December 9, 2021 • 42 mins
This week the guys visit with Bob Dillner, long time racing personality, now commentator, host and reporter for MAV TV. From growing up in a racing family to his carreer in motorsports, we discuss the range of his broadcast carreer.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Skinny with Rico and Kenna is a production of
I Heart Radio. Hey, I'm Bob Dilner and this is
the Skinny from the bath Heads I Wear Studios in Speedway, Indiana.
This is the Skinny brought to you by Toyota, Rhino, Classified,
General Tire and Dream Giveaway. This segment of the Skinny
(00:23):
is brought to you by Toyota. Welcome to the Skinny.
Time to have another great show here and joining back
at the desk and joining me back at the desk
is Rico Elmore. It's been a long time. I'm scared, man.
I mean you've got me jittery over here. Mean you've
taken my name off the sign. Okay, we're no longer
wearing headsets, so I can't get any queues on anything.
(00:44):
So yeah, I guess I'm happy to be back. Yeah,
it's been a couple of months. You've been running around
the country with n hr A gone for for many
days at a time, and we had some dude named
Michael Phillan in for you on a clown. Anyhow, he's
actually running the board today, so you're gonna be careful
what you say about that. He'll pot you right down. Quick.
(01:06):
We have a great colleague of mine, good friend of
mine as well that will join us on the show.
Mr Bob Dinner has been in the business for a
long long time and has reached the pinnacle really of
motorsports racing in side of this country excluding f one,
if you will, has seen the behind the scenes stuff,
has been part of Speed fifty one and worked very
closely with drivers and how to promote them and their
(01:28):
careers all along the way. Uh started off and Long Island, Huntington,
Long Island, which I owned a trucking company, a small
trucking company in New Jersey, and I used to pick
up and deliver cars in the Five Boroughs and Long Island,
so I know exactly where Huntington is, just a little
bit short of Komac about the middle of the island,
maybe a little bit short of the middle of the island.
But uh, beautiful place out there, I mean it really is.
(01:50):
I know New York can get beat up as as
kind of a bad rat from time to time, but uh,
and certainly the end of the island. Boy, you better
have some scratch if you're gonna play ball out there.
Oh yeah, you know, it was really cool growing up
on Long Island because not only was it beautiful and
you're close to the water and stuff, but in the
in the racing world, because I was one of those kids,
they got picked on all the time for being the
racing guy. Hey are you going to the Yankees game? Uh?
(02:12):
What are you doing? I'm going out to Iceland Speedway
or Riverhead Raceway or whatever. What's that? That's all right? So,
I mean, you know, my dad was a race car driver,
and you know, uh he he taught us. Listen, you know,
if you get hit, whether it's on the racetrack or
off the racetrack, make sure you hit him back twice
as hard. Okay. So that that's how we grew up.
(02:33):
The Dialners grew up on Long Island. We were known
as the fighting Dialners, you know, from the race tracks
right to the ballfields. So how much difference in age
is your brother? I? I think that's awesome. But he's
a six years difference. And I love it because you know,
he gets piste off all the time because people say,
are you older or is he older? And I'm like yes,
(02:55):
because I'm six years older than he is. And uh
he he says he's the he's the Pontiac Dilner. You know,
wider is better, is okay? All right? I understand, I'm
I love that. Yeah, I can relate totally. We grew up,
you know, just our dad was a race car driver,
Figure eight race car drivers. You wonder how my brother
(03:15):
and I wound up the way we are where he
got hit in the X one too many times and uh,
you know, we just he quit early on and we
just went to the race track and you'd have one
of those orange seatback chairs you put into the grandstand.
He'd tie his belt around me, give me his old
steering wheel from his Figure eight, and I would just
pretend I was my favorite race car driver on the racetrack.
(03:37):
And we went Friday, Saturday, Sunday most weekends and just
went to different racetracks throughout the Northeast. So who so
who anybody of name that came from out there, any
of the tracks that well, I mean, you know, it
depends on how you look at it, you know. For me,
you know, you take a look at my idols growing up,
which was like Charlie Drewsambek, you know, charging Charlie one
(03:58):
of the baddest modified drivers ever, you know, But the
people that you know would relate to these days. It's
like a Steve Park. You want some cup races, great
sacks want the big Cup race there at Daytona. So
those are the guys, you know. But the Mike you
and its Goes and the Fred Harbacks and uh, the
Georgie Brunholz, those sort of people. Nor another state. Okay,
(04:25):
so you know that that's up here and Long Island,
you know, honestly, Long Islands bigger than Rhode Island. We
always said we could have been our own state, and
that New York just adopted us because we acted way
different than anybody else in the state. My buddy lives
in Aledo Beach, uh so uh closer towards Brooklyn or
back that direction, and uh and the first time I
(04:49):
ever went out there, I was amazed. I was absolutely amazed.
I was like, you're not in you know, you're definitely
not in New York City. You're definitely and like, as
you guys both mentioned the other, you go north, the
deeper your pockets better be because it's uh, you get
up to the Hamptons, it is uh, it is quite
the difference. I grew up you know, in the TV industry.
(05:11):
When I made that transition, you know, I was in news,
so I was this news guy during the week, and
then the weekend, I created my own company into these
racing shows for the network. And it's funny because you know,
you realize some of the same people you covered during
the week were the same people that watched your show
and loved it. You know. So I don't know if
(05:32):
you guys remember um, you know back in the day,
Joey buttafuco sure see him, Mary, joe Amy Fisher, that
whole deal. We cover that because I was working in
the news business right from the get go. And then
Joey gets out of jail, you know, the whole deal,
Remember him with the cuffs, you know, raising his hands.
But then he shows up at Riverhead Raceway and we
had a show called Ly Island track Side on News twelve,
(05:53):
and you know, we'd be like, oh, there's Joey. You know,
we covered him during the week and you interviewed him
and all that. We try to walk the other way
and he'd be like, Hey, Long Island track Side, were
you still on the island when they had the shooting
on the train or Colin Ferguson, I actually covered that
as a producer, so um, you know, so many different instances.
(06:17):
You know, that's kind of like flashbacks for me, uh,
covering that, you know, being in the control room and
not knowing what's going on and sending live cruise and
finding out bits of information and and not giving folks
the wrong information. And that's really where my background came from.
You know, even while I was in the in the
Cup series, you know, I learned a lot from that
(06:39):
news side of the thing to be able to know
what to say and what not to when Kyle Larson
had that truck and you know or his Exfinity car,
I can't remember which one it was back then, you know,
and part of it went into the grandstands at Daytona.
You know, we were on the air for I think
it was twelve straight hours giving people updates and saying
what we could. We knew some more, but you can't
(07:02):
give that information out. So that news background for me
certainly helped me out a lot um, you know, for
for fun purposes, but also for my career moving forward.
I wouldn't be amazing if people still did that. Yeah,
the news media has changed so much. I that's what
I was talking about that would first and foremost and
(07:25):
just tell the truth and then we'll figure out where
you can and can't say that's right. Yeah. Yeah, So
did you ever uh did you ever drive a race car?
Where you ever a driver? Yeah? Actually we had no
money grown up, so we were just in the grand stands.
But as I started to move along with my career,
obviously start making some money, especially with your when you're
(07:45):
in NASCAR, I mean, you make good money, or you
at least you did back then. A lot of things
are changing right now, but um yeah, I was able
to drive other people's race cars, my own race cars,
everything from street stocks to carts to modify it's the
late models and and everything in between. Dirt end pavement.
Um and I was a guy that grew up around
(08:06):
pavement racing, being from Long Island, but every summer were
venture out and go to dirt track. So man, you know,
I started out on payment with some of the driving
that I did, and then finally moved over to dirt
and loved dirt so much better. Um So, you know,
I just never had Hell, we had a race shot.
One time I had twelve cars in the shop. We
(08:27):
were like thirty thousand square feet full time people just stupid.
When you were making the Big Box. I wish I
had some of that money back on, you know, because
I can relate all that. Memories are good, they're cool.
I mean, listen, you know, I I remember my brother.
You mentioned my brother with Law Speedways and David Jr.
(08:47):
You know again, the Fighting Dillners. We brought that down
from New York and I remember, you know at that time,
I had like three super was like a cloverleaf in
the in the Fighting Dillners. You know, I'm telling you
is stupid Legends car race. He's in the B main,
but he's leading the B man. I'm like, my brother's
gonna qualify for the feature here at the summer shootout
(09:09):
at Charlotte Motor Speedway and he got put into the
wall on the last lap. So we had this thing
that was kind of handed down from my my dad.
Is when when the guilty party came in the pits,
we we didn't do what most New Yorkers did, and
that was flipped people off. You know. We just gave
him the Dilner point and when I pointed, he flipped
me off. Well, it was like adrenaline. You know, you
(09:31):
hit that button, got all of a sudden, I was
on the roof of this Legends car reaching inside, trying
to grab the driver he's driving through the pit area,
and I got called to Humpy Wheeler's office the next
week and got suspended. Shocking, like my son was running
a Legends car there, And it was so funny that
he had just left Road America's running a Continental Tire
(09:53):
car there, had qualified on the pole or qualified outside
pole and ran in the top two or three as
in his entire stint. We left there, went right to Charlotte.
