TNT and the Daytona Telecast

During the TNT presentation of the Daytona Cup race, the Pepsi 400 (Did you hear that Pepsi is going away and Coke is taking over?), TNT will be unveiling its "wide-open" coverage, using a concept that mixes live racing action throughout the entire telecast while also appeasing advertisers without traditional full-screen commercials.

In other words, we get to see the race, no interruptions, but sometimes, we might have to tolerate a smaller screen while our favored advertisers get some screen time!

Ads, or as TNT calls it, "sponsor interaction with the show" means technologically as a broadcaster and for the fans is we get more racing action. They say if it's a successful endeavor we can see this every race they cover next year.

Instead of having graphics running at the top of the screen and then also at the bottom, TNT will only have a graphics area in the bottom quarter of the screen. It will not superimpose most of the graphics over the live action. Instead, that graphic area will feature the logo of a company sponsoring that portion of the telecast with the current running order streaming across the top part of the graphic area. (Hmm, sounds like we're going to be getting a 50%-er!!)

TNT will put a breakout box at times on the lower right corner of the screen, using it for interviews as well as commercials. When the breakout box isn't being used, other stats will be shown in the graphic area.

We can only hope this will work out well. This is going to be like the Indy 500 coverage, or at least, that's what sparked this idea into fruition, as far as this reporter can tell.

www.scenedaily.com