How is it that now that I have over 200 cable channels, I was able to watch more track and field and swimming when I was 12 years old in 1964. I remember indoor meets from Madison Square Garden on TV every other week thru the winter. Wide World of Sports showed more swimming back then than we can find now.
OLN shows some bike races, but a 24 hour channel dedicated to tri and running,swimming and cycling events as well as discussions, reviews and demos ala slowtwitch would be unbelieveable.
I don’t get cable but when I am at the inlaws I actually like to watch the fishing… I also like to watch the biking… maybe you would feel different if you fished… The hunting doesn’t float my boat though…
The lack of response indicates to me that there isn’t a great demand to watch other people run bike and swim.
I agree that it is much better to do these things than to watch them, and I do my best to improve in at least running and biking.
I still would have loved to be able to watch the indoor World Track and Field Championships and many other events that get no coverage or as so many complained about Kona, very poor coverage.
As one of the few who paid for and enjoyed NBC’s Triple Coverage cable of the 1992 Olympics, I should probably stay out of marketing obscure sporting events.
What Francois? You mean you don’t sit in rapt oblivion watching “Hunting with Hank?”
I second the vote for La Primavera. I did a search for cycling shows for the next few months on OLN’s website. I didn’t see any of the big spring classics listed. What a shame. Americans need to see the other side of big time cycling. The Grand Tours are awesome spectacles, but races like MSR, PR, etc. offer some of the very best cycling in the world. Watching Museeuw put the hammer down to crush the field at PR would have rivalled any of LA’s mountaintop fireworks! Just imagine watching Cipo try to claw back to Bettini after the Poggio yesterday. That would be every bit as compelling as the final TT at last year’s Vuelta!
For that matter, I’d like to see them put forth some efforts covering the big tris around the world. Imagine a 3 hour OLN program on IM OZ. I’m sure they would do far more justice to our sport than NBC.
I’m sure it’s not an easy thing to get done, but it might be possible. For the Euro bike races for example, you would pick up the existing feeds, same for T and F.
Getting the Tour from OLN and the big Euro meets from ESPN or whoever would probably be a real problem. I have no idea what kind of money we’re talking about to get something like this going and this will not be a big money maker. More providing a great service and hopefully profitable.
I think there is more than a little interest in this. But unfortunately, in the U.S. the stations make a lot more $$ showing basketball or baseball repeatedly until your head hurts, then they would showing IM or a lesser known (in the U.S.) great Euro cycling event. I would be much more willing to subscribe to a premium channel that would offer these types of events, than any movie channel offered by cable or sat-tv programs. Having said that, at least the ESPN 1 hour coverage of various IM events, provides more actual race coverage than the horrible NBC 2 hour coverage of Kona. I wonder, since this is an international forum, does anyone have a tape or know a link to a place where we could buy another nation’s television coverage of IM events? I would think, language-wise the easiest for most in the U.S. would be Canadian, but I would rather watch in in German or French, etc. then listen to the dribble from NBC.
Unhip isn’t necessarily a bad thing when it comes to getting good tv coverage. People watch golf on tv fer pete’s, and that’s only slightly more interesting than, well, watching perfectly manicured grass grow.
One thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of the bigger name universities seem to be piggy backing minor sports coverage onto their general teevee packages. So if FoxSportsRegional wants to carry Georgia basketball, they’re also now carrying a certain amount of SEC volleyball, gymnastics, swimming, and baseball. It’s also way easier to find swim coverage of NCAAs than it is for any of the USS championship meets, probably piggy backing of basketball again there.
If more colleges had tri programs, we’d probably be getting a fair amount of college tri coverage as part of some sort of deal involving the Weber State, Southeast Missouri State, and Citadel men’s basketball coverage.
The volume of sports specific programming has increased significantly during the last decade with excellent coverage of, among other things, the Tour de France and adventure racing. My money is on this trend continuing. With many new broadcast venues opening I think there will be a day when Dan is bringing us Slowtwitch TV live from Xantusia. This could be a satelite broadcast or a webcast. Remember Quokka.com? They were decades ahead of their time in sports programming. That may be a glimpse f the future 6-10 years in advance.
Consider yourself fortunate that you aren’t the only tri-geek living in a rural area where the only things they are interested is huntin’ and fishin’. Oh yes, and snowmobilin’ in winter. The wife and I run, ride bikes and cross country ski. The locals think we’re from another planet.
I’ve been really dissapointed with Europesport in the past year. I remember a few years back they used to show Ironmans nearly every week, but I may be wrong (back when i was like 10-11). Now to watch some Triathlons I turn to ESPN (who were awesome with Kona, 90 minutes of good stuff). ESPN also aired Cancun and a roundup of the 2002 season, which rocked.