tour is full of, the most talented late model stock racers in the country and the one thing that I think is unique about it is that you just really don't know who is going to win when they show up you'll you'll have an expectation of a driver that you'll think will be strong Connor Hall's been great over the last several weeks but then they go to Dominion and butterbean is the man to beat and of course Bobby McCarty ends up winning the race but he didn't have the fastest car and Butterbean did. It just butterbeamped them at North Wiltsboro.

Carson, our driver at Juno Motorsports, won a handful of races right out of the gate early in the season. You just never know what driver will be strong on any given weekend. The late model stock competition man is very close and very tough, and it takes some pretty crafty race craft to get a car to victory lane. It ain't just about being the fastest. You've got to be pretty smart and sharp. take care of your tires and have some great restarts and all those things.

But it's kind of a three-car battle right now for the championship, and that may change and evolve throughout the year, but between Butterbean Queen, Carson Quappell, and Connor Hall, it's going to be a fantastic finish to the year. I expect some more fireworks. And I hear Kyle Larson is going to be racing in a carster race, too? That's right. Tomorrow at Carraway, Kyle Larson is going to be racing a junior motorsports late model stock car.

I asked Kyle if he would be interested in competing in the car's tour, gave him a few dates. This is the one he chose. We kept it a bit of a secret. You know, he's getting him, you know, he's out racing, doing all these things. He's on vacation, and the Cup series had an off week, so trying to get him to the shop, get him fitted in the car, and comfortable.

We had to make sure that all of that was going to work and check all those boxes before we said, yes, this is happening. But I've been excited about this for several weeks, And the Cars Tour is a fabulous tour full of incredibly talented drivers. But to be able to plug in one of the best drivers in the country, if not the world today, is going to be a fascinating thing. If I am one of the Cars Tour drivers, if I know those guys, they are going to be thrilled about this opportunity to compete with Kyle

and be able to say hey to him, see him at the driver's meeting. I mean, it's just having Kyle in the proximity of all of the things. things that we do at the Cars Tour is going to be great. And there's all kinds of things that we're doing throughout the year. Kenny Wallace was going to race at Tri-County. That got pushed back. He's now going to race later in the year at South Boston. I'm going to continue to work and pursue more opportunities for the Cars Tour

to plug in some of the world's top talent and recognizable names into the series when we can. This is a great win for the Cars Tour, and we've got to thank Kyle for his interest in doing it. So it should be a lot of fun. I can't wait to see. He's going to have a special crew chief tomorrow. Oh, Josh Barry will be at the helm. I'm out of town tomorrow. I cannot be there.

I wish I could. I cannot be there. And so I asked Josh, I said, Josh is very important. And hell, to be honest with you, it ain't going to make any difference whether I'm there or not. It ain't going to change the way the car runs. Now, having Josh there to make sure that everything is ready to go, Josh will make sure that Kyle Larson has an incredible shot and a great finish. So I'm thrilled to be able to have the opportunity to,

to see that happen and I know everybody else will too. You said it. Kyle Larson's like one of the most versatile drivers. It's going to be very cool to see him in a car store. I can't wait to see how they do. I hope he gets to race a lot of laps and get, I want him to be able to come out of the car and really be able to give us some feedback, right?

This is what I think. This is what I thought. I'd love to do it again. Here's some things I would change about the experience of the day, whatever, right? And so hopefully the car is good enough for him to be able to understand all those things and get out of the car and give us some feedback. and help the cars tour move forward, right?

Not only is this a great opportunity for him just to try something new, but this is a great chance for the car store to learn and get some feedback from one of the best. And I won't give any details. But there's another half of this story. There is? Me and you are going to do something with Kyle Larson later in the year, and we'll give you more details on that, me and you being Mike Davis.

Will you give me some details on it too? I'm going to give you some details. You know some of the details. Stop it. But we're going to do something fun with Kyle. Something that me and Mike have never experienced. We're going to go do it. And I think we may be taking just about everybody in this room with us.

So it could be a lot of fun. Now I'm interested. Everybody in the room. Details to come. Yeah. Be ready. Clear your calendars for about four months. Yeah.

I'm just going to keep four months clear. This next one is coming from Cameron. Is there a good story behind the cosmic pinball? machine over there in the studio. Absolutely there is. So I move in with my dad at the lake house in 1981, and we had a basement, and there's that brown wood paneling all on the walls, pool table, orange, couch, sectional, and VHS, probably a beta VCR over in the corner with a TV, record player with a couple records,

Delbert McClinton, and Meatloaf. Boston and all that good stuff. And in the corner is the Comet Pimball machine. Now, this is not the exact same machine. But dad did not have any toys at the house. Now, we lived on the lake. We had a boat. We had the pier.

He fished. We had all of that. But in the house, it was bare of any activity, toy, entertainment. style stuff. I did mention a pool table, but I hardly ever saw him play on that pool table. When Dad came home, he got home late, and he went to bed. He fell either that or he climbed into the recliner and was asleep in 20 minutes,

and then he was gone the next morning. That was his use of the house. But he gets this pinball machine probably around 1983 or 84, and I'm going to tell you, man, he played on that thing. religiously every night. And continuing to outscore the high score over and over, and he would yell and holler at it. And, you know, he, so I found one in really, really good condition.

And it is identical to his machine. And I, I, it's the only thing that I ever remember seeing in that little span of time from, like, say, there's a five-year window in the mid-80s, it was the only thing that he really did that gave him joy when he was at home outside of just being a family man and a father right i mean that he played on that thing all the time and uh we would ask him to let us try and boy he was it was tough to get him off the controls man i got a wonder here did you were you looking for that or did you just happen upon it and i was like oh my god there's no i thought when we were thinking about i was uh i had a couple pinball machines and there's a dale junior pinball

machine and I've got a few different ones and I thought damn I need to get I need to see if there's a common out there to have and I found one in really good shape and it was not that expensive and I was so I just felt so lucky to be able to find it because it is identical and in great shape and a lot of fun to play dang that's cool yeah it's kind of it's it's sort of an amusement park theme where you got a man in a dunk tank yeah and he's hollering all the time dunk me hey dunk me hey dunk me hey Don't be dummy. And then there's a roller coaster that the pinball can ride. And then there's a motorcycle jump, right?

And that's the big win is trying to fire the pinball up this ramp, and it lands in one of three holes. And it's like $20,000, $50,000, $1 million. And so if you can land it in that back hole, it's a million. And he, I think his high score got in the $7 to $8 million. range where he hopped that pinball into that thing a few times in one solid in one single game he was hollering at that thing every time it was fun i remember all those nights of standing there watching and play it and getting so animated he was very animated with the pinball machine

i'm very out of character we'll have to fire fire this one of these days here in the studio uh this next question coming from lance what's the best reaction you've gotten giving a ride-along to somebody. My wife probably. We had this. This was just recently, I think last year. We were at Bristol in a two-seater, a very good capable car. Hendrick has a two-seater that's set up well and you can get up to pretty good speeds.

I think we were running within a second of race speeds. So, I mean, it was a really, really good lap time that we were running. And at Bristol, you can run up against the wall and all this things in the corner. but the um it has some of that PJ one down on the bottom and i i was running around the racetrack and i put the left sides off a turn four and the PJ one and it the car just turned sideways and so like yeah i had a big big moment of of really really loose off turn four and she starts waving her hands and going frantic and i slowed down we come down pit road and she gets out and she goes y'all you're crazy you all are crazy y'all are crazy y'all are crazy y'all are

crazy for doing this, that you want to do this, that you've done this all these years, you're maniac. And I told her, I said, I said, that was, that was, we got really out of shape. I was like, you're really fortunate because I don't, I can't do that. I can't, I can't, I can't, I'm not going to go out there in every ride along and go, hey, man, I'm going to get us sideways. Yeah. Because it's too risky and too dangerous.

But it happened accidentally. And I was like, man, you know, you got, you got an, you got to experience. something that I can't even do for the rest of these people today. And that's to be in a car that's for a moment out of control. And you got to, I think it really helped her sort of realize the treachery, right, the danger and how close you gang, how close we can get to that barrier, right, before it's too far. And it scared the heck out of her.

So that was the best reaction that I believe I've ever gotten. Yeah. What percent were you pushing the car in terms of how hard you're going? It's hard as possible. Yeah, we lost all traction for a moment. Yeah, I guess. So we went over the line. So, yeah.

Oh, man. This next question is coming from Penny. How much do your daughters know about your career? That's, I don't really know that answer because, you know, I've been trying to take them to these little late mall races I've been running and trying to, you know, when we've been to any Xfinity race, we've had them with us.

But I think Ila was far too young to really understand where she was at and what was happening around her. But the last couple of times we've went to a show, she's sort of, she knows a race car. She knows what it is, right? Right. But I don't think she still truly gets that I'm in the car when it's going around the track. And so she sees me in a driver's uniform. She sees me, she sees the race car. but I don't think she's processing that it's me out there driving it, right?

And that that's, I don't know. I don't think that that's quite got, because we don't do it at all. We don't do it enough. Yeah, right. I run once or twice a year and it's out of sight, out of mind, right? And we go back to the racetrack and it's like she goes, she goes through that whole process again of going, oh, okay, where are we at? Okay, this is what's happening.

