Summary: Each week, I ask a member of the racing community to shed some light on their career path. Up next: Daniel Norwood, who heads SiriusXM Radio’s NASCAR channel. This interview was recorded as a podcast but is also transcribed for those who prefer to read. Full disclosure: I occasionally do some work for SiriusXM Channel 90, so this could be viewed as a conflict of interest (but that’s not why I did the interview).<br> What falls under your purview for the NASCAR channel at SiriusXM?<br> First of all, thanks for inviting me to do this. I got my hair done. I hope I look good on the podcast. When you write the transcript, make sure I look this good, OK?<br> I’ll put in parentheses: “(Has nice hair).”<br> Thank you. I appreciate that. Make me look taller, if you would.<br> I am the Senior Director of NASCAR Programming, which is really a big fancy title. In radio terminology, it means I’m the program director. I always boil it down to say I do the hiring, the firing and decide what goes on the air.<br> So when shows come on like “Happy Hours” with Kevin Harvick, you’re the one that’s going out and got that and decided to put that on the air?<br> Yeah, you know, everybody has a boss. I have a great one, Steve Cohen. He has bosses, the President and CEO (of SiriusXM), and so forth. But yeah, it’s largely myself and my team working with Steve Cohen, and we just try to find something that’s unique and creative.<br> And in those particular cases (with Harvick), they actually came to us and said, “We have an idea. We’d like to see if you would be interested.” Of course, we were immediately interested. Then you’ve got to go out and try to find some sponsorship and find a way to pay for the show, and that’s kind of the genesis of how those things begin. It’s usually just with the passing of a conversation, usually at the garage or something.<br> That one came about because of the success of Tony Stewart Live. Tony used to do a show with us. He did a weekly program back in the early days, maybe back in 2007 when the channel first started, then dropped down to a handful of times throughout the year. But we got a lot of attention. I think they saw that, and of course Kevin is working on his broadcast career for the future when he hangs up the helmet and thought this might be a good place to go.<br> That’s pretty interesting. So obviously, there’s only one job like yours where you’re deciding all the NASCAR programming and all the hosts and all the shows. How did you get to where you are today? Did you grow up wanting to be in radio at all?<br> No, it was never in my mind in the early days. I wanted to be a psychologist, which in some ways I actually am today. “Sit down and tell me about your problems,” that’s a lot of times what we have to do in a managerial role. But that’s what I wanted to do for as long as I remember, I wanted to be a psychologist.<br> Secretly — and I never really said this to anybody other than my wife — I always wanted to be a comedian. That was my dream. To this day, if I could get over my stage fright — I never told anybody, I don’t think, but I’ve been writing comedy for 25 years. I write it every day, and it might just be a line, sometimes it might be a couple of pages, but I write stuff and I put it off to the side. I don’t know. One day, maybe. A friend of mine, I used to write, he used to perform, and it was a lot of fun.<br> Like stand-up material kind of thing?<br> Yeah, that’s what I enjoy the most, and when I’m away from the racetrack you’ll find me, if not in the movie theater, then in the comedy club or something like that. I just love to live in those environments. I find the more I’m around it, the more ideas that come my way.<br> But nevertheless,
