Happy New Year! January 4, 2009

Claire B. Blog
January 4, 2009

Greetings friends from my studio in Charlotte, NC!

I wish you all many blessings in this New Year! Thanks for all the nice emails and instant messages with wishes! You all mean a lot and I appreciate it greatly. To all of you – thanks for following the show and keeping in touch with me and for the friendship and great racing conversation via email and on the air over the past year. Now, as we pack away the holiday trimmings — and welcome in what I hope is a positive New Year for all of you -it’s time to go racing isn’t it?

I promised that when I was about to go back on the air I’d write and let you know. Although formal announcements are forthcoming I have a lot going on and have a major role in SIRIUS NASCAR Radio starting next week and I wanted to keep you all posted. Hopefully, many of you were able to hear the LIVE broadcasts of “Dialed In” when I was in the SIRIUS Studios in New York City for Champions Week in December. I hope you enjoyed the special broadcasts.

I am going to be very busy returning to SIRIUS NASCAR Radio in 2009 -and will be anchoring pre and post race broadcasts, putting together broadcast specials, anchoring live broadcasts from all special events in 2009 (Sound and Speed in Nashville, the Lowe’s Motor Speedway Media Tour, Fan Fest, Daytona etc.)

Yes…. I’ll be anchoring “Dialed In” as well – and the first official “Dialed In” show will be at 7 p.m. this coming Wednesday on SIRIUS NASCAR Radio channel 128 and on XM for “Best Of” subscribers on the “Best Of” SIRIUS channel 128.

As I said, I will be extremely busy taking you live everywhere on SIRIUS NASCAR Radio that special events are going on and very busy taking my show on the road covering the NASCAR circuit this year again. I will be leaving for Nashville on Friday and broadcasting “Dialed In” Friday and over the weekend from “Sound and Speed” from the SIRIUS XM Studios in Nashville. I love taking you into live events and to race shops and broadcasting from the track where action is happening. I will be doing that as well as “Dialed In” in 2009. It’s going to be exciting to take you on the road and to events with me and whenever I have news breaking you will hear it on the channel – and I’ll be checking in each night at 7:00 p.m. EST once things start rolling.

As to how the holidays went – thanks for asking.

First off, my birthday is not January 1 and any information on Facebook as to my birthday was totally incorrect. This blog (Claireblang.com) is posted on the social networking sites but since I did not update my personal information – somehow the sites computer automatically put January 1 as my birthday and tons of you sent me emails wishing me a happy birthday. My birthday is in August so thanks for the wishes but I am not a New Years baby! 🙂 Geeze how many birthdays does someone need in a year?

The other thing that I wanted to write about was all the economic woes that the sport is going through that seem to be the main and sometimes only story line topic everywhere you turn. While I have spent a great deal of time covering the economics of NASCAR and I have so many friends who are affected within the sport —people are hurting everywhere. Every business and every sport and seemingly every American is affected. What we need now is not to ignore the economic story – of course not –It’s major –but to get back to covering more than just the easiest picking off the story tree and focusing only on that. I’d like to get back to covering racing and my wish in 2009 is that we start to see a turnaround in the economy in general for you all- that we start to see any inkling in our lives that we can begin to enjoy sports again – and that we can start to pick up the pieces, all of us in America, and turn things around.

I think we do that by working hard. We do that by being extremely thankful for our blessings if we have a job and helping others if we know people who do not. We do that by finding things about whatever sport we enjoy (football, basketball, hockey) to give us something besides the grim news to talk about. I am a positive person by nature and I am feeling deep inside that it is my job to work harder to find compelling stories that have not been told yet about players in the sport, and to tell those stories the best that I know how.

My commitment in 2009 is that I want to take you live to more events than you could possibly ever go to anywhere else other than SIRIUS NASCAR Radio. I want to take you inside, make you feel as if you are at the parties and inside the shops and at the special events and I want you to know how important you are as we share stories and wrangle and debate and laugh and enjoy another season inside this sport. I want to keep seeking to be unbiased and fair – and to find more sides to a story than just a simple opinion.

I’m excited to be back on the air and I will have so much to tell you when I return this coming week.

Again thanks for the friendship. A shout out to all my friends in racing, both those who are in the sport and those who lost jobs and are waiting to find positions to return. And, a shout out to all of you coast to coast no matter where you live and no matter what you do for a living. Your story is important too.

Thanks for the emails.

I’ll catch you back on the radio this coming week on SIRIUS NASCAR Radio, Channel 128.

Happy (Not my birthday :)) New Year to all of you!

Enjoy the day!
Claire B

P.S. Can’t wait to talk with you again on the radio. Stay tuned for more news on this blog and for me to be writing here more in 09. I got a digital camera today so that I can post more up to date and inside photos on this site…so get ready for that as well.