Okay, racing is cars racing, okay. She doesn't understand there's a guy in first. she doesn't understand the competition side of it there's people you know it's a chat she doesn't know what a race is like how someone's trying to win and I don't think she gets all that but she might she might have it going on up there it's hard to tell they don't they don't articulate it right mike I got a funny story I was never going to tell this but now I'm telling it you want to hear a funny story yeah that in terms of how people think and how kids

think of Dale junior last week I was dropping off my daughter and her friends at a soccer camp. And I was telling them, they're ranged from 12 to 14. And I was telling them to hurry up because I needed to drop them off early because I needed to get to do a show. We had a show to do, right? And I said to them, hurry up, I got to do a show, get out, see y'all later.

And my daughter then commences to tell her friends about, Dad does a show with Dale Jr. one of them asked who is that and my daughter's response was you might have seen him he was on the Kentucky Derby broadcast if you watched a Connecticut

and I'm like I cracked up I said I cannot wait I cannot wait there's going to be a moment when I can go Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kentucky Derby broadcaster

is the first thing that people know him at right? I know right not in a million years would that happen and then that happened so that is funny

like listen how people look at Dale I mean he's involved in so many things things now. It's not above the ordinary to honestly know that he's in Indy 500 or Olympics. This is how people sometimes see him. Yeah. Dale, have you had moments of that where people recognize you, but it's not necessarily for what you think? Yeah, it's pretty much. That would be interesting. Yeah. Yeah. All right, we got time for one more. This one's coming from Zach. What is the most used emoji on your phone? Oh, let's go. I'll just can tell you which one is.

is first. Like on that recommended page? I know the one he uses the most to me is that mad face. That orange mad face. All right. There are two that are probably running neck and neck as most used

and it's thumbs up. Yep. Or crying face. Or laughing, laughing crying. Oh, okay. Tears coming out laughing, right? Sorry, not crying face. But I use

the laughing with the tears coming out and the thumbs up and also the one with the big eyes where you're like sort of shocked or surprised right yeah i use that one quite a bit huh um i used the the face over the like all face palm yep like goodness grief you know oh goodness what in the world is this uh i used the fire emoji quite a bit um me and my wife use the emoji where um the the mouth is kind of wavy and the eyebrows or tweak or it's kind of like

this one. Confused a little or how do you explain? Yeah. Yeah kind of like I just figure confused. Perplexed. Perplexed.

But also maybe drunk all at the same time. I don't know what that one is. So one size fits most. The two beer cans. I use that one a lot. Two beer mugs clinking together.

And the angry face to Mike apparently. When I don't answer. I do, yes, the one with the smoke coming out of the nose. Oh, yeah, that one. Oh, that one's almost worse than the, you know, the red face emoji. Is it? They're all the same.

Yeah, yeah, they are. And there's the, there's the what, I don't know, this one. I don't know. Yeah. I got that one in there. Do that one a lot. Yeah. That's about it.

You've got some range. I mean, those seem like the common. Yeah. Those seem like that, like if you had a starter pack, they were all, They were the ones that be in there. Yeah. I think that's a good place to end it there. All right.

I appreciate it. Good job, Andrew. Thank you, Exfinity, for supporting Asg, Jr. And everything we do here at Dirtymo Media. Exfinity providing that 10G internet. It is amazing stuff. And I'm a customer of the service and very happy with everything they do. I keep piling more and more and more things onto my internet.

And the bandwidth is they're providing. me is plenty to handle everything I'm doing. Well, that's going to be the end of my participation in this particular show. We're going to bring you up next an episode of Business of Motorsports. That's right. And that's going to include a special guest, my boss, Sam Flood. So let's bring Kelly and Sam into the room. I'm going to depart, Mike.

I'll see you later. Have a good one. Racing season is underway. New customers download the Draft King Sportsbook app and use code DJD. Bet $5 and get $150 in bonus bets instantly. That's code DJD only on Draft King's Sportsbook. Gambling problem, call 1-800 Gambler. In Massachusetts, call 800327-50 or visit Gambling, helpline.m.m.m.org. In New York, call 8778-8-Hope-N-Y or text Hope NY 469. In Kansas, call 1-800-5-22-4-7-700 on behalf of Booth Hill Casino and Resort Kansas. In West Virginia,

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New Hampshire Motor Speedway, where it's going to be a wicked fast, wicked fun weekend at the Crayon 301. That's right, the Crayon 301. Entertainment and Racing Action kickoff when the Friday night Dirt Dukles take on the NHMS Flat Track. followed by a massive fireworks show and the night tops off with a concert by Shot of Poison, rocking well into the night.

Saturday roars to life with a doubleheader of racing, including the NASCAR Xfinity series and the NASCAR Wheelan modifies. Plan to be there. You don't want to miss this action. When the racing stops, the rock and roll begins. Saturday night's concert by Dirty Deeds will keep the party rolling. The weekend caps off Sunday afternoon with the NASCAR Cup Series race That's right, the Crayon 301.

It's a full weekend of racing, camping, fun, entertainment, and getting together with your friends and family. This is NASCAR, New England style, and it promises to be a, you got it, wicked fast, wicked fun weekend. The Magic Mile, July 14th through 16th, get your tickets today at NHMS.com. That is nhms.m.com. The following is a production of Dirtymo Media. Welcome to the Dell Jr. Download.

It is yours truly, Kelly Earnhardt Miller. This is actually a little bit different segment, the business of votersports. This is something that I've wanted to do with you for a long time. Do business-related podcasts, do business-related episodes. Open chats, right? Open chats about the business concerns of our industry, which there are many. I hope this series opens people up to the broader, bigger picture. All right, welcome to the Bojangles Studio with our another episode of the Business of Motorsports

Part 4. I am so excited about our ally guests today, Mike, Sam Flood, executive producer, and president of NBC Sports. Man, we've wanted this a long time, as you know, and frankly, there's a lot of people that, whether they realize it or not, TV, is part of their lives. And if you're a NASCAR fan, Sam Flood is a very important person to you. Every week you got opinions about commercials, opinions about, you know, the booth, opinions about this. Well, this is the guy that we can ask all those questions to, right? Yeah, that's right.

And that is what really I was thinking about, you know, just kind of prepping for this, the the captivation for me. I have so many roles to play sitting here ready to just attack Sam with questions because I'm a fan. You know, I have the same sometimes opinions about commercials or, you know, start times or delays or how all that works. But then just kind of as an industry person with junior motorsports, you know, curious about the television and how it impacts the series and how it all works together. And then, you know, we represent Dell Jr., right, who's a member of the broadcast team. So we've got a lot of hats that, you know, I hope we can uncover some really special things with Sam. That's right. This is Dale Jr's boss. You're his boss

and Sam's his boss. We've got both of Dale Jr's bosses on this planet. They're going to be at this table. I'm excited about that because frankly, you know, there's some Dale Jr. questions we can ask him. There's some things about, you know, moving forward. Is he going to keep sending Dale to the Indy 500 in the Kentucky Derby and the Olympics, all these places? This is a Sam Flood idea to get Dale Jr. on the team and put him all over the planet. So this is the guy. I cannot wait. Also, there's all these other little conversations about NASCAR rights and the media stuff. Sports broadcasting rights. NBC is just in the thick of all of those conversations. So he's flown in here from Stanford. For America. Pretty much I feel like just for us, right? Yeah. And so this is an opportunity that we're

going to have. I hope our listeners of the Dale Jr. download and all the Dirty Mo Media really kind of look at this as a way to learn and I hope they find this entertaining. Yeah, I think they should. And you mentioned the word boss there. You know, I get a lot of things on social and whatnot of, you know, with with the jokes and the fun-loving part of being Dell's boss. But ultimately, when you want to talk about boss, that's Sam Flood. Dale responds, listens, and whatever Sam says goes, right? Wait, does he not respond and listen to you? That was my point. So if we, if we ever need something, we need to all Sam, no, but it's going to be fun. Sam's just such a, you know, highly respected and just can't wait to dive in with just all this information. Like you said, there's just so much to unpack and uncover

based off of whether you're a fan, whether you're in the business and whatnot. So I can't wait. I'm going to learn a lot here. I do not know how television media rights work at the level the Sam's at and how they work from the network side. I'm really curious. And, and, and, and, you're really curious. And it's such a changing landscape, too. That's right. I was going to say that. I mean, how many times do people have opinions about peacock or streaming platforms? Is linear TV got a place in 10 years?

We got to know that, right? And I need to know if Sam Flood, what he thinks about that. Exactly. That's going to be fascinating. Yeah, I'm super excited. So let's bring in our ally guest, Sam Flood. Oh, here he is. Hi, hi.

How's it going? Good. Welcome to the studio, Sam. So excited to have you here. we were Mike and I were talking earlier this is going to be captivating to me I want to learn and know more about just sports properties and media rights and how it works from the network side so I'm really excited about that but I kind of am wearing three hats here as I'm ready to talk to you being a fan and you know the engagement with NASCAR fans is like incredibly loyal right so they've got they've got all kinds of opinions good bad or indifferent right and so I'm I'm excited about that and to talk some about the sport. I'm excited from being an Xfinity owner, just, you know, TV stuff is just right there. And then obviously, we've said it, you're Dale's boss.

