TNT will simulcast this weekend's NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Coke Zero 400 on truTV, marking the first time the channel has carried a NASCAR race. Turner has been adding sports to truTV's schedule for the past two years and has made it one of the channel's which telecasts NCAA basketball tournament games. truTV's coverage will be exactly the same as TNT's. Race coverage will start at 6:30pm ET Saturday with the prerace show, "Countdown to Green." The race starts at 7:30pm. Another Turner channel, HLN, also will play a part in race coverage -- HLN's Robin Meade will sing the National Anthem and will conduct interviews with troops attending the race. Those interviews also will be featured on "Morning Express with Robin Meade" on HLN during the following week. The race will mark the culmination of the initiative "NASCAR Unites -- An American Salute," which honors American troops. Turner Sports will produce the race in its "Wide Open" format, which means no national commercial breaks. Instead, Turner will run commercials alongside the race in a letterbox widescreen format. National advertisers on the telecast will include AndroGel, Coke Zero, Dodge Ram, Geico, Goodyear, Sprint, Toyota, Twitter and Viagra. Local commercial breaks will still be part of race coverage.
