3/30/04

Letters are still coming in about Jok Nicholson and Darr Hawthorne's columns about the NHRA television coverage on ESPN & ESPN2. When Jeff Burk waded in with a column about the ratings, even more letters came in.

We gave ESPN's Shawn Murphy the opportunity to respond to Nicholson and Hawthorne's columns and received this reply: "Thank you for sharing the articles and offering the opportunity to respond. We also appreciate the feedback and the opinions. However, we will pass on responding to the articles. While we know our shows are not perfect, we work very hard and each week challenge ourselves to produce the most accurate and entertaining show possible."

We did, however, receive this letter from on-air personality Bill Stephens:

I want to extend my deepest thanks to Darr Hawthorne for utilizing his unwavering brilliance to correct the many obvious shortcomings which exist on our ESPN coverage of the NHRA. It's commendable that a gentleman with no network television experience can sit at his keyboard and so comprehensively pick apart an entire telecasting team with his trenchant observations and ingeniously framed insults, thus rendering a group of hard working, dedicated broadcasters as nothing more than blathering morons.

Criticism is nothing new to anyone who works in the media and our performances, good or bad, are fair game. We understand that if your goal is to please everyone, television isn't a logical place to do it and getting bad reviews is part of the hostile environment in which we operate.

But perhaps Darr should spend a bit more time on critiquing his own work and investing a little more sweat equity into his somewhat feeble attempts at journalism. Anyone with the remarkable powers of observation which Mr. Hawthorne is blessed with and who has spent as much time as he has carefully reviewing our programs should know my last name is spelled "Stephens", my colleague's last name is spelled "Rieff", and Mr. Reinhart's first name is spelled "Alan".

Furthermore, to my knowledge, Mr. Hawthorne has never spoken directly to any of the ESPN production crew in an objective attempt to gather first-hand information on how our telecasts are conceived and produced. Why not?

Is that question short enough for you?

Bill Stephens
ESPN

Darr replies:

Dear Bill Stephens,

What a surprise to get your response to my View From the Left Coast column for March. The person who should have responded probably was Director Shawn Murphy, but since you chose to attack me rather than deal with the issues, here goes.

First, I must apologize for misspelling some of the ESPN on-camera talent's names. I completely understand your point since my name has been spelled incorrectly in so many ways over my career, even on film industry awards. When I signed on at Drag Racing Online, Jeff Burk asked that I spend some of my time as the resident media critic, and since you questioned my television experience, I'll give you a short resume.