Yes. And so I've already put you. Can anyone be Dale's boss? Yes. I've already put you on the pedestal because, see, they say that about me. Of course, they say that about Amy, his wife, too. But I said, you're the one that he listens to infinitely. Like what Sam says, Dale listens.

too. Is that true, Sam? Yes. I think it is. You're good. We try and do it the right way. Well, absolutely. Absolutely. So let's get us up to speed. Williams College graduate hockey captain, had no idea. And now president of NBC Sports, take us on a little journey there. How did that happen? Well, passion for sports was that all started as a kid. I was the child of two educators, lived on a school campus and I had the key to the hockey rink. I could go do anything I wanted at any time. So went off to college. In college, I played hockey and was trying to play baseball. When I switched from the hockey season to baseball, I threw my arm out. So I became the voice of Williams College baseball. And that's the start of the adventure in television. And so when I graduated from college,

I decided I wanted to chase this dream and being part of the television industry. And the first job was as a gofer, a runner, go for this, go for that for ABC Sports. And there was a picture on the front page of the USA Today of me holding an umbrella over Howard Coasell's head as he interviewed Pete Rose. And all my friends from Williams, this is the 83 World Series, we're going off to law school and business school or Goldman Sachs and all these fancy highfalutin companies. And I'm holding an umbrella for $35 a day. And I keep that picture in my office to this day just to remind people that you've got to be willing to do anything and do the hard work to get where you want to go in life.

And so from there, I eventually got a job at NBC Sports as the Olympic researcher for the 1988 Seoul Olympics. And since then, I've climbed up through the ranks and have been in the current job for the last 14 years as executive producer and president of the production. I mean, listen, I could spend the rest of the show

talking about Howard CoSell here, but we can't do that. I'll give you one Howard CoSell lesson. Give me all you want. Holding the umbrella over. his head. I looked down and realized I would never wear a toupee because it just was not something I needed to put on top of my head. That's what he did. There was a rug on there. Yeah. I always heard he was sort of hard to deal with. Is that fair to say? I mean, did you deal with him enough? I mean,

like, not enough. And he had a nephew who went to Wesley in one of the rival schools that I went to one of the rival colleges. And so we connected on the Little Three level, which was Williams, Amherst and Wesley. And so he liked me. And so I got to do some things with CoSell. And he was a fascinating guy. He had that great voice. And that made great television. Right there. That man. Oh, that's good. You do a good Howard CoSle. Right. What was your major in college? How was a history major? Okay. You know what? A lot of people would not understand that there's a connection there actually with what you do now. Most people, myself included, I mean, like I was a journalism major. And I still apply that to a lot of stuff that we do today. But you are basically documenting

history, aren't you? Yeah, and you're telling stories. And you're telling stories. And I think the ultimate thing in college is to learn how to learn and learn how to adapt to situations. I mean, when they asked me to do NASCAR back in 2000, I was a sticking ball guy. I knew nothing about the sport, but I went into it and studied and tried to figure out how can I get people like me to fall in love with a sport that obviously has an incredibly passionate fan base. And so I use that approach and along the way I fell in love with it. And it became a passion of mine is to tell stories in NASCAR and get to know the drivers, the sport, the leadership, and execute and try and bring a broader audience into the tent. I've always told my children that what you just said about college, you know, like in school

in general, like I love good grades. Don't get me wrong. You know, I want to see all A's. But that responsibility, that reliability, that accountability, that problem solving, analytical, all those things are so much more important because, you know, obviously if you're going to be a surgeon or something, I want you to go and, you know, really know how to be a surgeon. And get age. And be really good at it. But, you know, in general, I think, you know, the jobs that we are all in, that's what it's about, right?

I mean, there's some knowledge-based information, but you go about it and you learn about what you're getting involved in and how it works and all that. And you apply those types of character traits to what we're doing, right? So I love that. I love that you said that. Love it. And it's relationships too, right? Yeah.

You learn how to, in the college, you're in the same age group for a four-year period of your life. And that's when you learn how to deal with people and create relationships and those relationships carry for a lifetime. But how to make a friendship, make a partnership, all those things come out. And if you're lucky enough to be on a sports team, you know, as a captain, I learned how to lead people and make people accountable in the way that they respected and not felt like you were. dictating. Yes. Being a researcher for the Seoul Olympics in 1988 feels like a huge break, a big jump, was it? It was a remarkable experience. The other researcher was a guy named Jeff Zucker. And Jeff went on into the news side of it, ended up executive producer of the Today Show, became the chairman of all of NBC Universal for a period of time, then went off and ran CNN for

a while. So anytime I think my career's gone, okay, look at what Zucker did, he did a little more than I did. But we were the two Olympic researchers, and it's a long legacy of people who've had great careers launched out of their researcher job. The very first Olympic researcher was Dick Ebersoll. Wow. Researcher seems to be the portal into skyrocketing in your career. Is that right? It's been a good list to them. Because when I was doing it, there's no internet.

And you're traveling the world, and they just come up with laptop computers. This was back in 86 when I started. And I traveled the world to sporting events, to interview athletes, and write it. about them and tell their stories and put them in these eight research volumes that the announcers all read to have the background to tell stories about the athletes. And so I went to New Delhi, India, to the world table tennis championships. And I'm going, what the heck am I doing here? Table tennis, but that was the first year in the Olympics.

And I'm off in India. And I got to know the Swedish and the Chinese teams very well, and they won all the medals. And somehow I had a connection to them. And it was two years of incredible relationship building and experiences traveling the world with an early-onset, early-era laptop. And that was it. Amazing. That's crazy.

That's right. Now, if Dale ever complains about going to the Olympics or anything, no kidding. He can't go to Sam. Sam has actually says, I'll see your trip and I'll raise you a table tennis championship or any of these things you've done. From India, right. So what's your current responsibilities in your role over these last 14 years?

It's changed dramatically once Comcast took us over. Comcast merged with NBCU or took over NBCU back in 2011-12. And during that time, we went from a weekend shop that did Olympics to 24-7 sports. And so I oversee the content side of the business for everything except the Olympics and golf. but from Sunday night football to the new Big Ten deal we have, to Notre Dame football, to NASCAR, IndyCar, IMSA, Supercross, motorcross, motor gp, I think that's our motorsports suite. That's a big one, yeah.

We got Premier League over in the United Kingdom. We got the French Open. We got the Tour de France. We've got horse racing, the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, the Breeders Cup, and the Royal Ascot, which starts this week. then you go to especially shows like the dog show, which is the Thanksgiving tradition now

where people walk to their dogs. So we're the dog show, and we have baseball. We have baseball deal that started a year ago, which is a lot of fun. And there are more and more. So I think I've hit just about everyone if I've missed something, I apologize.

So what's your team look like, like the number of people underneath you, but what's that next level team for you that manages this property and then kind of your role in that? So another aspect that I oversee is the digital side. So all our digital content. Essentially, I am the content side of the business, not the commerce side.

My job is to create content, execute the content, and I have a team that does the digital side, which is a lot of the peacock content, which goes from Dan Patrick to PFT with Mike Florio. We've got a fantasy football show with Matthew Barry. We've got brother from a nut. other, we've got a series of shows there. We also have three million YouTube subscribers to one channel, 550,000 YouTube subscribers for the motorsports, but for the primary sports, so Sunday night football.

Take that, for example. I work with the producer of that show, Rob Highland, and his, and then the football night in America, the studio show, that producer, plot out your budget, your talent, how you want to execute, what new elements you're going to bring to the show, how we're going to execute at high level, and then evolving the talent and making sure you've got the right people in the air to tell the stories like we did when we brought Dale on board in 2015. With that being said,

and so what is your role as it relates to like the media, the buying the rights for the sports properties, not in particular NASCAR, but just that role of digital content, where do you sit in that whole circle? So the commerce side of the business makes those, deals. They negotiate the deals. I'm involved in conversations because of, for example, in NASCAR. They all know that I'm passionate about it. I'm at the racetrack a lot. I'm helping evolve our

production team, training them, making sure we tell best in class stories, talking to the talent on a regular basis, making sure they improve every day, tell them what they did great, but also telling them what they need to improve on. So that's my side of the equation. And I have to worry about what it's going to cost to produce the race. In terms of the overall budget, yeah. That's the commerce guys. Those are the guys who have to figure out what is the value to our company to have Sunday night football. And do they come to you for that type of, for information or how, how does that work for them to sell something that you know works on the content side or doesn't? Well, they have all kinds of people who figure out whether the platforms it'll go on, the value to

that platform, the potential audience size, the potential sales size. So when you're negotiating for first time into a sport, you're going a little bit less information than you'd like, but once you've had a relationship like Sunday night football since 2006, we understand the value to the company, and they really know how to execute and make it work for all involved. Would the Big Ten deal have been one such thing where you guys, I mean, you've done college football and you've done Notre Dame forever, it seems. So if I'm hearing the process right, the commerce guys will go do the deal they come to you and say hey we've signed a big we've signed the big 10 as part of this landmark package is it landmark by the way did it feel landmarks yes it's a huge deal

it's a huge deal because it it actually replicates a little bit of the NFL model where you've got three broadcast partners across three distinct windows the noon with fox 3 30 with CBS and NBC in prime time but we obviously am engaged in the conversation what's it going to cost to produce if we get this big 10 deal? Give us a cost and we have three level of games, A, B, and C, based on what we project as an audience size. You know, a really big game, we will put, you know, prime time and put more resources time behind it. Like we've got Ohio State Notre Dame. That game's going to have all the bells and whistles you can imagine.

