As you know, the NASCAR TV landscape is set to change substantially over the next six months. Amazon will join the sport. TNT will return after a decade away (via Warner Bros. Discovery). The CW will officially join in a couple of weeks.

Thursday night saw the first new show with Warner Bros. Discovery premiere. That is NASCAR Inside the Playoffs, a weekly show about the playoffs that will air on Thursday nights on TruTV with a simulcast on Max. You can watch the show on demand on Max as well.

Shannon Spake, formerly of FOX Sports, is the host along with Steve Letarte and Dylan "Mamba" Smith, NASCAR's "Hype Man." A fourth seat will switch around with various drivers on tap. For this week and next, it is Kyle Busch.

Compared to seemingly everything NASCAR-related that was produced by FOX Sports, this set looks rather cheap. The first thought that came to mind was the weekday edition of rpm2night back in the 1990s that John Kernan hosted on ESPN2. That version of the show premiered in 1996 in a Charlotte studio that is apparently being used today by ESPN for Ryan McGee and Marty Smith's skylarkings.

After the basic introductions, the show starts with something of a mini-recap of Darlington and some discussion of the finish. Having Busch here really helps since he was right there in the mix.

You saw a lot of the same things that I've seen in the past few days. Nobody thought that Chase Briscoe was going to be the guy Sunday night, but he was right there all evening, just lying in wait.

Busch and the panel disagreed on whether or not Darlington is a driver's track. Most of the panel thought that it was. Busch thinks that it's a bit more normal. However, the driver is the X-factor late in the race.

There was discussion about the Austin Dillon mess and Richard Childress' comments about how his final appeal being denied would "...change the final lap in NASCAR forever." I think that's a bunch of malarkey. Most of the panel agreed with my opinion in various different ways.

Spake is a veteran of NASCAR programming at this point. She's been in and out of the sport since about 2005. In that time, she's served in a number of different roles including as host of NASCAR RaceHub.

The show finished up with a preview of Sunday's Quaker State 400. Of course, since it is a superspeedway-type race, anything can happen.

Having watched this show, the closest facsimile to this show that I could give you would be NASCAR Victory Lap, the post-post-race show that NBC Sports used to have on the now-defunct NBCSN that Parker Kligerman was part of. The format is more or less the same (review the race that just ran, discuss a couple of topics, preview next week, wrap).

As noted above, NASCAR Inside the Playoffs looks cheaper than what seemingly any of NASCAR's media partners would put together. There's an argument that such a setup would put more emphasis on the content, but knowing that this was shot out of NASCAR's new production hub in North Carolina, it feels like they're cutting corners. The new YouTube show that Spake is hosting, NASCAR Daily, has not premiered yet (the first show will stream at 10 a.m. ET Monday), but it seems like it's on that level.

Is NASCAR Inside the Playoffs a decent show? I think so. Does it really move the needle all much? Not really. It doesn't do anything new, but it brings racing discussion back to television after FOX Sports killed off NASCAR RaceHub in June.

The first episode really seemed to have everyone on one side and Busch on the other in discussions. Maybe not the best way to go about things. I know how that feels. That was a good chunk of college for me. 

More seriously, you might not get all that much debate. It seems to me that debate and discussion will be a big part of this show, much more than it was on NASCAR Victory Lap. If everyone agrees on everything, you might not have much of a show.

In future weeks, you'll have different voices on there since Busch's seat is a rotating chair. I don't know who's going to be there after next week, but since the show's based in Charlotte, they can tap a number of people to participate.

Should this show exist? Absolutely. Ideally, this show would air after the Cup race finishes. You wouldn't be able to have current drivers on the show in-studio, although the possibility of a satellite cut-in from the track would be possible. Perhaps a show along these lines could air after TNT's races next year. If it does, it would be on TNT and not TruTV. The Max simulcast is built into the new TV deal, so that would exist as well.

As for NASCAR Daily, I want to see what that show will ultimately look like. Do I think it could possibly replace NASCAR RaceHub? Heck no. Could it be solid? Perhaps. I'll have something on NASCAR Daily next week after a couple of shows have aired.

Phil Allaway is the Newsletter Manager for Frontstretch.  He can be reached via e-mail at phil.allaway@frontstretch.com. Photo is courtesy of Nigel Kinrade Photography.