RSS Feed
February 25th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda When most people think of tech-savvy social media users, they probably don’t picture fans of NASCAR. At this weekend’s Daytona 500, though, social media will play a central role in television coverage of the event.
Speed TV, which carries much of the Daytona 500 coverage and will broadcast Saturday’s final practice round, has imported its Social Garage to a live sporting event for the first time. The Social Garage began last year at as a digital dashboard on the network’s website to facilitate fan conversation with one another and broadcasters across Facebook and Twitter during coverage of an auto action. But for Daytona, the operation is taking physical form.
[More from Mashable: Pinsanity: How Sports Teams Are Winning on Pinterest]
It functions as an on-site social and communications headquarters of sorts at the race, said Laura Gainor of GMR Marketing, which helps with Speed’s social strategy. Inside the space, Speed’s social media team provides live updates, works on behind-the-scenes features and guides the online fan conversation. Any time a fan tweets with the hashtag #Daytona500, the message is streamed through the Social Garage, where producers and on-air talent at Daytona respond to questions and comments and converse with fans. And as top auto racing analyst Rutledge Wood interviews drivers at Daytona, he can see a feed of fan questions he can then ask on-air with an accompanying graphic to credit the Twitter sender.
SEE ALSO: Pinsanity: How Sports Teams Are Winning on Pinterest[More from Mashable: Discovery Channel Adds Pop-Up Tweets to ‘Gold Rush’ Show [EXCLUSIVE]]
“This is by far our strongest effort and the biggest dedication of resources by the network of integrating social media into what our producers and reporters are doing to provide our audience with a high level of interaction,” Erik Arneson, Speed’s vice president of media relations, said in an interview.
When the network debuted the physical manifestation of its previously-virtual Social Garage at another car auction last month, viewer reaction and conversation was so positive that implementing it at Daytona wasn’t a tough decision, Arneson said.
NASCAR as a sport has had a rocky last few years on TV. Ratings increased last year by almost 5% for all coverage, but that followed three consecutive years of decline.
But Arneson said Speed didn’t see the same hits as other channels who broadcast the sport and that, while the Social Garage is a bid “make the network more sticky,” it’s also part of a natural evolution. Before social media became dominant, Speed viewers were encouraged to interact with broadcasts online — for example, by having viewers guess the final selling price of cars at auction through the Speed TV website.
Nonetheless, building a physical social headquarters at Daytona represents a significant step for the network, and one that Arneson said will definitely be considered for future live racing broadcasts.
“When you do something like this on the level that we’re doing it for Daytona, you have to step back and see what worked and didn’t work, but I don’t see it going backward,” he said. “I think we crossed a major hurdle this year, and now with viewers there’s an expectation that there will be higher level of interaction.”
Image courtesy of Speed TV
This story originally published on Mashable here.
Related posts:
Views: 0
Posted in 
Tags: 