A smaller game that might not have the same cost level. So you have to figure out how that's all going to work. They put that in the overall bid model and what it's going to cost to execute for the season. Michigan and Notre Dame or Ohio State Notre Dame or Ohio State Michigan, those aren't big gambles. You know they're going to be huge. Even if they don't win a game leading up to it, that's going to be a big number. But how much do you feel the gamble in having to pick games? And I'm assuming y'all sort of do it like a draft, right, with the other networks?

Yeah. So like how, what's your thought? process on picking the games when nobody's played a game. They haven't even had fall camp yet. Nobody really knows exactly what they're going to do. Nobody's gone through injuries. What do you do? And add to that, the transfer portal. The transfer port. Where a team can add, USC last year, added 31 players and became a hot shot team. So you can change fortunes of a franchise overnight. And we've got a new coach in Nebraska, a new coach in Wisconsin. So you know those two programs in theory are going to be elevated because they're really strong coaches that they hired.

So the draft is a process, you know, Fox, CBS, and NBC. And we have some people in the department and the programming side. One guy, young guy in particular, Nick Casanova, who studies his tail off and looks at all the probabilities and where it should rank in terms of what game has the most value to broadcast. And then we build it together. And then we pick games that need to be on Peacock versus NBC. And sometimes you might have a better game on Peacock than NBC to drive,

subscriptions. So it's a whole process of figuring out what the right game is the right time. Yeah. That job? No. I was just sitting here thinking about, well, how do you know about all those coaches and how do you know about this? And I'm not that. I don't pay attention to as many sports as I could or should. But so I don't know a lot. You're so good at the different teams and all that good stuff. But it sounds to me, it's the researcher. Going back to the Olympics, the researchers are the ones that are the premium jobs at NBC sports. Exactly. I know Dale relies heavily on the researcher in NASCAR, so he's picking up and talking about those guys all the time. You're talking about, you know, Peacock and Network TV, Linear TV.

I know in NASCAR, it seems like you and the Fox team work very close together because you obviously want a successful sport, even though they're on two different networks. Talk about that just in general between the networks, the streaming platforms, you know, how that's changed, where that's headed, all that, those kinds of things. So fascinating. We really root for Fox. And as you know, last year, we even let Junior do a race in Talladega with them because their success is our success.

We want them to have a great first half and they want us to have a great second half because we lead them into the 500. And that's unique. For the NFL, we all want to be the best and we want to, we know that all the networks are doing a great job, but it's more competitive than NASCAR. NASCAR truly is equal footing between the two networks. It's kind of like that big family aspect we talk about, right? And that's part of what NASCAR is.

Yeah, it's your sport. It's this sport. Yes. And so we lean into that. And then you talk about the evolution of TV, you know, it started out as broadcast only. Then cable came in. Cable got up to almost 100 million homes. And those 100 million homes were spending in the cable bundle a lot of money.

And if you were getting ESPN and there was in, 99 million homes, it was about $8 a home. So what it used to be, and what it still is, but the 99 million homes have gone down to about 70 million homes now, so it's the numbers have lowered. But every home in America that had the cable bundle was paying for ESPN and USA and TNT. And what happened was it allowed different content plays to take place. So if you're a lifestyle fan, well, you're going to have your Bravo. If you're a sports fan, and you're going to have ESPN on there or FS1 or when we had at NBCSN. But as this ecosystem kept shrinking, the money is not the same

because people were leaving the ecosystem and going a la carte, cutting the cable cord, and picking up off of different systems of delivery. And that's where streaming comes in. Yeah. And, you know, you think about it, the $5 a month you pay for Peacock or less if you get a good deal, because there are oftentimes we run specials where you get it for $1.99 a month,

you're paying a lot less than you are paying for even one channel on cable. You know, the ESPN is $8 or $9 per home for just ESPN primary. And so that's the dramatic difference. Except when you have 10 to 15 to 20 of those payments a month. But there's going to be a consolidation of some kind as these streaming services come together. And it's just goes back. to history that we talked about earlier. One of the books I read was Anademy of a Revolution.

And what happens in a revolution, the Russian Revolution, the French Revolution, is the world gets turned upside down. Chaos ensues. And you end up back to kind of what you were doing before, but just modified. And that's all we're doing right now, which is modifying how people consume. Yeah. And it's interesting. Yeah. And I'm curious how it's going to land, because as you were talking about cable, you know, I remember the times of certain, you know, networks or however you call them, you know, they would use their leverage and not be on, you know, a certain direct TV or dish or whomever, right? That, obviously, that's changing, right, with the streaming.

You're having to introduce your own streaming concept for the network. And I wonder where that leverage is going, you know, how that's shifting and changing as you do your business and how to do business. One of the things we've noticed is that for the Premier League, for example, it used to be on NBCSN and then we started a streaming service just for soccer, soccer plus. It was called, and then we switched over to Peacock. And the cable games are in USA now. The games on Peacock now are getting the same numbers of viewers as they did on NBCSN.

Because you've got a dedicated audience that knows where to find the Premier League, and they love it, and they want to consume it, and that's where they find it. So we now have it on Peacock, NBC, and USA. And I look at the Peacock combination with NBC is NBC is like the Barker Channel. It reminds everyone and tells everyone where it is. So you hit the biggest possible audience and then drive them over to Peacock. And on a lot of the product, it airs simultaneously on NBC and Peacock. So Sunday Night Football, we're getting more and more viewers on Peacock than we did on NBC.

but the total number is higher. And it's just a different way people are consuming. And your audience is younger on streamers. Where does this end then? Or not end, but where is this going? Is it going not just, I'm not just talking to NBC. I'm talking about mass market general stuff. It sounds to me like you're saying that with the cable bundles,

consumers and people like myself are just, we're paying for stuff that we don't even watch because we're paying basically every network for, you know, to cover their cost. And I may not watch Bravo. I may say all this stuff. You should. You should.

I'm ashamed of. Well, I bet. Real housewife is great stuff. Below deck. Below deck. Come on. Let's go. Bill Jr.

and Amy cover me on that one. Okay. Thank you. They spend more time on that than I do. But the fact is, is that you spend all that stuff. So then it becomes a la carte where you can go pick and choose streaming platforms. But is it fair to say that the mass market in general is still a little confused? or unclear on where to find things and how that stuff works.

Are we in this period in which we're still trying to figure out the education process? Yeah, it's that part of the revolution where there's a little bit of chaos. Yeah. But we're trying to bring clarity to it, particularly when you have a broadcast network like NBC that has the number one show on television with Sunday Night Football. You can talk to a lot of people in one place and tell them the value. you a peacock and drive audience to where you need them or want them to go and find out that ultimately they're getting a great opportunity to consume a ton of great content for a less than a

cup of coffee. Yeah. And what you're saying is not any difference. I mean, I like that revolution example because what you're saying is no different than when TVs were introduced, right? I was thinking about your question, the generational aspect of it. The older generation probably, you know, obviously has a harder time on the streaming aspect of it.

I know when we were trying to teach our mom to use her phone and do this, that, and the other right. And then you've got the streaming aspect of things for the young because they've got their kids everywhere. I mean, their phones and their iPads and all that. But the same thing happened when you introduce TVs and then when you introduce cable. And then, you know, like those changes and challenges in that revolution's always happened. I think that's just important for people to realize and understand because people think that this is some new concept. This new change. Oh, my gosh, they're blowing the world up.

You know, streaming's coming. Social media, da-da-da. But that's happened in our life as different things were introduced to people that didn't. I tell our team that we're creating content and we don't need to worry about where it's being consumed. Our job is to create great content. So tell a great story, make people care, and engage that audience. And that audience, the commerce guys are going to decide whether it's on Peacock or USA or NBC. They can figure that out.

Or the newest thing, right? We need to do the best possible job telling that story, building stars, making it. people care, making sure they come back and watch again. You know, to complicate it even more and to make Sam's job even more fun here, is that, you know, you've got like Xfinity team owners, for instance, that where the races are broadcast matter a great deal in your business model. Absolutely. I'm not saying the business model is the best business model that just cashes checks all the time.

No, no. Racing is a difficult business model for sure. But then you do have a stake in this game. if it's on this network, if it's on NBC primary, we know more eyeballs, right? If it's on another channel, then you can take that number. And then if it gets on streaming right now, even in this revolution, that still matters to you. And so I'm sure Sam has to hear it from everyone, right? I mean, it's not just, we say fans, which we are fans, but then also the stakeholders in sports.

and in every sport. I'm sure the NFL teams have something to say. I'm sure everybody wants the network that has the most eyeballs now. Give me it now, right? Yes, but the fascinating part is they call it a partnership, but we're spending the money to put your product on the air. So shouldn't you get to say so where it goes? That's the business model.