He hopped in a Legends car for the first time
ever and spun out two or three times when they
asked him on the radio to please leave the track.
You go from leading, you know, in the in the
(10:14):
biggest sports car series in the country, to being asked
to get off the track at Charlotte on this little
bitty bull ring. But in the driver's meeting, we were
we were both laughing because at one point in the
driver's meeting they tell all the drivers and you you
were not allowed to flip off the flagman anymore. I
started laughing and just just funny. The different forms of racing,
(10:37):
right that's pretty competitive though. The Legends Charlotte I kind
of where that was, where that was founded, if you will,
was you know, it was definitely a dream for everybody,
from SMI and Humpy and everyone that started that. I
personally I hate Legends cars. Okay, sorry, I hate Legends. Yeah.
(11:00):
Actually Mark Martin saw me drive one once and he said,
you better stick to your day job. But there's so
unlike anything you drive. I mean, and I think to
some degree it's really good to get some of that experience.
But you know, like Jeff Burton, you know, he was
talking about his son Harrison, and you know, what should
I do, Bob? Should I go dirt? Should I go payment?
You know? Should I do the Legends car racing? And
(11:20):
and I really think that you get in a Legends
car and you tried it a couple of times and
you get an acclamation to racing and shifting and this
and that. But the pulp pushed, the pass and the
rough racing it really I think has some bad tendencies
for drivers. So get in, get out, moved to something else.
And that's what he did with Harrison, moving them to
pro late models and super late models at twelve years old.
(11:42):
Uh so I didn't even think about racing a car
until I was eighteen. You know, we were, um, we
figured out pretty quickly that we were not part of
the good Old Boys Club. And we got down there
and this was a guy who put him in the
car for whatever. It's like a huge race at the
end of the year. I feel like a million dollar
race or had the legends Millie and yes, so need
let's just say everybody is going there, and he put
(12:04):
Robert in the car to try and qualify for the show.
But what we figured out was they called him practice sessions,
first practice sessions, second practice session, but then they lined
the cars up based on the speeds from the practice
sessions that were really qualifying sessions is what they were.
They ended up being a fast group and and the
b Maine is really what it ended up being. But we, uh,
(12:24):
we learned pretty quickly that the fastest lap times of
the day would be running in the first session, which
was during the hottest part of the day, including the race.
And they did that because that gave them the best
starting spot. So they knew the tricks that we didn't know.
Like I said, part of the good Old Boys Club
where they cooking tires. I'm not gonna say who knows
(12:44):
what they were doing, but those cards were pretty fast
on a very hot race track. I can tell you
that listen. Soaking tires is part of the game of
legends car racing. Yeah, I mean listen, I've done it
in super late miles two. But you know, we used
to even my daughter's Bandelero, Okay, a bandalerro car, you're
always looking for the edge, and she wasn't great in
a bandalero. She got better with bigger cars. But you know,
(13:07):
we would take different soaks and you know, put him
in the valve stem and you know, put it on
the rotisserie and then really smells. If you smell it,
you're gonna you know. So we put like ground up
peppermint in there, and the peppermint with the soak would
kind of combine. It would actually smell like a tire.
So you learned certain that you could do trade. Yeah,
(13:27):
you can't always get the dirt from a racer, but
when you bring a broadcaster on who's no longer racing, well,
he can certainly talk about what he did in the past.
So we'll have some more from Bob Downer in just
a moment, stay with us. This segment of the Skinny
is brought to you by Dream Giveaway. Dream Giveaway has
(13:48):
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(14:09):
Check it out at dream giveaway dot com. Welcome back
to the Skinny. We have our colleague with us. Bob
Dillner has has joined us, actually has moved to the
north side of Indianapolis, so here full time now. Made
it very easy to get him down here. Rico Elmore
has joined me here once again inside of the studio,
and uh great to have you with us. Man Um,
talk to me about the progression. Maybe the fans don't
(14:30):
know that you're no longer part of Speed fifty one.
Certainly associated with that for many many years and did
such great work there. But you've moved to Indianapolis now
and full time at at Lucas Oil Productions in association
with my f TV. Yeah, so it's definitely a big
change for me. You know, work with Speed Channel and
back in the day TNNU moved to Speed and Fox
(14:52):
and uh that went by the wayside after season, and
I thought, I I thought my career was done. Honestly,
I got a call and started working with the folks
from Lucas and mav TV, and you know, we've now
been part of that. You've been part of that family
for a real long time. I've now been for eight
years and and all the while, you know, started speak
(15:13):
a d one back in two thousand and one and
grew that to become the biggest short track site in
the country and had a lot of fun with that.
Really helped build events, build some careers, work with some
great people, and uh, the r t A organization came
along and uh they acquired it, you know, a couple
of years ago, and UM, you know, they have definitely
(15:34):
good visions for that. UM. But at the same time,
I felt like I needed a new chapter in my
life and had been working with this organization, mav TV
and Lucas Oil for a long time. So UM had
that opportunity to move up here. My wife is from
northeast Indiana, so we kind of came back home a
little bit for her. For me, it's like, you know,
going back to New York, it's like the winters are cold.
(15:56):
So that's why I say, you're you're at luck with
your wife being from around here to get that pass
to come back. I haven't put snow tires on a
vehicle in like twenty years, and I just bought snow
tires from my wife's Tell Your Ride yesterday. So it's
a new world. But I like challenges, and I think
(16:16):
the vision of what Forest and Morgan and everybody wants
to do with mav TV, and uh, there is really good.
There is um a void I believe after Speed Channel
went away became FS one understood why Fox did it. Uh,
they were very strategic in their business affairs and it
worked out for them. But at the same time, when
(16:38):
Speed went away, and you know, it was tough, you know,
for you and me as racing fans, it was wow,
where do we gw stuff? And mav TV was there
and they start, you know, continue to grow and now
this year we're really focusing solely on mav TV and
American motorsports. Um. I know we have a lot of
international shows on their too, they're cool. But we're really
(17:01):
looking at some of the American motorsports, the motor sports
we have and the motor sports we don't have yet,
and looking at that and saying, hey, how can we
grow that, grow it for the players that are involved,
but grow the network as well, and maybe recapture some
of the fancy that the old Speed Channel had. And
and I mean that's the that's the whole thing. I mean,
I remember when you know, I've of course have been
(17:24):
a part of the Lucas family for many many years
and uh and and honored to be that. I've I
don't know that I've had anybody yelled at me quite
like Forest, but I deserved every bit of it. Uh.
When I started, you know, fatheads our business and uh
and uh you know he uh he had a vision
(17:45):
for what he wanted to do there, and I think
it got a little derailed in the beginning, uh in
getting there, which lesson, it's all about timing. No matter
what you know, if if if it went exactly as
planned right out of the gate, it's like Forest onld
ME one time he said. He told me many things,
but one of the things he told me was, I'll
show you somebody that made their money fast and easy,
(18:07):
because they won't have it. You know. So if you
make a great network fast and easy, then you know
what you don't appreciate. It is what he was getting at.
It's kind of cool, you know, And I think you
hit on a lot of cool points from the standpoint
of you know, we're not spring chickens. Okay, we ain't old,
but we ain't spring chickens. And back in the day,
I used to wait for Speedway Illustrated and speed Sport
(18:28):
News to come to my mail box, you know, on
that Thursday Friday whenever it wound up to find out
who did what the week before, you know. And now
everything's changed, you know, with social media, with streaming this
and that, and you know, it's a balance and it's
hard to figure out what that balance should be. But
I think the one cool thing about mav TV is
(18:49):
that while streaming is awesome, and I think it's a
viable means to entertain people, um and also inform them,
I think that you know that linear television is still
super important, especially from an advertising perspective because you get
all the streaming side of things and into some degree
that's a younger generation. But that live TV. Uh, nothing
(19:13):
can replace that because that that is, you know, the
the kingpin of what made motorsports right. And I mean
that's the same thing with the magazine, right. I mean
like what we you know, what we talked about was
geez who does magazines anymore? And Ken of course definitely
encourage me. Maybe I subscribe to that thought process, maybe
(19:35):
not to do it, but I mean the rumor, the
rumor mill is you know, print was dead, it was
going away. But as as it turns out, because it
went so dead, it actually has a bit of a
surge where you know, people still want to hold I know,
my wife, she doesn't want to read something electronically, She
still wants to hold a paper book, you know, when
she reads a book. There's just something to that. And
(19:56):
the photography, which Evan Smith does a favorous in our magazine,
but the photography just captures you and it captures that
moment and you know you can just sit and look
at a look at a really cool picture for you know,
for a few minutes and and analyze everything that was
going on there. So it for sure has has its place.
