NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

In the second of what will be a series of columns, NHRA Vice President of Public Relations & Communications Terry Blount discusses the successes of NHRA's 2016 initiatives. This week, Blount takes an inside look at the new Wally Parks NHRA Studio located at NHRA Headquarters, in Glendora, Calif.

If you’ve taken a gander at NHRA.com the last couple of weeks, you’ve probably noticed that we have a shiny new toy we are proudly touting.

Our new Wally Parks NHRA Studio, which officially opened for business in August, is a state-of-the-art broadcast center that will enable us to produce up-to-the-minute content on NHRA breaking news, features, and weekly video segments to all our fans.

For the techno geeks out there, the new studio is as cool as it gets. It has all the bells and whistles for a broadcast studio in today’s video era.

We are going to make sure the studio gets plenty of use to keep our fans informed and entertained. Programming will include frequent interviews with drivers, crew chiefs, team owners and other prominent people in NHRA racing. These interviews will get immediate exposure on NHRA.com and sometimes be shown on the FOX broadcasts.

The studio is being used for live and pre-recorded programs. Skype broadcasts enable us to do interviews no matter where someone is on the globe.

This broadcast center also gives us the opportunity to support our NHRA member tracks with information on upcoming events they’re having across the country.

You’ll be seeing a lot of FOX broadcaster Amanda Busick, who is hosting many of the interviews from the studio, along with stat guru Lewis Bloom, our two West Coast reporters.

You also will see veteran motorsports reporter John Kernan, our Indianapolis bureau chief, breaking news on many of NHRA’s Indianapolis-based teams.

Rob Hedrick is our studio director and Brian Stoll is the studio producer. Both men are broadcast veterans with a world of experience.

It’s no exaggeration to say the Wally Parks NHRA Studio is top of the line. Let me toss a few particulars at you to prove the point:

• It’s a 2000-square foot complex with a soundproof stage and the latest technology, including robotic cameras and state-of-the-art Teleprompters.

• The studio has a large green screen that allows us to customize the environment to the story being covered.

• The entire facility is controlled by an automated system that allows us to get programs to air quickly to give our fans up-to-the-minute information.

• The studio has the “Talkshow” appliance, which allows for broadcast quality Skype conversations from around the world.

• The post-production side of the facility has eight editing bays connected to a central storage unit with more than 60 years of NHRA history on the storage platform.

As you probably can tell, we’re pretty proud of our new studio. And it’s just one of many improvements we’re implementing to enhance how we provide and distribute information to NHRA fans.

Coming next season, NHRA will have a new television production truck that will enable our broadcast team to present our telecasts with the latest graphic displays and audio capabilities. We even have a name for the new truck: Nitro!

We also are in the process of completely revamping NHRA.com to make information about drivers and teams more accessible and much more detailed than ever before in our history. The new design will debut in early 2017.

It’s all part of our plan to make NHRA bigger and better than ever before. We mean what we say about Shifting Gears into a New Era for the Fastest Growing Motorsport on the Planet.

Previous columns:
Shifting Gears into a New Era