And that's why it's a complicated model. Right, right. And so you have to figure out how it works for everyone. and it is a partnership in that all sides want the most eyeballs of possible. But we also have to cover the cost of that. And how do you find the best way to create commerce that's going to create the revenue streams that can make it palatable for all involved? For a long-term plan, too, a long-term strategy.

You know, a lot of people say to me, you know, these other podcasts would work if Jail Jr.'s on all of them. And I'm like, of course it would. I know the way to quick numbers, right, and big numbers. But Dale Jr. also fly from here if we start using him in all those ways. If we start utilizing him that way, it's not a long-term strategy. And that's essentially what I'm hearing you say. You're trying to build some stuff.

You're trying to maneuver in a way that keeps up with the times and the consumer habits. And therefore, there's value in putting them on there now, even if you know that it's not the biggest number that we'll get on this Sunday or anything like that. And the question comes down to do is when does that cable universe shrink to the point where it no longer has the same value to the consumer? When it gets below 60 million, 50 million? When does that happen? And when's the tipping point where you're better off going direct to consumer? And the cable world is dramatically different. Explain that direct-to-consumer.

Streaming. Just streaming. Streaming. Streaming is direct-to-consumer. Because you don't have, you're not going through a middle person. Middleman. That's right. Well, goodness.

All right. so then NASCAR. Yeah. You guys, I love Sam, and I want you to explain it. What is your philosophy on just broadcasting a race? What is your philosophy on broadcasting any live event? Well, NASCAR, we have a rule. There might be boring races, but no boring telecasts.

As we know, there are occasional races where they get strung out. But there's always something happening. If you're at the racetrack, you can find something to look at and enjoy and say, hey, that battle for fifth, that battle for 10th. I mean, unlike a stick and ball sport in football, if you've got the football on the screen, 95% of time, that's where the action is. And in NASCAR, Mike Davis is leading by five seconds.

He might have a pretty car and he's a good-looking dude, but we don't need to watch him leading the race by five seconds. We've got to go back and find where the action is. And that's the great part, and that's the key to our theory, is it might be a boring race, but never boring telecast. So engage, engage, engage, and find where to go. And that's the job of the production team to figure out where the action is and what's going to engage the audience the best.

How hard do you critique them after every race? Start of the year, go a little harder, and then I slow it down because we learn the lessons and figure it out. You know, we did the 24 hours of Daytona, and they came on the air, and I was immediately very disappointed, how we came on the air because we preached to the converted. We were so inside IMSA that in no way did we open the door to the broad audience.

And this first portion was on NBC. So anyone happened to be in the channel at that time felt like they were going to an inside club that they weren't welcome. They didn't know the password. They didn't know the code. So we made an instant change and recalibrated how we're going to do it.

The next time we reset on NBC, big and broad, why? told you why, engage you with the personalities, the stories, and it's more than a car race. It's an event that changes lives. And once we got people there, so that evolution of what your job is, your job is to open the tent, open the doors, get people in, and then get them that they can't leave. Talk a little bit about determining on our talent, the size of the booth. You know, obviously you guys have played around with up to four people in the booth. and really their roles because I never really as a fan coming up through the sport until we

started working with you guys and I understood some of the terms a little more of play by play of color analysts of you know commentator whatever those different things are talk a little bit about that and you know how that makes up the booth and how that makes up the broadcast well what we started we looked for the three-man group the traditional grouping and we hired the driver in Burton we hired the crew chief in LaTart and and Rick Allen is the play-by-play. And we had a great group. They were doing an awesome job,

and then all of a sudden I come meet with you, Kelly, and say this guy used to drive the eight car and now the 88 car might want to step out of it. What would you have for? And you can't say no to the opportunity to add, you know, a Hall of Famer who is the most recognizable star in the sport to your team. And so we wanted to figure out how to make it work and add him in.

And one of the things Dale said is, I don't want to mess up Jeff Burton's job because Jeff Burton's great at what he does. And that made me say we have to have him because he's going to be a great teammate. He's not going to be the star system where I'm going to come in. I want these guys out of the way. I want to do my thing. I want to focus on me. A great teammate from the minute we had that conversation.

I knew we had to make it work. And then the question was, once it started, how do we do it? And we did the two booths, the driver booth. and then Rick and Steve would be together sometimes, then Junior and Steve would be together, and we just started mixing and matching. And then we did radio style when we're on the road courses, which we're going to do in Chicago this week.

So that kind of strategy makes a difference. And it changes. When you do 20 consecutive weeks, even the fans and the people on the air need new challenges. Just like we asked Dale to do play-by-play a couple of times a year. And he loves doing it, but he also loves being the analyst. So I think that balance and new challenges which stretch people.

And sometimes you move Steve down to the pit box so that he's really crew chiefing from down low from where he used to see the race all along with cars just doing this all day. But what would be your preference? Listen, it sounds to me like Dale Jr. came in and forced you to go, let's just call it a revolution. How about that? Yeah.

But the fact is, is that if you had your way, what is the best, what is the setup that, in your experience, produces the best successful broadcast? I think it depends on the racetrack. Unlike a sport like football, where you kind of know the way the game's going to go. Football is best with a two-person booth and a great sideline reporter. Baseball, we're doing that now with Peacock, and we have. have a permanent play-by-play guy. And we do a national broadcast,

so it's two different teams every game. So we don't want to have the same announcers. We hire an analyst from each team. So yesterday we had Joe Gerardy, and we had Jim Palmer, Palmer for the Orioles, Gerardi for the Cubs. Oh, for the Cubs?

Oh, I got you. Cubs got. The whole strategy was to take you inside both locker rooms to tell you what's going to the clubhouses for those two teams. So that's a different approach. On the NASCAR side, a street course, a road course, has a different feel. And so we position them around the track, and we call it radio style. And that allows that energy that is a little bit different on the road and street course

to execute at a higher level. And then in terms of the booth, there are some cracks that are really heavy on strategy. And when that happens, we've got to make sure we put Lattart in a position to really talk us through. how that race needs to play out. There are other tracks like Talladega or Daytona, which is really a driver's track. And so you want to have Jeff and Jr.

banging heads over what they do and strategy and executing the race. So each track, you have to step back and look at. And we're very fortunate to have Jeff Benke, who oversees the NASCAR product forward and the motorsports overall for us. And Jeff is a total geek for it, but he is constantly looking

ways to make sure we are executing at a high level and he'll hit me all the time with crazy new ideas and the radio style is one of his ideas and he just said i really want to try this and they finally said all right you've asked me for too long we're going to try it and if it sucks shame on you if it's great you're the hero and he's the hero how will you guys approach chicago street course it is a big event for naskar it's really important to the to the leadership of naskar to make this a success We've been promoting it for a long time if you watch the U.S. Open. A lot of content, a lot of promotion for it. We've had multiple surveys to make sure it works.

We know where the cameras need to be. But again, it'll change because when the real cars get out there versus people driving in their simulators, it's going to be a very different endeavor than what we're seeing now in kind of this practice fantasy world. So how long have you been setting up for Chicago as far as knowing where those cameras are going to go in the street race? because this has obviously been a big deal for NASCAR to figure this out.

I'm sure on your end it's been equally the same. We've been involved in all the surveys, all the planning. Our director, Sean Owens, who's a remarkable young director who really sees air. He sees where the cars are going. I'm in the truck one day and he says, hey, he's got a right weirs going down. I said, one lap later, he's in the wall. I'm going, okay, what's up for this guy? So Sean and Renee, our producer, have gone there and really looked at how

the race might play out and obviously engage Steve LaTart and Jr. and Jeff on Carmen, what they see and what might happen and where the passing zones will be. And we'll, you know, we'll have multiple meetings to go through what will happen. And then you'll look at the practices and see how the cars behave on this. Some of our listeners might not know this, but our friends at Lionel Racing, the official diecast of NASCAR, have an entire line of cars and haulers that you can find on the toy aisle at a store near you. Lionel's NASCAR Authentics Cars and Hollers can be found at all your local stores like Walmart, Target, Myers, and Lionel releases new cars in this line all the time.

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Start that collection now or add to the one you've already got. So curious, you talked about the U.S. Open and seeing that advertisement at all. You used Dale in a lot of events outside of his wheelhouse. So he goes to the Kentucky Derby. He goes to the Indy 500. He goes to the Olympics. I don't watch enough other sports, so I don't know if you do that with some of your other talent into other sports. But I'm curious of the philosophy for that.

What are you trying to achieve what that looks like? It's a unique situation. A couple of times we don't cross over, but this is really the big one that we've leaned into. And when we made the proposal to Junior, we had a list of things that we wanted to do. We wanted to go be on motorsports because we want him to take the fans

that get to know him at the Kentucky Derby or at the Olympics and say, hey, that guy's pretty cool. I want to hang with him. Oh, he's the NASCAR guy. I want to watch a race and hang out with Junior for three hours during a race. And that's the strategy, is to get him.