It does. It's difficult right now because everybody's still trying
(20:19):
to figure it out. You know, what's going to happen
with these apps? Who's gonna buy what? You know? Heck
I was. I was a cord cutter, right and I
went to you know, just everything based off the Internet
and apps and so forth. Um, that's what we're used
to now in our home. But at the same time,
it's just kind of evolved where everybody has a Hulu
or YouTube TV or something like that, and you're basically
(20:41):
back at the same price point you're where you were. Yeah,
So it's just weird, and it's it's weird on how
the racing industry has evolved. It's definitely being good, I
believe for the race tracks um through rights acquisition fees. Um.
It's not like it was when I began Speed fifty
wanted listen. If the rights acquisition fees were you know
(21:03):
then what they are now, I would have never been
able to build Speed fifty one. We built it on Hey,
join me, I'll help build up your event, and and
therefore we're going to have some rights to what you do, right,
And I remember that, which I thought was a genius idea,
and now it's changed to hey, you have two dollars,
you got a million dollars. You know what do you have?
(21:25):
And I can give you what we have And it's
definitely changed the game a little bit, and both I
think are all aspects are still needed. Um but like
you said, everything is evolved and in this age I
think is going to be defined in terms of the
racing television media industry within the next three years or so.
(21:46):
We're gonna take a quick break here. We're gonna dig
into some of the behind the scenes stuff when it
comes to television. Bob is up to speed on all
that and there's a lot of questions that we typically
get asked from fans that maybe we can address some
of that stuff here and help make the picture a
little bit clearer because it can be pretty complicated. Stay
with us, we'll be right back. This segment of the
skinny has been brought to you by General Tire. It's
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Tire dot Com today. This segment of the Skinny is
brought to you by Rhino Classifies. Tired of all those
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in we got you at Rhino dot Co. Welcome back
to the Skinny here once again. UH TV extraordinaire broadcaster
(23:13):
and behind the scenes producer Bob Downer in the house
with us and UH he really has a lot of
knowledge of what goes on behind the scenes. There's a
lot of spokes in the wheel whenever it comes to
television and you work closely with the network and the
network has UH has their items that they have to tackle.
Production has their items they have to tackle. The promoter
has their items they have to tackle, the racers are racing.
(23:35):
I mean, there's a lot of spokes in that wheel
that have to come together. The sponsors, of course a
massive part of that. So give us an idea of
where this industry is going, because, as we just talked about,
I mean, this podcast I Heart Radio is growing faster
than they ever have before. A bunch of podcasts are
(23:55):
out there, so they're commanding a little bit of airtime.
We have the apps commanding some air time. We have
regular television commanding air time. It's it's a wild wild West,
if you will, as mass chaos, honestly, you know, and
everybody is trying to steal an event from somebody else,
and you know, other people are trying to start series
and and throwing money out there, and you know, you
(24:17):
can throw money out there all you want, but are
you gonna stick? Are you gonna have that you know,
longstanding feel within the motorsports industry. So it's hard to
shake everything down right now. But rictually, the series director
for the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt series, he and
I were talking about that and they just have a
fantastic UM series. You know, with what they do, it's
(24:37):
definitely the leader in the dirt late model, realm, big money,
I mean huge, and next year is even bigger and
better than ever. But yet they have some people like, oh,
I'm gonna go over here on a cherry pick over here,
I'm gonna look for a big event over here. So
what can you do to make things better? And I think,
you know, to some degree, some of these you know startups,
(24:58):
you know, make things appear egger than they are. And
I think it's it's trying to make sure you have
that full package. You know, you have the races, you
have the racers, you have the money. Okay, then you
concentrate on the show with the promoters. Uh, it's definitely.
You know, you're tap dancing all over the place. And
social media is so important. You can make things look
(25:20):
huge on social media when they're really not. You know,
how many times do people go, especially the younger generations,
say well how many lights did my picture get? I say,
who gives a jump? You know? But at the same time,
that's kind of what makes the racing world go around
right now is oh that one viral? Oh did you
see that? What's the latest content that we can put out,
(25:42):
and I think to some degree it's getting a little
bit old school. You know. For the Winchester four hundred
and for the last year and a hair a year
and a half, I've promoted Winchester Speedway. You know, I
had a car that was stripped down, um, you know,
a lightweight for front wheel drive car and took on
the engine, the drive train, all that sort of stuff
out there. And if you remember back in the day,
(26:04):
one of the pieces of video that really did well
with Bob Jenkins okay and Larry newbert Um at Bristol,
they rolled the car down the banking at Bristol to
show the degree of banking, and they did that on television.
I believe it was ESPN. Well, unfortunately because of mother nature,
we weren't able to do that with just a four
hundred weekend, but still have the car sitting out there.
We were going to do something like that and just
(26:26):
put it up on social for people to see and go,
I gotta go to this racetrack. I gotta go to
this race, Yes, exactly, because it doesn't oh it's thirty
seven degree banking. Didn't you slide down on the st
or something I did, you know. And honestly that started
at at like my kids wanted to go uh sledding,
(26:49):
and and there's really not a lot. The one complaint
I do have is, you know, being from North Carolina
in the last twenty years with a lot of mountains,
there's not many mountains around this part of Indiana. So
we we said, you know what, let's just go out
to the racetrack. And I think we had like a
maybe eighteen inches of snow out there on the banking,
and I'm like, maybe it's little down. I don't know,
you know. So we went out there and now it's
(27:10):
still there on the banking. Uh. So I took my
my son's little plastic sled, went up into the banking
and I said to my buddy Robbie, I'm like, hey,
let's do a social piece on this and and try
to see what it does. And we should have tried
it before we did it, you know, because if we
if we made the run already, it would have been fine.
But the problem is it was at fresh powdered snow,
(27:32):
so three quarters of the way down the thirty seven
degree banking, I crashed. So but it made for good
social exactly. So you know, it's the whole things in evolution,
even the race promotion side of things. You know, I
think everything got back gate driven, you know, and and
promoters and and series and so forth started looking at
(27:55):
things totally the opposite way. Then. You know, some of
the promoters that I looked up to growing up, did
you know, and um, you know some of the promoters,
especially around the old open wheel ranks. You know, you
read uh, Dave Argenbright and Chris Economackie's book, and you
hear about some of the stories there, and you know,
sometimes you know, it wasn't completely factual, but it got
(28:15):
people to the racetrack, you know. And I think we
need a little bit more of that. We need less
professionalism to some degree, and a little bit more flair,
and I think we've lost a little bit of that
right now. Um, talk to me about the network side
of things that that people don't understand as well. They
work off of a different set of numbers. They call
(28:36):
them universe. So there's a certain number of viewers and
that networks universe. So mav TV will would naturally compete,
let's say, with the CBS Sports Network or an NBC
Sports network, which my understanding is that platform is going
to be completely different or going away. Is that correct? Yeah,
I mean it's all gonna be housed underneath um. You know,
(28:58):
Peacock Peacock, and you know, some of the programmings go
into USA and so forth, and some of it is
just gonna be streaming. So you talk about, you know,
a change in the scope of things, you're basically getting
rid of a network on NBCSN you know that's on
most satellite and cable providers and really forcing the streaming
side of things. You know, they're definitely um taking a
(29:20):
chance there. UM, But I still think it's it's really
difficult to um base everything right now. For the next
couple of years as this evolves, I think you need
to wait and see where the players shake out. And
you know, listen Forced and Morgan and everybody, they're committed
to American Motorsports. Um. I don't see anybody else out
(29:43):
there within this scope that we love so much that
are dedicated like that. So you know, we honestly owe
them a debt of gratitude. But I'm also really intrigued
to be part of the process because there's a lot
of different players, but to see where it's gonna get
because I think we have the opportun unity to do
something really big within motorsports. Yeah, I mean, going back
(30:04):
twenty years when we've said this on this show, I'm sure,
I'm sure you've heard it somewhere along the way. I mean,
I'm just hard pressed to think of a company that's
done more for grassroots motorsports in the past twenty years
than Lucas Oil Products has has done for this industry.
And granted, they used that industry to help build their business,
(30:24):
but they have stuck with that format throughout and they
they've never faltered and and nor are they faltering now.
And again they're they're following along the same lines with
their network. Now you look at Lucasotle Stadium where the
Colts play, all right. You know, I was with Forest
this past weekend and he's so proud of that plaza,
and he should be. I'm proud of it, not only
(30:46):
because of my association with the company, but because bike Alli.
Take a look at the cars. You got Earl Pearson
Junior's Late Model, you got Renaissestors, you know off road truck,
You've got Bobby Gerhardt's ARCA car, you've got you know,
PPL machines and spring cars, the two fuel cars. Yeah,
that that is really showing people what motorsports is all about.
And you're doing it on a different stage, a different
(31:08):
platform to where you normally would find out that information.
So that that's really cool. I mean, listen, he he
doesn't have to do this. That engine that's on the
on the on the wide floated version of the himy.