And also, Junior wants to be more than just a race guy. I mean, he wants to try some play by play. He wants to see what it's like to be a broadcaster. He does this, right? And he has grown from a shy guy, and you know it. You have to chaperone him and push him forward to being the most popular guy in the sport and to someone who communicates an incredibly welcoming level. He doesn't put up barriers. He engages you at such a plain way. And it's real. It's authentic. And I remember, you know, we're talking to him about, he says, I want to learn how to be a broadcaster. I'm not going to even attend to try his accent. But he says, I want to learn how to be a broadcaster. I want to learn all the lessons that I need

to be great. And I said, the only lesson you need to learn is to be Dale Jr. The minute you're not Dale Jr., and you become a broadcaster, we're wasting our money. We shouldn't hire you. We want you to be Dale Jr. We need to bring your authentic self to the TV and whatever you do. And do. Yeah, we'll teach you how to, when to talk to the camera, when to talk to your coworkers, and how to get to commercial and do the little things. But most importantly, is never lose you, because that's what the fans are in love with, and you see things in a really unique way, and you describe things in a great way. So let's let that happen. Give us an example of the best in your favorite Dale Jr. moment on

broadcast during a live event. During a live event, I'll go back to the Kentucky. Derby, I just, I think the way he engaged in the infield and felt comfortable with the crazies going around him, it was his very first NASCAR race when he starts going slide job, slide job. That's what I was thinking of. Immediately go, damn, the guy's got it. We thought he probably had it, but that's go, okay, this is a home run. This guy's going to make it happen. And the checkered flag was there. And he knew how to just, his passion came through. You know, I remember when we took him skajoring and all the different things for the Super Bowl. For the Super Bowl.

That's right. And those weird outdoor events and we were playing broomball or whatever it was. And all those things that he had fun with and laughed with and engaged with and it wasn't the superstar driver who was the man of steel stepping into his race car

ready to go win another race. It's a guy who is vulnerable, having fun, laughing and himself and trying to figure it all out. Are you looking, though, at a specific analytic or something to see if that was successful, if using that is doing what you hoped to do? Or is it just more about just getting Dale Jr. reps and getting him comfortable and maybe getting him comfortable by being uncomfortable? Yeah, I think you've said it right, getting uncomfortable because that's how you get better. If you're just in the comfort zone,

I think one of the big risks in a 20-week run of races is time to make the donuts where people come back and rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. You've got to do more than that. And, and, and, that's why the different styles of booths make a difference. Because it is different. You've got to think a little bit differently. You've got to be a little bit uncomfortable to be outside one of these turns at Watkins Glen. All of a sudden, it's not the same as the comfort of the booth. We have a controlled environment, and you got your stat guy feeding you what you need,

and you got all your monitors. Instead, you're in the elements, and it might rain or it might get cold, or it might do something to you, and you've got to be ready. I bet that was really different during COVID when you guys were doing the broadcasting from different places and not always at the track or whatnot. That had to be a really crazy time

of pushing that out there. It was another revolution because we started producing that our TV trucks were at Charlotte Motor Speedway and the cameras were at whatever race we were doing that weekend. And the announcers would call it

from the booth at Charlotte and so we're trying to keep people off the road in the safe environment as possible. and it worked. It also taught us that we didn't have to have the control room at the racetrack. We're doing it this year and we're doing it next year, but long term, whoever is in this NASCAR world is going to look at having the control room back home for the Big Ten. We're going to have two games that have the TV trucks, the big mobile units that'll go to the football stadium.

One game a weekend will be produced from a control room back in Stanford, Connecticut. The talent will be there. The cameras obviously will be there. But the producer, the director, all the people who execute the show, they're in Stanford, Connecticut. And that's kind of the evolution. And you realize you can do that efficiently. Because of COVID? It would have happened because.

Oh, it would have? Yeah, but you think of the. It probably happened faster, just like remote working, Zoom, so and so forth, right? Now we can pretty much hold a meeting anywhere. You were forced to do it. You realized, oh, this works, right? Yeah. And economies of scale.

you want to spend money on things that touch the on-air product. And so flying a producer and director in that, you know, 30 or 40 people that would be in the control area to the racetrack, putting them in hotels, feeding them, that's a lot of money. And if you don't have to do that, if they just have to jump in their car, drive into the Stanford office where they normally work and execute the show, we take all that money off the books, and maybe that allows us to have a special camera or a drone, whatever it is, We now have money that can touch the product and not touch the feeding and caring of the animals. Yeah, and I can imagine that that's probably, I mean, that's probably a great benefit for them from a working standpoint, too, because people want to be home more. I mean, there's a lot of people that like to go on the road and travel, but there's a lot of people that want to do that same job, but, you know, they'll be in their own beds at night or being more time with their families and stuff like that. Yeah, it'll certainly help most families. I know that my wife during COVID finally said, can you please go somewhere?

Enough of you around the house. So how has, you know, we've spent some time here just with your workforce. You know, COVID changed a lot of things for the workforce, how we employ people, you know, what perks they like, so on and so forth. Then just getting talent. I mean, it seems like people have just decided they don't want to, you know, maybe work as hard, whether that means the travel or whatever that is. How has that been in your industry? It's definitely changed. I think the work from home has become the new normal,

but you need more and more people in the office. And you've got to get back to it. On the production side, the team that I work with, we have to be there. Well, you have to be collaborative and brainstorming. That's the same thing here. But you also have to touch the product. I mean, you have to be in the control.

So that the work from home doesn't really impact the production team. There are 280 people kind of in my side of the business that roll up to me. And they pretty much have to be there. If you're building graphics, if you're doing research, if you're a director, a producer, an associate director, a production assistant, there's a need to be in the building or be at the venue. And I do think being able to drive home at night has made people happier than having to jump on a plane and airports are no fun to go through. Yeah, we could never figure out how to take the race cars and move them to people's garages and have the same workload. Didn't work.

Yeah, just get figured out. Okay. So Sam, and you're going to answer this honestly because I know you, you're an honest man. If you who is looking for a moment and looking for an opportunity here to entertain, if you had somebody that was interviewing the president of NBC Sports and the executive producer of NBC Sports that also oversaw NASCAR, would you be upset with them if they didn't ask about the current NASCAR TV negotiations? I think that would be a question that would probably be asked. Yeah, the answer would be the question.

If they didn't answer it, if they didn't ask it, would you be upset? It would look like they were preconditions in an interview. We don't like preconditions on interviews. Exactly. So, like, I must ask then if you have anything you want to give us, like drop us some news or whatever. NASCAR, the current deal, the broadcast media rights deal is going to expire after next year. There's ongoing negotiations. You're Sam Flood.

And I'm the content guy. Oh, come on. We're the commerce guys that make those decisions. We've been through this. And you know how much I love NASCAR. I hope we get it back. There you go. You'll give us that.

I think everyone in our shop wants it back. You know, it's a business decision, and the commerce guys will make the business decision, and the content guys will kick ass and put great television in the air. So here's another commerce question. We talked in the beginning about fans. And so here are some of the things that I see or hear about start times, you know why do we pick these certain start times we went to the we went once to where they were all the same

then we went all over the place in the sport delays commercials what do you hear about from or and what do you pay attention to I guess and then talk to the fan just about that so that maybe they understand a little more on how that all works start times vary based on the ability to bring the biggest audience possible and so a later start time there were more huts more homes using televisions. So a little bit later is going to help you. And we saw it back in our first NASCAR deal, 01 to 06, the later we started them, the ratings would go up.

And so that is a common thread in how you push ratings. And are you also looking at start times from the standpoint of other sports and what they're doing? Yes. Okay, got it. I mean, an IndyCar has looked at the NASCAR schedule and vice versa and figure out how they can coexistence. We have all of IndyCar. So there's a way to make it. so you're not competing head to head,

and we don't want to be in the same windows. It doesn't make a lot of sense. There's a finite number of motorsports fans. So let's give them the opportunity to watch as much as they can. Our super cross-cross deal. That group, we should get into NASCAR tent, and we're cross-pollinating there. Steve LaTart goes to a super cross-race.

Why? To get that audience to come over here. Ricky Carmichael shows up on a NASCAR race. All we want to do is just slide audience around and make sure they know if you love things that go fast, and people who are nuts enough to make them go fast, watching it, get them in there. And that's the strategy. Okay, what about commercials?

It's one that everybody likes to complain about. How do you commerce guys? Well, you know, NASCAR is asked for a certain amount of money for their rights fee. So if we don't have to pay a rights fee, we won't have to do commercials. So it's the NASCAR's fault. It's a business. And, you know, we've got to make our business side work. and if they want a certain amount of money, rightfully so,

they've got a great product. We have to figure out a way to make it work financially, and commercials are part of that. And the sponsors are important to the sport. There's no sport that sponsors are more important to than NASCAR. Absolutely. And I think those synergies go so well, and we've got to work together to make it even better.

And part of that is, you know, I think the race teams, if they can partner with NBC, if they have sponsor X in the country, car, is there a way to incorporate in the telecast a little bit differently so that it feels like a part of the show versus a sidebar of the show? I think that's really important and how we work as one industry to help the sponsors and to help push those products forward and become one team. What about weather and delays? Because I know that how do you... It sucks. Yeah, I know. How do you figure that out? Because like if you know, like, weather's going to like ruin, like this week, I don't

know if y'all know around here, but we're going to get flooded. Like, there's a ton of rain coming in here. And if you knew, you know, if Charlotte was happening this weekend, do you look at that way in advance or do you just go, and this could be for other sports properties too? You know, you just look at it in the weekend and what you're trying to figure out to do. And how does that change things for you from a weather perspective, just in commercials? Well, motorsports is really the only one. NASCAR in particular is the only one that just don't run in the rain unless it's a road course.

And even then, it's not necessarily ideal. And it's frustrating because it takes so long to dry these tracks and there has to be a better way. And, you know, I always thought if they can pull a tarp out on a baseball field, is there a way to pull a tarp around a racetrack? They've looked at everything. And they're, you know, can you have tarps that roll down from the safer barriers? Are there things that can be done differently? And NASCAR looks at all of this. They're great at the technology and trying to figure things out.

But unfortunately, nothing's been done yet. And the drying process, we throw out 50 Air Titans, and they're all blowing away all over the place. And it still takes forever, and it's beyond frustrating. And then you lose the audience. And then when you run the race on Monday. At 11 o'clock. And it costs teams money. It costs broadcasters money.

Everybody. It costs eyeballs. The people who bought commercials don't get the same eyeballs. It's a lose, lose, lose, lose. What happens then? Do you have to, in terms of the advertisers? Do you owe make goods in those cases? I mean, like, how do you let them...

Well, you have a season long... Got it. Bucket that you're supplying. So you're going to make good down the road? You're going to get there. Most advertisers across all 20 races on our season, the Xfinity side or the Cup side. Yeah.

I'm going to be able to tie this, I think, if I'm creative enough, I can tie this back into the TV rights. We'll see. From a commercial standpoint, I was also wanting to ask you, not specific about the current, negotiation, but if Sam Flood had his way about races, races, you know, you guys clearly have

the back half of the year. I'm always curious on what races you find to be the most valuable and what you would love NBC to do, even if you currently don't do it. The easy one to say is I'd love to split the Daytona 500, which we did from 2001 to 2006. The three of the high, the three highest rated, two of the three highest rated Daytona 500s happened on NBC. back in, I believe it was 02 and 06. You mean split, just swap ears. Yeah, alternate years. Got it.

The 0-1 to 06, Fox at odds, we had evens. And 02 and 06, 2 highest rate. And 04 was pretty high. Some guy in the 8 car, I think, won, 04. He did okay. He did okay. Oh, yeah, I think I remember that. Yeah.

I think that brought a decent number, too. So. How does the championship weekend do? It does well, but, you know, you're up against the NFL. Yeah. And the NFL is the grand Puba. It's the greatest. spectacle in television. It's the number

one show in television. The Super Bowl is a national holiday even though it's not. It consumes the eyeballs at a crazy level. And they've built this product into something that's unbeatable. And so it's hard to go up against it. I just didn't know if that was a comparable, swappable

situation where you could swap off beginnings and ends of the series with the other partner. Commerce boys can look at that. Commerce boys and girls can look at that. but, you know, I know Fox loves having the 500. They do a great job with it. It's always a spectacular race,

and the Americana that flies through that racetrack is very cool. And NASCAR on Fox shows it brilliantly. So congrats to them. Oh, go ahead, Kelly. I think you were about it. Well, I was just curious. So the chairman of NBC Sports, Pete Bavaka, right? Bavacua.

Bavacua. Recently left his position. What does the future look like for Sam? What's that? What's the continuum ladder, you know, through NBC sports? Well, Pete has been a great guy to work with. He came in. Was he a researcher?

No. He's a lawyer that came through the sports world. He worked at the – he was the head of the PGA of America before he came to us. And he worked the USDA prior to that and CAA. And he is an incredible guy. Freak for Notre Dame. If you cut him, he would bleed green. And so he's going back to Notre Dame to be the athletic director.

his dream job, and we're so excited for him because it's what he's always wanted to be and wanted to do. He was a walk on on the football team there. And when you would watch a Notre Dame game with him, it was scary. You thought you were in danger. Because he was a man possessed. The whole thing was high drama. So now he gets to have even more drama in it because he's going to be the athletic director. And in terms of, you know, I work seven days a week. If they go to 14 days, if the week becomes 14 days, I could add more to their plate, but I don't plan to add any more to the plate

because I love what I do. I love being the content side. I love the team that we have. And we're going back to what we had prior to Pete, which is Mark Lazarus, who is one of the biggest supporters of NASCAR of all time. I used to report from Mark from 2011 until Pete came in in 18-19.

So I'm back to reporting to Mark. love working with him. We go back all the way to the 2001 NASCAR because he was the head of Turner Sports then. So Mark and I worked together back in 2001 for that period, and now we've been together since 2011. So he's going to oversee it for a while

and figure out how we want to recalibrate the division. I'm glad you said that. I didn't know Mark Lazarus was going to take that back over, but you know, the general reason why we would want to know that is because you always want a NASCAR advocate, right? because we know it all too well in sponsors. You know, when you get a new CMO or something like that and they don't care anything about NASCAR,

then all of a sudden things change. So how concerned were you? I mean, Pete was obviously a big NASCAR advocate, like you're a big NASCAR advocate. How important is it for you that whenever the Mark Lazarus, you know, the takeover is complete and you guys find somebody else, like how important is it that NASCAR gets somebody that, that has a voice.

Well, that person will report to Mark Lazarus, and Mark Lazarus loves NASCAR. There we go. I'm not concerned. You're not concerned. We're very, we're very fortunate. We have, there's a lot of love for NASCAR in our building. Yeah.

And we've got a great team that does it. The passion for it is real. And, you know, Mark likes to go to the racetrack. I like to go to the racetrack. That's not going to change. I love Mark because, you know, we really got to know him in South Korea. I did, at least. You've known him for a long time, but such a genuine guy.

And man, does he know the business, right? Does he know the business? And he's such a fan as well, like of sports. So I just feel like those things are important, even in the executive level. You have to be passionate with what you do. Yeah. And, you know, when going back to when they asked me to do NASCAR, I'm going, I'm not sure I could be passionate about this.

I'm a hockey playing, football-loving, baseball-loving guy. And then you get around the sport and you get to meet the people and go, This is the coolest thing going. Yeah. The one bad thing that happened to me in NASCAR, though, was first year in NASCAR would go to Atlanta Motor Speedway. They're doing ride-alongs. And some guy named Jeff Burton gets me in the passenger seat next to him.

And as we're pulling off pit road, Burton looks to me and goes, this steering wheel is smaller than the one I usually hold, and these pedals are smaller. He hits the gas. We fly off into turn one, and I am just holding on for dear life, ran the three laps, and I vowed never to get in the passenger seat in the car with Jeff Burton again.

Yeah. But you have no problem putting other people in the cars, because you even have the car for that, the rides. He's still giving rides there, Sam. Yes, but it's different. Let me warn you, don't get in with Dale Jr. Not going to happen. Not going to happen. Because he does the same thing.

We had our ride-alongs. I think it was the year before last, and he took Taylor Moyer, one of our crew chiefs, and he got the Bristol Stripe all the way down. of the car. Wow. Really gave him a ride. Wanted to see how high you could get at Bristol. Amy got the treatment as well.

She did. And we rode, I mean, he just, he wants to put it out there for you. He's going to. That's right right. He takes it easy on our fans that do the ride along. It's a little bit easier. They still get an awesome ride, but. There's a couple Sam Flood things that I don't even know if you know or if it's that

big a deal, but things I love. One is, is it true that you still go to every event but watch it from the production truck. Like, you don't ever go up into a suite or something like that. Is that fair? So in NASCAR race, what I do is, when I get to the racetrack, you know, I go to the truck, check on everyone. I always walk pit road. My first year in NASCAR back in 01, I learned that the best thing I could do before a race to walk the length of pit road, get a feel in real space where everyone was pitting, but also reminding myself how big this event is and how many people are here in the stands and how our job is to bring the magic of this place to the audience.

So I always do my walk along pit road every morning of the race. I'll always start the show in the truck. And then after stage one, I'll go up and see everyone in NASCAR. I'll swing by the booth, stand behind Dale and company and watch them call some of the race, go into race control, swing over and see if the friends, you know, see Jim or Lisa or Ben, say hi to them, see Steve Phelps, and then go back to the truck for the end of the race. Did you also, didn't you direct the Super Bowl pre-produce? Produced.

You produced it, right. Yeah, I produced. The most recent one is what I'm doing. No, I oversaw it. I stopped producing after the one in Minnesota. So I lined producing, I became executive producer in 2010, was producing football night in America, and I was also producing hockey games. I kept doing that, stopped hockey in 15, stopped.

producing Football Night in America in 18. When we got NASCAR on 15, I started missing some football nights and some other producers who had produced that got a young guy named Matt Casey's, who's the current producer, he started producing it in my stead.

Where do you find good producers? And what makes a good producer? Curiosity, intellects, people who can see multiple stories and get off the train tracks. What you don't want is someone who's putting you on the train tracks and here's the plan we're doing this, this, this, this and this.

You want a person who's going to see the moment and lean into the moment. And that might take you off your script or your plan, but when moments happen, that's the magic that brings you back to sports. Yeah. And so I love people who just see a moment and just got to go. Got to lean into it. Throw the script out the window. There's no plan now.