I mean, oh my goodness, unbelievable. He told me the
whole story. I mean, I've got a great forest story
about when when the stadium was almost well, they were
(31:30):
getting right open, and and he um. I either called
him or he called me, and I said, I said,
what are you up to? He goes on down the
stadium and I said, I said, awesome, Well he goes
why don't you come down and check it out? Now
there there hasn't been one fan in this place. So
now I'm getting the the v I P Tour by Forrest,
(31:53):
which there's no other tour like that other than him
explaining everything. It's like him at the cattle ranch going
through telling you about what this is and what that is.
In your head is just spinning like I'm lost. But
I mean, yeah, but that's another story in itself. With
(32:13):
noticing sick cattle or if there isn't one in one place,
and every different kind of tree on the planet, different
mushrooms planted, there's not much he doesn't know. So he says,
he says, come down, and he's, uh, he's he's standing there.
We're now we're up to the to the suite and
(32:34):
he's showing me the bar and you know, it's very cool,
very very cool. And he says he's he's just standing
there looking at something. And he shows it to him
and he says he believed this, and he shows it,
shows me the piece of paper it's how much they
charge you for a six pack of cokes? And I go,
(32:55):
you're right, you know what I mean. But that's that's him.
Although he spends the money to promote these things, he
is a very frugal man and watches every step of
the way. And that's what's made him unbelievably successful and
the company and Morgan carrying it on the way Morgan's
doing things. I I text Morgan as soon as it
(33:18):
was announced, uh, and I just told him, I said,
I'm proud of you did and I mean, I you know,
I Morgan's younger than I am. But there were very
few people that got invited to the wedding that got
to go back to the house after the wedding, and
I was I was blessed to be one of them,
and and many other great experiences with that family, and
(33:39):
and uh, it was just it's just awesome to see
because I think there was a level of uncertainty at
one point kind of how it was going to move,
you know, and this was way back, so not anytime soon,
but you know, what was the next steps with the
company and and uh, you know more again with Katie
(34:01):
and Katie Katie's uh mindset, and I mean it's just
they they've put together super team. And you coming in,
I was, you know, I was like, well, what happened
to speed Ffy one. I mean like I was, of
course completely confused, and I kind of knew a little
bit that you were doing some stuff, you know, kind
(34:21):
of in the background and doing some other things. But uh,
definitely a huge part that will help build I mean,
you've built it from the ground up before Okay, they're
not on the ground by any stretch, but you've built
it from the ground up. You know what people are
wanting to watch, what people are wanting to see and listen,
(34:42):
I mean, why did sr X do so well. Sr
X did so well because Tony and then put together
a Saturday night racing. It was great racing. It was
it was you were in, you were out. You could
set there for you know whatever it was, ninety minutes
or or sixty minutes, whatever it was, and you got
(35:02):
it and you got to see good racing. And you
were talking about the Lucas Oil Dirt Late Model Series. Listen,
They've been going back and forth with the World of
Outlaws forever. World of Outlaws, great series, good group. Have
had their handful of challenges along the way, like most
(35:23):
of us in business. But at the end of the day,
you know, if you want the Outlaw the wing Sprints
to come, you're gonna have to take one of these shows. Well,
Lucas doesn't have that luxury. We've got a great product,
and I don't know how it is now. I just
kind of know from back in the past that's how
a lot of that worked. But you know, the great
(35:43):
part of it is is Lucas says, this is the
product we have. We're gonna bring these racers and this
is gonna be a good show. And it is a
good show. So that's that's the cool, I mean a
nice part of it. You've got some good material. And
what I like, honestly is the fact that you know,
you know, Morgan is doing a job and Katie is
just so smart in in everything that she does, but
(36:04):
forced is still involved. He'll pop into meetings and you
know what he got this week? You know, and and
you know, we'll tell him we got this and that,
and and he's as attracted, you know, to the smaller
stuff as he is to the big stuff. Like a
couple of weeks ago, he was like, what do you
got this week? And we went through our GA and
Late Model and got O T E. Lucas Oil on
(36:25):
the Edge and he's like, oh, where's on the edge
And Jamaica Virginia Virginia Motor Speedway. We got mud Box.
Oh I love mud Box. Yeah. So I mean, can
you were involved with that from the beginning and I've
voice over some of the numbers on that. It's it's
really neat to to see how everything has progressed and
(36:46):
to get a broader scope of of things that we're doing,
and honestly the people involved and so forth as well.
So I'm just really amped up for it. Um. I
love the future. And I know sometimes that might be
boring talk, but you know when we talk about where
is that passion for the whole company, uh, including the motorsports,
realm is key to that success. Hey man, we want
(37:07):
to thank you for taking the time to come down here,
um and then take a look at the studio and
and real quick, it can't be that without Jen. She's
been around a long long time and I have given
her more headaches. Well, he mentioned on the Edge. So
that show was created by Steve Grind myself and Jen
was part of that process. Those three people created that
(37:29):
show and it it did so well when Whenever we
initially went out to Corona and met with Forrest and
Bob Pattison at the time, and they said they wanted
to be title sponsored for it and it was going
on speed and uh. I remember in subsequent years after that,
and at the time, that's what Forrest Forest wanted his
(37:49):
Saturday night short track racing. He wanted to go back
and when he was a kid watch Figure eight racing,
trailer racing, those gimmick races that are so much fun.
There's no thinking. You just sit there and you enjoy yourself,
you know. And and the trailer racing where you're like,
there's no way he can make another lap, dragging it
around on the attack. And I heard the guys in
(38:11):
and at the Cup races on a Saturday night would
be standing there watching it. Was a quick thirty minute show,
so they would be standing there watching it and we
would lead into some big races. Well, there were no
short There was no shortage of of months and weeks
where we were top five on the network in terms
of rating, and there was one time I think we
(38:31):
were second or third in the ratings. I mean, the
thing absolutely killed it and it was it was cool
to be part of it, you know, And and that
is what's really neat. I mean, we could sit here
and talk, you know, on and on about a bunch
of different things. But um, you know, watching some of
those Cup people all right, when you went in the
garage area and they said, oh man, that that that
(38:52):
Lucas Oil late midel Dirt series, that man, and that
is cool. You know. How about Davin Board, He's having
a heck of a year or they see the on
on the edge stuff from Anderson or Rockford or whatever
A gos the carnage from that those guys that Kevin
Harvick's the Jimmy Johnson's of the world. We're watching that
stuff and that's when you knew, Man, this is pretty cool. Uh.
(39:14):
And you mentioned jan I mean she is so sharp. Uh,
she's on point, she knows what she's doing, She's got
a great vision, and work with her every single day. So, Um,
she's one of those you know, Um, she she's one
of our leaders for sure, But I really believe what
she does in the motorsports industry. Honestly, she's one of
(39:35):
those visionaries in regards to what she's been able to
do from where she's come from. You guys working sister,
we pissed and Mona grown at each other like brother
and sister. We've been working together for near twenty years.
But she would be at an event and we would
be I would totally not be any help wellcause you know,
we would usually be partying and they're trying to work
a show, and she would make us to the line.
(39:57):
I mean, there was just a number of time she
knew what she wonder from the show or if we
said something wrong or made a mistake, boom stop do
it again. And and she cared about the show, you know,
which demanded immediate respect from us. It's like she you know,
she cares. She's she's part of the people that really
care and want this to be a good product. And
so I've always really respected her for that. And you're right,
I mean, she's extremely switched on. So um, she's a
(40:21):
she's a great addition to the team. And uh yeah,
I've been with her for for many, many years, so
it's it's been a good run for sure. And this
was a lot of fun here today. I mean we
didn't even get to the stories of me getting you know,
my my credentials and my suspended from NASCAR and stuff,
so I appreciate it. They could have gone down that
road and we would all love to hear the story.
So you'll have to be bad. We didn't even ask
(40:43):
you what your ugliest car was, or what you dip
chicken nuggets in or any of that stuff either. So
there's a lot of stuff there. But and that's what happens.
It goes by so quickly. So Michael has been yelling
at me for ten minutes to close the show up.
So it's all good. But thanks for taking the time. Man.
I know you're just a little bit north, but I
also know how busy you are, so it's cool for
you to come down here, take a little studio and
(41:04):
sit down and have a little bit of fun. Yeah. Absolutely,
it was a lot of fun and a lot of
fun to just chat. You know, so many times there's
interviews and what we do and um, you know, you
guys have a really cool thing going with a lot
of the guests that you've had on here. So I'm
definitely a big fan of the Skinny. So now you
know a little bit of behind the scenes stuff on
Bob Dylan. You see him on camera every now and again,
but know that he is heavily involved behind the camera
(41:25):
as well. I hope you learned a little something here
and now you know the skinny on Mr Bob Dillner.
Thanks for watching, Thanks for being with us here on
the Skinny. This episode has been brought to you by Toyota,
Rhino Classifies, Dream Giveaway and general tire For the latest
and sunglasses, optical frames, accessories and apparel, be sure to
(41:46):
check out bad Heads dot com that's bad Heads with
a Z. Production facilities provided by fat Heads I Wear Studios.