We've got to make sure we tell this story. Yeah, it's kind of like interviewing. through my years of, you know, just doing stories on Dale or vice versa, whatever, you want to, the best storyteller from that aspect is not this, you know, and not just going down this, but leaning into the conversation, letting the conversation flow from, you know, one topic to the other of what you spoke about and so on and so forth. So that makes a lot of sense. Oh, I've got an example on that. Like when Dale went up to Stanford, Connecticut, and this was early on in the deal, I believe. And this probably was his first Stanford visit, at least as part of the NASCAR and NBC team. And they were doing NASCAR America from the studio there. And so Dale was on it.

And Dale was a nervous wreck. Nervous. And Steve, I believe, was there. Yeah, he was because I beat him in a putting competition. They got a green in the NBC Sports Complex there. But anyways, you know, it was not a great show. It was not a great show.

You know why we know that? Sam let them know it. He let them know it in a commercial break, as a matter of fact. I mean, this is live TV, and he let him know. This is a funeral. You guys are, I mean, this is not okay. I remember the back end of that. And then after the show, there was a big meeting, and Sam, you know, not like, you know, not like a dictator or anything, but he just very

coolly explained the expectations and the standards that he expects out of them. And it was all about creating moments. And there was nothing memorable about that broadcast. I remember that was the thing. It got better after that. Something memorable, but it wasn't what we wanted to remember. Right. It was after the broadcast. It was so memorable. But, and that's when Sam told them, like, you know, you're trying to create moments that they remember, that take away. You're not going to have, you know, a half hour of constant memory, but there could be one or two. There could be two or three. There could be two or you know, something like a handful of moments that you're trying to create. And that's what you focus on.

We've taken that and applied it across the board in Dirty Mo Media and Dale Jr. Download, all of these things. It's just try it like, let's go get people that are compelling and at least have moments that we can try to drill down to. And that all started with Sam from that day, a negative situation that honestly had a lot of positive influence. I call it a learning situation. There you know.

Not necessarily negative. It's interviewing. What you guys are doing now is you're listening. Yes. And too often people have the next. question planned and don't listen to the answer. And I always tell people it's the Hitler example. The person comes off the track and you say, was the race, but what you expected? Well, it was a weird race because last night I had dinner with Adolf Hitler and Hitler

and Hitler told me this, this, this and this. And what happened out of turn three? What was going on in turn three? No, this guy just had dinner without Hitler, the most evil person in the history of mankind. Got to respond to it. I so hear you. Oh my gosh. It's crazy. Listen, because the audience of home is screaming. What are you doing? Yes. Yes. All right. So I'm a little scared to ask question, but I'm going to ask it anyway because we can decide that you can decide to answer it or not or you can blame it on those commerce people. So Race Hub, very exciting, fantastic show for our sport, you know, on a weekly basis, on a nightly basis. Who, what, why, how does NBC has not had something similar? We had it. Yes. And we realize the resources. Yes. Yes.

and the cost associated were just preaching to the converted. And the value to us was different because we don't have a 24-7 sports cable channel. So the value to us, the value proposition changed. So we said, we want to keep our resources at the racetrack for executing during the season. And that was the decision. And when you're trying to balance costs, cost benefit. And it's as simple as that. even though I'm not the commerce guy, I get cost benefit.

I took Econ 101 my sophomore year in college, so I understand micro and macroeconomics to a degree. Well, and, you know, for the importance of our audience listening, because I think that the business of whatever we're talking about with our previous guest and so on, that ultimately everything we do has a business decision consequence, whatever it is. And you're certainly, you know, pleasing the first. fans is a business decision, right? But then to back up the other business decisions,

you can't please them at the expense of not having enough money to try to please them, right? And Motor Mouse, what we do on Peacock, it's become a digital play now, and that has value. I mean, the 3 million YouTube subscribers on sports, the 550,000 subscribers for the Motorsports channel on NBC, you can service that audience differently. It doesn't have to be, appointment television. So you know that race subs at a certain time. And that works great for FS1 because they're a linear channel. But now

we put out content that you as a motorsports fan can consume whenever you want. And that's what we do with motor mouse and that's how it works for us. And Jeff and the team do an excellent job, getting that out and our digital group knows how to get it consumed. Yeah. All right. And then

the other question, we still get this a little bit. I ask this almost and I like the story. The Lost Speedway story. If I have this right, you were not a fan of this at the beginning, not when we started doing it, but when the idea was presented to you because you, and rightly so, go, I'm trying to tell stories of life, not death. I'm trying to, successes, not failures. More importantly, do I want to have a series on a sport that's trying to find a fan base and trying to grow a fan base is saying,

well, here are all the speedways that have been shut down because people aren't going to the races anymore? Yeah, but there could be people that just like history that don't necessarily know NASCAR. As soon as Dale took me through the bigger plan and explained, the concept, if you just think of the concept, I want to do a bunch of stories of Speedways that no longer being used and are dead. And by the way, there are a lot less racetracks in America. There are less people going to the races for NASCAR right now. So let's talk more about why NASCAR doesn't have tracks to go to anymore. That doesn't sound really appealing, does it, if you're the people trying to grow a sport? So you're not, you're saying that Dale doesn't really have a place in the sales department for NBC sports.

But what he, but that, I just had the concept. I didn't have his boilerplate vision of it. And once he started talking to the vision, I said, okay, you had me, not at hello, but you had me in the second graph. That's right. And that's exactly what it was. I think it was, you were interested in doing a Dale Jr. series of some sort. Maybe it was to him and Amy, something like that. And Dale was like, no, this is the show I want to do. It's about abandoned racetracks. And you weren't a fan of it. But then, you weren't a fan of it. but then eventually you relented, and I think that you just answered the question of why. It was because you got the bigger picture. And most importantly is passion, the passion junior had for it.

Yeah. It meant a lot to him. And when he's all in, he's all in. Were you proud of what it became? Awesome. Really proud of it. It was a great show. The guys did a really good job making it engaging, inclusive, and you don't have to be a

motorsports fan to engage in the stories. Yeah. A lot of people ask us, you know, why? are not a season three. My answer to that is, look, I felt like it ran its course fine, just the way television series do, right? Like, you know, could we still go, we had tracks picked out for a third season, but the fact of the matter is, is that I wasn't really even sure a second season was ever in the works.

And so I think we should, I really think, and this is a great reminder to me, is that we should kind of relaunch it again. You want to? And the current, season one and season two, get people reengaged in those seasons because Peacock is grown, grown dramatically. For new eyeballs. For new eyeballs. And so if it's new to you, when they used to do it for repeats in the summertime on

network television, it's new to you because they always b-h about repeats. Well, these would be new to the people. The one thing I think is Lost Speedway's legacy for me, and that was that we got, and you're part of this, Sam, I don't think you know it, is that we were part of the programs that NBC slash Peacock bought to launch the streaming network, right? To launch Peacock. But then COVID hit. COVID hit right in the middle of production.

When I say hit, like literally we were still shooting racetracks, one of which was in San Francisco while that cruise ship couldn't even dock. Yeah. Remember this? Everybody on COVID had on the ship had COVID. So we couldn't get to San Francisco. And then as we now know, everything shut down. And we still had season or we still had racetracks or episodes of doing.

My point on that is I told our team, I'm like, I don't want to let Sam flood down. You know, I knew that all that went into the decision to even do, I thought it was a bit of a leap of faith by you. And one way or another, we were going to figure out a solution to that so that we could deliver to Peacock the series that they bought regardless of the situation. And I'm proud to say that we did that. And it worked. And it was a great series. Two seasons. That's where I always look back at Lost Speedways that going, you know, we had a pretty big obstacle,

and it was something, but it was also Sam's influence that had a lot to do with that. I can't thank you enough for coming in just to fly in here, to see us. And I know you got another small meeting and just a bit, I know, with maybe your own-our-talent team. Lots going on. And, yeah, we can't wait to see what evolves and happens and the fantastic stories that come out of the NBC broadcast this year. Well, I really appreciate the partnership with you guys. Dale's been a great ad to the team. Getting to know you has been a big bonus.

Mike, always interesting when you're around. Oh, come on now. Come on, I love work with you, Mike. Hey, Sam, I love work with you. Leave on this note. Yeah. Did you ever get in a hockey fight? I lost teeth.

But that was with a hockey stick. Oh, not a fight. All right. If you got in a fight in high school or college, you'd have to sit out the next game. So I didn't have to do that. So I did some bad things on the ice. that I'm not proud of that I wouldn't want to talk about.

But fighting was verboten. It's not the NHL where you can fight. We had to play by the rules to a degree. All right. All right. I know he's gotten a fight. Favorite NHL team.

Boston Bruins. Everything Boston. Like, you know, Pete Blakas, dream job is to go work for Notre Dame. That's you. I'd be the coach of the Boston Bruins. That would be the dream job. Behind the bench.

They'd win a Stanley Cup with me behind the bench, I promise you. All right. Well, thanks again. Hope everybody's enjoyed this episode of The Business of Motorsports on the Dell Jr. Download. Man, I'm really excited to have Ally help us bring the guest segment every week. It's one of my favorite parts of the download. We get to talk to so many different people in racing, outside of racing. But everybody that comes in here, I want them to have had a good time.

I want them to want to come back. I want them to feel like an ally to Dirty Mo Media. Thank you, Ally, for your continued support of the download and the entire dirtymoe media team. Check out dirtymoe media. Check out dirtymoe media on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.