All rights reserved. The Skinny with Rico and Kenna is
a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from
my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
The Skinny with Rico and Kenna is a production of
I Heart Radio. Hey, I'm Bob Dilner and this is
the Skinny from the bath Heads I Wear Studios in Speedway, Indiana.
This is the Skinny brought to you by Toyota, Rhino, Classified,
General Tire and Dream Giveaway. This segment of the Skinny
(00:23):
is brought to you by Toyota. Welcome to the Skinny.
Time to have another great show here and joining back
at the desk and joining me back at the desk
is Rico Elmore. It's been a long time. I'm scared, man.
I mean you've got me jittery over here. Mean you've
taken my name off the sign. Okay, we're no longer
wearing headsets, so I can't get any queues on anything.
(00:44):
So yeah, I guess I'm happy to be back. Yeah,
it's been a couple of months. You've been running around
the country with n hr A gone for for many
days at a time, and we had some dude named
Michael Phillan in for you on a clown. Anyhow, he's
actually running the board today, so you're gonna be careful
what you say about that. He'll pot you right down. Quick.
(01:06):
We have a great colleague of mine, good friend of
mine as well that will join us on the show.
Mr Bob Dinner has been in the business for a
long long time and has reached the pinnacle really of
motorsports racing in side of this country excluding f one,
if you will, has seen the behind the scenes stuff,
has been part of Speed fifty one and worked very
closely with drivers and how to promote them and their
(01:28):
careers all along the way. Uh started off and Long Island, Huntington,
Long Island, which I owned a trucking company, a small
trucking company in New Jersey, and I used to pick
up and deliver cars in the Five Boroughs and Long Island,
so I know exactly where Huntington is, just a little
bit short of Komac about the middle of the island,
maybe a little bit short of the middle of the island.
But uh, beautiful place out there, I mean it really is.
(01:50):
I know New York can get beat up as as
kind of a bad rat from time to time, but uh,
and certainly the end of the island. Boy, you better
have some scratch if you're gonna play ball out there.
Oh yeah, you know, it was really cool growing up
on Long Island because not only was it beautiful and
you're close to the water and stuff, but in the
in the racing world, because I was one of those kids,
they got picked on all the time for being the
racing guy. Hey are you going to the Yankees game? Uh?
(02:12):
What are you doing? I'm going out to Iceland Speedway
or Riverhead Raceway or whatever. What's that? That's all right? So,
I mean, you know, my dad was a race car driver,
and you know, uh he he taught us. Listen, you know,
if you get hit, whether it's on the racetrack or
off the racetrack, make sure you hit him back twice
as hard. Okay. So that that's how we grew up.
(02:33):
The Dialners grew up on Long Island. We were known
as the fighting Dialners, you know, from the race tracks
right to the ballfields. So how much difference in age
is your brother? I? I think that's awesome. But he's
a six years difference. And I love it because you know,
he gets piste off all the time because people say,
are you older or is he older? And I'm like yes,
(02:55):
because I'm six years older than he is. And uh
he he says he's the he's the Pontiac Dilner. You know,
wider is better, is okay? All right? I understand, I'm
I love that. Yeah, I can relate totally. We grew up,
you know, just our dad was a race car driver,
Figure eight race car drivers. You wonder how my brother
(03:15):
and I wound up the way we are where he
got hit in the X one too many times and uh,
you know, we just he quit early on and we
just went to the race track and you'd have one
of those orange seatback chairs you put into the grandstand.
He'd tie his belt around me, give me his old
steering wheel from his Figure eight, and I would just
pretend I was my favorite race car driver on the racetrack.
(03:37):
And we went Friday, Saturday, Sunday most weekends and just
went to different racetracks throughout the Northeast. So who so
who anybody of name that came from out there, any
of the tracks that well, I mean, you know, it
depends on how you look at it, you know. For me,
you know, you take a look at my idols growing up,
which was like Charlie Drewsambek, you know, charging Charlie one
(03:58):
of the baddest modified drivers ever, you know, But the
people that you know would relate to these days. It's
like a Steve Park. You want some cup races, great
sacks want the big Cup race there at Daytona. So
those are the guys, you know. But the Mike you
and its Goes and the Fred Harbacks and uh, the
Georgie Brunholz, those sort of people. Nor another state. Okay,
(04:25):
so you know that that's up here and Long Island,
you know, honestly, Long Islands bigger than Rhode Island. We
always said we could have been our own state, and
that New York just adopted us because we acted way
different than anybody else in the state. My buddy lives
in Aledo Beach, uh so uh closer towards Brooklyn or
back that direction, and uh and the first time I
(04:49):
ever went out there, I was amazed. I was absolutely amazed.
I was like, you're not in you know, you're definitely
not in New York City. You're definitely and like, as
you guys both mentioned the other, you go north, the
deeper your pockets better be because it's uh, you get
up to the Hamptons, it is uh, it is quite
the difference. I grew up you know, in the TV industry.
(05:11):
When I made that transition, you know, I was in news,
so I was this news guy during the week, and
then the weekend, I created my own company into these
racing shows for the network. And it's funny because you know,
you realize some of the same people you covered during
the week were the same people that watched your show
and loved it. You know. So I don't know if
(05:32):
you guys remember um, you know back in the day,
Joey buttafuco sure see him, Mary, joe Amy Fisher, that
whole deal. We cover that because I was working in
the news business right from the get go. And then
Joey gets out of jail, you know, the whole deal,
Remember him with the cuffs, you know, raising his hands.
But then he shows up at Riverhead Raceway and we
had a show called Ly Island track Side on News twelve,
(05:53):
and you know, we'd be like, oh, there's Joey. You know,
we covered him during the week and you interviewed him
and all that. We try to walk the other way
and he'd be like, Hey, Long Island track Side, were
you still on the island when they had the shooting
on the train or Colin Ferguson, I actually covered that
as a producer, so um, you know, so many different instances.
(06:17):
You know, that's kind of like flashbacks for me, uh,
covering that, you know, being in the control room and
not knowing what's going on and sending live cruise and
finding out bits of information and and not giving folks
the wrong information. And that's really where my background came from.
You know, even while I was in the in the
Cup series, you know, I learned a lot from that
(06:39):
news side of the thing to be able to know
what to say and what not to when Kyle Larson
had that truck and you know or his Exfinity car,
I can't remember which one it was back then, you know,
and part of it went into the grandstands at Daytona.
You know, we were on the air for I think
it was twelve straight hours giving people updates and saying
what we could. We knew some more, but you can't
(07:02):
give that information out. So that news background for me
certainly helped me out a lot um, you know, for
for fun purposes, but also for my career moving forward.
I wouldn't be amazing if people still did that. Yeah,
the news media has changed so much. I that's what
I was talking about that would first and foremost and
(07:25):
just tell the truth and then we'll figure out where
you can and can't say that's right. Yeah. Yeah, So
did you ever uh did you ever drive a race car?
Where you ever a driver? Yeah? Actually we had no
money grown up, so we were just in the grand stands.
But as I started to move along with my career,
obviously start making some money, especially with your when you're
(07:45):
in NASCAR, I mean, you make good money, or you
at least you did back then. A lot of things
are changing right now, but um yeah, I was able
to drive other people's race cars, my own race cars,
everything from street stocks to carts to modify it's the
late models and and everything in between. Dirt end pavement.
Um and I was a guy that grew up around
(08:06):
pavement racing, being from Long Island, but every summer were
venture out and go to dirt track. So man, you know,
I started out on payment with some of the driving
that I did, and then finally moved over to dirt
and loved dirt so much better. Um So, you know,
I just never had Hell, we had a race shot.
One time I had twelve cars in the shop. We
(08:27):
were like thirty thousand square feet full time people just stupid.
When you were making the Big Box. I wish I
had some of that money back on, you know, because
I can relate all that. Memories are good, they're cool.
I mean, listen, you know, I I remember my brother.
You mentioned my brother with Law Speedways and David Jr.
(08:47):
You know again, the Fighting Dillners. We brought that down
from New York and I remember, you know at that time,
I had like three super was like a cloverleaf in
the in the Fighting Dillners. You know, I'm telling you
is stupid Legends car race. He's in the B main,
but he's leading the B man. I'm like, my brother's
gonna qualify for the feature here at the summer shootout
(09:09):
at Charlotte Motor Speedway and he got put into the
wall on the last lap. So we had this thing
that was kind of handed down from my my dad.
Is when when the guilty party came in the pits,
we we didn't do what most New Yorkers did, and
that was flipped people off. You know. We just gave
him the Dilner point and when I pointed, he flipped
me off. Well, it was like adrenaline. You know, you
(09:31):
hit that button, got all of a sudden, I was
on the roof of this Legends car reaching inside, trying
to grab the driver he's driving through the pit area,
and I got called to Humpy Wheeler's office the next
week and got suspended. Shocking, like my son was running
a Legends car there, And it was so funny that
he had just left Road America's running a Continental Tire
(09:53):
car there, had qualified on the pole or qualified outside
pole and ran in the top two or three as
in his entire stint. We left there, went right to Charlotte.
He hopped in a Legends car for the first time
ever and spun out two or three times when they
asked him on the radio to please leave the track.
You go from leading, you know, in the in the
(10:14):
biggest sports car series in the country, to being asked
to get off the track at Charlotte on this little
bitty bull ring. But in the driver's meeting, we were
we were both laughing because at one point in the
driver's meeting they tell all the drivers and you you
were not allowed to flip off the flagman anymore. I
started laughing and just just funny. The different forms of racing,
(10:37):
right that's pretty competitive though. The Legends Charlotte I kind
of where that was, where that was founded, if you will,
was you know, it was definitely a dream for everybody,
from SMI and Humpy and everyone that started that. I
personally I hate Legends cars. Okay, sorry, I hate Legends. Yeah.
(11:00):
Actually Mark Martin saw me drive one once and he said,
you better stick to your day job. But there's so
unlike anything you drive. I mean, and I think to
some degree it's really good to get some of that experience.
But you know, like Jeff Burton, you know, he was
talking about his son Harrison, and you know, what should
I do, Bob? Should I go dirt? Should I go payment?
You know? Should I do the Legends car racing? And
(11:20):
and I really think that you get in a Legends
car and you tried it a couple of times and
you get an acclamation to racing and shifting and this
and that. But the pulp pushed, the pass and the
rough racing it really I think has some bad tendencies
for drivers. So get in, get out, moved to something else.
And that's what he did with Harrison, moving them to
pro late models and super late models at twelve years old.
(11:42):
Uh so I didn't even think about racing a car
until I was eighteen. You know, we were, um, we
figured out pretty quickly that we were not part of
the good Old Boys Club. And we got down there
and this was a guy who put him in the
car for whatever. It's like a huge race at the
end of the year. I feel like a million dollar
race or had the legends Millie and yes, so need
let's just say everybody is going there, and he put
(12:04):
Robert in the car to try and qualify for the show.
But what we figured out was they called him practice sessions,
first practice sessions, second practice session, but then they lined
the cars up based on the speeds from the practice
sessions that were really qualifying sessions is what they were.
They ended up being a fast group and and the
b Maine is really what it ended up being. But we, uh,
(12:24):
we learned pretty quickly that the fastest lap times of
the day would be running in the first session, which
was during the hottest part of the day, including the race.
And they did that because that gave them the best
starting spot. So they knew the tricks that we didn't know.
Like I said, part of the good Old Boys Club
where they cooking tires. I'm not gonna say who knows
(12:44):
what they were doing, but those cards were pretty fast
on a very hot race track. I can tell you
that listen. Soaking tires is part of the game of
legends car racing. Yeah, I mean listen, I've done it
in super late miles two. But you know, we used
to even my daughter's Bandelero, Okay, a bandalerro car, you're
always looking for the edge, and she wasn't great in
a bandalero. She got better with bigger cars. But you know,
(13:07):
we would take different soaks and you know, put him
in the valve stem and you know, put it on
the rotisserie and then really smells. If you smell it,
you're gonna you know. So we put like ground up
peppermint in there, and the peppermint with the soak would
kind of combine. It would actually smell like a tire.
So you learned certain that you could do trade. Yeah,
(13:27):
you can't always get the dirt from a racer, but
when you bring a broadcaster on who's no longer racing, well,
he can certainly talk about what he did in the past.
So we'll have some more from Bob Downer in just
a moment, stay with us. This segment of the Skinny
is brought to you by Dream Giveaway. Dream Giveaway has
(13:48):
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(14:09):
Check it out at dream giveaway dot com. Welcome back
to the Skinny. We have our colleague with us. Bob
Dillner has has joined us, actually has moved to the
north side of Indianapolis, so here full time now. Made
it very easy to get him down here. Rico Elmore
has joined me here once again inside of the studio,
and uh great to have you with us. Man Um,
talk to me about the progression. Maybe the fans don't
(14:30):
know that you're no longer part of Speed fifty one.
Certainly associated with that for many many years and did
such great work there. But you've moved to Indianapolis now
and full time at at Lucas Oil Productions in association
with my f TV. Yeah, so it's definitely a big
change for me. You know, work with Speed Channel and
back in the day TNNU moved to Speed and Fox
(14:52):
and uh that went by the wayside after season, and
I thought, I I thought my career was done. Honestly,
I got a call and started working with the folks
from Lucas and mav TV, and you know, we've now
been part of that. You've been part of that family
for a real long time. I've now been for eight
years and and all the while, you know, started speak
(15:13):
a d one back in two thousand and one and
grew that to become the biggest short track site in
the country and had a lot of fun with that.
Really helped build events, build some careers, work with some
great people, and uh, the r t A organization came
along and uh they acquired it, you know, a couple
of years ago, and UM, you know, they have definitely
(15:34):
good visions for that. UM. But at the same time,
I felt like I needed a new chapter in my
life and had been working with this organization, mav TV
and Lucas Oil for a long time. So UM had
that opportunity to move up here. My wife is from
northeast Indiana, so we kind of came back home a
little bit for her. For me, it's like, you know,
going back to New York, it's like the winters are cold.
(15:56):
So that's why I say, you're you're at luck with
your wife being from around here to get that pass
to come back. I haven't put snow tires on a
vehicle in like twenty years, and I just bought snow
tires from my wife's Tell Your Ride yesterday. So it's
a new world. But I like challenges, and I think
(16:16):
the vision of what Forest and Morgan and everybody wants
to do with mav TV, and uh, there is really good.
There is um a void I believe after Speed Channel
went away became FS one understood why Fox did it. Uh,
they were very strategic in their business affairs and it
worked out for them. But at the same time, when
(16:38):
Speed went away, and you know, it was tough, you know,
for you and me as racing fans, it was wow,
where do we gw stuff? And mav TV was there
and they start, you know, continue to grow and now
this year we're really focusing solely on mav TV and
American motorsports. Um. I know we have a lot of
international shows on their too, they're cool. But we're really
(17:01):
looking at some of the American motorsports, the motor sports
we have and the motor sports we don't have yet,
and looking at that and saying, hey, how can we
grow that, grow it for the players that are involved,
but grow the network as well, and maybe recapture some
of the fancy that the old Speed Channel had. And
and I mean that's the that's the whole thing. I mean,
I remember when you know, I've of course have been
(17:24):
a part of the Lucas family for many many years
and uh and and honored to be that. I've I
don't know that I've had anybody yelled at me quite
like Forest, but I deserved every bit of it. Uh.
When I started, you know, fatheads our business and uh
and uh you know he uh he had a vision
(17:45):
for what he wanted to do there, and I think
it got a little derailed in the beginning, uh in
getting there, which lesson, it's all about timing. No matter
what you know, if if if it went exactly as
planned right out of the gate, it's like Forest onld
ME one time he said. He told me many things,
but one of the things he told me was, I'll
show you somebody that made their money fast and easy,
(18:07):
because they won't have it. You know. So if you
make a great network fast and easy, then you know
what you don't appreciate. It is what he was getting at.
It's kind of cool, you know, And I think you
hit on a lot of cool points from the standpoint
of you know, we're not spring chickens. Okay, we ain't old,
but we ain't spring chickens. And back in the day,
I used to wait for Speedway Illustrated and speed Sport
(18:28):
News to come to my mail box, you know, on
that Thursday Friday whenever it wound up to find out
who did what the week before, you know. And now
everything's changed, you know, with social media, with streaming this
and that, and you know, it's a balance and it's
hard to figure out what that balance should be. But
I think the one cool thing about mav TV is
(18:49):
that while streaming is awesome, and I think it's a
viable means to entertain people, um and also inform them,
I think that you know that linear television is still
super important, especially from an advertising perspective because you get
all the streaming side of things and into some degree
that's a younger generation. But that live TV. Uh, nothing
(19:13):
can replace that because that that is, you know, the
the kingpin of what made motorsports right. And I mean
that's the same thing with the magazine, right. I mean
like what we you know, what we talked about was
geez who does magazines anymore? And Ken of course definitely
encourage me. Maybe I subscribe to that thought process, maybe
(19:35):
not to do it, but I mean the rumor, the
rumor mill is you know, print was dead, it was
going away. But as as it turns out, because it
went so dead, it actually has a bit of a
surge where you know, people still want to hold I know,
my wife, she doesn't want to read something electronically, She
still wants to hold a paper book, you know, when
she reads a book. There's just something to that. And
(19:56):
the photography, which Evan Smith does a favorous in our magazine,
but the photography just captures you and it captures that
moment and you know you can just sit and look
at a look at a really cool picture for you know,
for a few minutes and and analyze everything that was
going on there. So it for sure has has its place.
It does. It's difficult right now because everybody's still trying
(20:19):
to figure it out. You know, what's going to happen
with these apps? Who's gonna buy what? You know? Heck
I was. I was a cord cutter, right and I
went to you know, just everything based off the Internet
and apps and so forth. Um, that's what we're used
to now in our home. But at the same time,
it's just kind of evolved where everybody has a Hulu
or YouTube TV or something like that, and you're basically
(20:41):
back at the same price point you're where you were. Yeah,
So it's just weird, and it's it's weird on how
the racing industry has evolved. It's definitely being good, I
believe for the race tracks um through rights acquisition fees. Um.
It's not like it was when I began Speed fifty
wanted listen. If the rights acquisition fees were you know
(21:03):
then what they are now, I would have never been
able to build Speed fifty one. We built it on Hey,
join me, I'll help build up your event, and and
therefore we're going to have some rights to what you do, right,
And I remember that, which I thought was a genius idea,
and now it's changed to hey, you have two dollars,
you got a million dollars. You know what do you have?
(21:25):
And I can give you what we have And it's
definitely changed the game a little bit, and both I
think are all aspects are still needed. Um but like
you said, everything is evolved and in this age I
think is going to be defined in terms of the
racing television media industry within the next three years or so.
(21:46):
We're gonna take a quick break here. We're gonna dig
into some of the behind the scenes stuff when it
comes to television. Bob is up to speed on all
that and there's a lot of questions that we typically
get asked from fans that maybe we can address some
of that stuff here and help make the picture a
little bit clearer because it can be pretty complicated. Stay
with us, we'll be right back. This segment of the
skinny has been brought to you by General Tire. It's
(22:08):
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Tire dot Com today. This segment of the Skinny is
brought to you by Rhino Classifies. Tired of all those
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in we got you at Rhino dot Co. Welcome back
to the Skinny here once again. UH TV extraordinaire broadcaster
(23:13):
and behind the scenes producer Bob Downer in the house
with us and UH he really has a lot of
knowledge of what goes on behind the scenes. There's a
lot of spokes in the wheel whenever it comes to
television and you work closely with the network and the
network has UH has their items that they have to tackle.
Production has their items they have to tackle. The promoter
has their items they have to tackle, the racers are racing.
(23:35):
I mean, there's a lot of spokes in that wheel
that have to come together. The sponsors, of course a
massive part of that. So give us an idea of
where this industry is going, because, as we just talked about,
I mean, this podcast I Heart Radio is growing faster
than they ever have before. A bunch of podcasts are
(23:55):
out there, so they're commanding a little bit of airtime.
We have the apps commanding some air time. We have
regular television commanding air time. It's it's a wild wild West,
if you will, as mass chaos, honestly, you know, and
everybody is trying to steal an event from somebody else,
and you know, other people are trying to start series
and and throwing money out there, and you know, you
(24:17):
can throw money out there all you want, but are
you gonna stick? Are you gonna have that you know,
longstanding feel within the motorsports industry. So it's hard to
shake everything down right now. But rictually, the series director
for the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt series, he and
I were talking about that and they just have a
fantastic UM series. You know, with what they do, it's
(24:37):
definitely the leader in the dirt late model, realm, big money,
I mean huge, and next year is even bigger and
better than ever. But yet they have some people like, oh,
I'm gonna go over here on a cherry pick over here,
I'm gonna look for a big event over here. So
what can you do to make things better? And I think,
you know, to some degree, some of these you know startups,
(24:58):
you know, make things appear egger than they are. And
I think it's it's trying to make sure you have
that full package. You know, you have the races, you
have the racers, you have the money. Okay, then you
concentrate on the show with the promoters. Uh, it's definitely.
You know, you're tap dancing all over the place. And
social media is so important. You can make things look
(25:20):
huge on social media when they're really not. You know,
how many times do people go, especially the younger generations,
say well how many lights did my picture get? I say,
who gives a jump? You know? But at the same time,
that's kind of what makes the racing world go around
right now is oh that one viral? Oh did you
see that? What's the latest content that we can put out,
(25:42):
and I think to some degree it's getting a little
bit old school. You know. For the Winchester four hundred
and for the last year and a hair a year
and a half, I've promoted Winchester Speedway. You know, I
had a car that was stripped down, um, you know,
a lightweight for front wheel drive car and took on
the engine, the drive train, all that sort of stuff
out there. And if you remember back in the day,
(26:04):
one of the pieces of video that really did well
with Bob Jenkins okay and Larry newbert Um at Bristol,
they rolled the car down the banking at Bristol to
show the degree of banking, and they did that on television.
I believe it was ESPN. Well, unfortunately because of mother nature,
we weren't able to do that with just a four
hundred weekend, but still have the car sitting out there.
We were going to do something like that and just
(26:26):
put it up on social for people to see and go,
I gotta go to this racetrack. I gotta go to
this race, Yes, exactly, because it doesn't oh it's thirty
seven degree banking. Didn't you slide down on the st
or something I did, you know. And honestly that started
at at like my kids wanted to go uh sledding,
(26:49):
and and there's really not a lot. The one complaint
I do have is, you know, being from North Carolina
in the last twenty years with a lot of mountains,
there's not many mountains around this part of Indiana. So
we we said, you know what, let's just go out
to the racetrack. And I think we had like a
maybe eighteen inches of snow out there on the banking,
and I'm like, maybe it's little down. I don't know,
you know. So we went out there and now it's
(27:10):
still there on the banking. Uh. So I took my
my son's little plastic sled, went up into the banking
and I said to my buddy Robbie, I'm like, hey,
let's do a social piece on this and and try
to see what it does. And we should have tried
it before we did it, you know, because if we
if we made the run already, it would have been fine.
But the problem is it was at fresh powdered snow,
(27:32):
so three quarters of the way down the thirty seven
degree banking, I crashed. So but it made for good
social exactly. So you know, it's the whole things in evolution,
even the race promotion side of things. You know, I
think everything got back gate driven, you know, and and
promoters and and series and so forth started looking at
(27:55):
things totally the opposite way. Then. You know, some of
the promoters that I looked up to growing up, did
you know, and um, you know some of the promoters,
especially around the old open wheel ranks. You know, you
read uh, Dave Argenbright and Chris Economackie's book, and you
hear about some of the stories there, and you know,
sometimes you know, it wasn't completely factual, but it got
(28:15):
people to the racetrack, you know. And I think we
need a little bit more of that. We need less
professionalism to some degree, and a little bit more flair,
and I think we've lost a little bit of that
right now. Um, talk to me about the network side
of things that that people don't understand as well. They
work off of a different set of numbers. They call
(28:36):
them universe. So there's a certain number of viewers and
that networks universe. So mav TV will would naturally compete,
let's say, with the CBS Sports Network or an NBC
Sports network, which my understanding is that platform is going
to be completely different or going away. Is that correct? Yeah,
I mean it's all gonna be housed underneath um. You know,
(28:58):
Peacock Peacock, and you know, some of the programmings go
into USA and so forth, and some of it is
just gonna be streaming. So you talk about, you know,
a change in the scope of things, you're basically getting
rid of a network on NBCSN you know that's on
most satellite and cable providers and really forcing the streaming
side of things. You know, they're definitely um taking a
(29:20):
chance there. UM, But I still think it's it's really
difficult to um base everything right now. For the next
couple of years as this evolves, I think you need
to wait and see where the players shake out. And
you know, listen Forced and Morgan and everybody, they're committed
to American Motorsports. Um. I don't see anybody else out
(29:43):
there within this scope that we love so much that
are dedicated like that. So you know, we honestly owe
them a debt of gratitude. But I'm also really intrigued
to be part of the process because there's a lot
of different players, but to see where it's gonna get
because I think we have the opportun unity to do
something really big within motorsports. Yeah, I mean, going back
(30:04):
twenty years when we've said this on this show, I'm sure,
I'm sure you've heard it somewhere along the way. I mean,
I'm just hard pressed to think of a company that's
done more for grassroots motorsports in the past twenty years
than Lucas Oil Products has has done for this industry.
And granted, they used that industry to help build their business,
(30:24):
but they have stuck with that format throughout and they
they've never faltered and and nor are they faltering now.
And again they're they're following along the same lines with
their network. Now you look at Lucasotle Stadium where the
Colts play, all right. You know, I was with Forest
this past weekend and he's so proud of that plaza,
and he should be. I'm proud of it, not only
(30:46):
because of my association with the company, but because bike Alli.
Take a look at the cars. You got Earl Pearson
Junior's Late Model, you got Renaissestors, you know off road truck,
You've got Bobby Gerhardt's ARCA car, you've got you know,
PPL machines and spring cars, the two fuel cars. Yeah,
that that is really showing people what motorsports is all about.
And you're doing it on a different stage, a different
(31:08):
platform to where you normally would find out that information.
So that that's really cool. I mean, listen, he he
doesn't have to do this. That engine that's on the
on the on the wide floated version of the himy.
I mean, oh my goodness, unbelievable. He told me the
whole story. I mean, I've got a great forest story
about when when the stadium was almost well, they were
(31:30):
getting right open, and and he um. I either called
him or he called me, and I said, I said,
what are you up to? He goes on down the
stadium and I said, I said, awesome, Well he goes
why don't you come down and check it out? Now
there there hasn't been one fan in this place. So
now I'm getting the the v I P Tour by Forrest,
(31:53):
which there's no other tour like that other than him
explaining everything. It's like him at the cattle ranch going
through telling you about what this is and what that is.
In your head is just spinning like I'm lost. But
I mean, yeah, but that's another story in itself. With
(32:13):
noticing sick cattle or if there isn't one in one place,
and every different kind of tree on the planet, different
mushrooms planted, there's not much he doesn't know. So he says,
he says, come down, and he's, uh, he's he's standing there.
We're now we're up to the to the suite and
(32:34):
he's showing me the bar and you know, it's very cool,
very very cool. And he says he's he's just standing
there looking at something. And he shows it to him
and he says he believed this, and he shows it,
shows me the piece of paper it's how much they
charge you for a six pack of cokes? And I go,
(32:55):
you're right, you know what I mean. But that's that's him.
Although he spends the money to promote these things, he
is a very frugal man and watches every step of
the way. And that's what's made him unbelievably successful and
the company and Morgan carrying it on the way Morgan's
doing things. I I text Morgan as soon as it
(33:18):
was announced, uh, and I just told him, I said,
I'm proud of you did and I mean, I you know,
I Morgan's younger than I am. But there were very
few people that got invited to the wedding that got
to go back to the house after the wedding, and
I was I was blessed to be one of them,
and and many other great experiences with that family, and
(33:39):
and uh, it was just it's just awesome to see
because I think there was a level of uncertainty at
one point kind of how it was going to move,
you know, and this was way back, so not anytime soon,
but you know, what was the next steps with the
company and and uh, you know more again with Katie
(34:01):
and Katie Katie's uh mindset, and I mean it's just
they they've put together super team. And you coming in,
I was, you know, I was like, well, what happened
to speed Ffy one. I mean like I was, of
course completely confused, and I kind of knew a little
bit that you were doing some stuff, you know, kind
(34:21):
of in the background and doing some other things. But uh,
definitely a huge part that will help build I mean,
you've built it from the ground up before Okay, they're
not on the ground by any stretch, but you've built
it from the ground up. You know what people are
wanting to watch, what people are wanting to see and listen,
(34:42):
I mean, why did sr X do so well. Sr
X did so well because Tony and then put together
a Saturday night racing. It was great racing. It was
it was you were in, you were out. You could
set there for you know whatever it was, ninety minutes
or or sixty minutes, whatever it was, and you got
(35:02):
it and you got to see good racing. And you
were talking about the Lucas Oil Dirt Late Model Series. Listen,
They've been going back and forth with the World of
Outlaws forever. World of Outlaws, great series, good group. Have
had their handful of challenges along the way, like most
(35:23):
of us in business. But at the end of the day,
you know, if you want the Outlaw the wing Sprints
to come, you're gonna have to take one of these shows. Well,
Lucas doesn't have that luxury. We've got a great product,
and I don't know how it is now. I just
kind of know from back in the past that's how
a lot of that worked. But you know, the great
(35:43):
part of it is is Lucas says, this is the
product we have. We're gonna bring these racers and this
is gonna be a good show. And it is a
good show. So that's that's the cool, I mean a
nice part of it. You've got some good material. And
what I like, honestly is the fact that you know,
you know, Morgan is doing a job and Katie is
just so smart in in everything that she does, but
(36:04):
forced is still involved. He'll pop into meetings and you
know what he got this week? You know, and and
you know, we'll tell him we got this and that,
and and he's as attracted, you know, to the smaller
stuff as he is to the big stuff. Like a
couple of weeks ago, he was like, what do you
got this week? And we went through our GA and
Late Model and got O T E. Lucas Oil on
(36:25):
the Edge and he's like, oh, where's on the edge
And Jamaica Virginia Virginia Motor Speedway. We got mud Box.
Oh I love mud Box. Yeah. So I mean, can
you were involved with that from the beginning and I've
voice over some of the numbers on that. It's it's
really neat to to see how everything has progressed and
(36:46):
to get a broader scope of of things that we're doing,
and honestly the people involved and so forth as well.
So I'm just really amped up for it. Um. I
love the future. And I know sometimes that might be
boring talk, but you know when we talk about where
is that passion for the whole company, uh, including the motorsports,
realm is key to that success. Hey man, we want
(37:07):
to thank you for taking the time to come down here,
um and then take a look at the studio and
and real quick, it can't be that without Jen. She's
been around a long long time and I have given
her more headaches. Well, he mentioned on the Edge. So
that show was created by Steve Grind myself and Jen
was part of that process. Those three people created that
(37:29):
show and it it did so well when Whenever we
initially went out to Corona and met with Forrest and
Bob Pattison at the time, and they said they wanted
to be title sponsored for it and it was going
on speed and uh. I remember in subsequent years after that,
and at the time, that's what Forrest Forest wanted his
(37:49):
Saturday night short track racing. He wanted to go back
and when he was a kid watch Figure eight racing,
trailer racing, those gimmick races that are so much fun.
There's no thinking. You just sit there and you enjoy yourself,
you know. And and the trailer racing where you're like,
there's no way he can make another lap, dragging it
around on the attack. And I heard the guys in
(38:11):
and at the Cup races on a Saturday night would
be standing there watching it. Was a quick thirty minute show,
so they would be standing there watching it and we
would lead into some big races. Well, there were no
short There was no shortage of of months and weeks
where we were top five on the network in terms
of rating, and there was one time I think we
(38:31):
were second or third in the ratings. I mean, the
thing absolutely killed it and it was it was cool
to be part of it, you know, And and that
is what's really neat. I mean, we could sit here
and talk, you know, on and on about a bunch
of different things. But um, you know, watching some of
those Cup people all right, when you went in the
garage area and they said, oh man, that that that
(38:52):
Lucas Oil late midel Dirt series, that man, and that
is cool. You know. How about Davin Board, He's having
a heck of a year or they see the on
on the edge stuff from Anderson or Rockford or whatever
A gos the carnage from that those guys that Kevin
Harvick's the Jimmy Johnson's of the world. We're watching that
stuff and that's when you knew, Man, this is pretty cool. Uh.
(39:14):
And you mentioned jan I mean she is so sharp. Uh,
she's on point, she knows what she's doing, She's got
a great vision, and work with her every single day. So, Um,
she's one of those you know, Um, she she's one
of our leaders for sure, But I really believe what
she does in the motorsports industry. Honestly, she's one of
(39:35):
those visionaries in regards to what she's been able to
do from where she's come from. You guys working sister,
we pissed and Mona grown at each other like brother
and sister. We've been working together for near twenty years.
But she would be at an event and we would
be I would totally not be any help wellcause you know,
we would usually be partying and they're trying to work
a show, and she would make us to the line.
(39:57):
I mean, there was just a number of time she
knew what she wonder from the show or if we
said something wrong or made a mistake, boom stop do
it again. And and she cared about the show, you know,
which demanded immediate respect from us. It's like she you know,
she cares. She's she's part of the people that really
care and want this to be a good product. And
so I've always really respected her for that. And you're right,
I mean, she's extremely switched on. So um, she's a
(40:21):
she's a great addition to the team. And uh yeah,
I've been with her for for many, many years, so
it's it's been a good run for sure. And this
was a lot of fun here today. I mean we
didn't even get to the stories of me getting you know,
my my credentials and my suspended from NASCAR and stuff,
so I appreciate it. They could have gone down that
road and we would all love to hear the story.
So you'll have to be bad. We didn't even ask
(40:43):
you what your ugliest car was, or what you dip
chicken nuggets in or any of that stuff either. So
there's a lot of stuff there. But and that's what happens.
It goes by so quickly. So Michael has been yelling
at me for ten minutes to close the show up.
So it's all good. But thanks for taking the time. Man.
I know you're just a little bit north, but I
also know how busy you are, so it's cool for
you to come down here, take a little studio and
(41:04):
sit down and have a little bit of fun. Yeah. Absolutely,
it was a lot of fun and a lot of
fun to just chat. You know, so many times there's
interviews and what we do and um, you know, you
guys have a really cool thing going with a lot
of the guests that you've had on here. So I'm
definitely a big fan of the Skinny. So now you
know a little bit of behind the scenes stuff on
Bob Dylan. You see him on camera every now and again,
but know that he is heavily involved behind the camera
(41:25):
as well. I hope you learned a little something here
and now you know the skinny on Mr Bob Dillner.
Thanks for watching, Thanks for being with us here on
the Skinny. This episode has been brought to you by Toyota,
Rhino Classifies, Dream Giveaway and general tire For the latest
and sunglasses, optical frames, accessories and apparel, be sure to
(41:46):
check out bad Heads dot com that's bad Heads with
a Z. Production facilities provided by fat Heads I Wear Studios.
All rights reserved. The Skinny with Rico and Kenna is
a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from
my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
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