Anyone else frustrated trying to watch the supposedly ‘LIVE’ coverage of the Prologue on Versus?
I keep hearing how ‘grateful’ we should be about this ‘increased’ coverage, but while North Americans were treated to 65 minutes of the Three Amigos setting up the event and recapping last year’s race & Lance’s comeback, blah, blah, blah, EuroSport coverage had a solid feed of the riders (with only 1 commercial).
My husband is currently in the UK and was on the phone to me while it was on - their coverage rocked! Total commercials during 2 hours of EuroSport feed: 3! We had that many in the first 10 minutes…
To add insult to injury, the EuroSport coverage was 1 minute ahead of the Versus.
Definitely better than nothing. What’s the alternative? Live feed with 1 commercial in the US? Maybe on the net…not on TV. I’ll take it. I was happy to get two hours of coverage and not a short 30 minute program.
So far I am disappointed as well. How can satellite feeds work rather well in the Alps during le tour when a rain storm throws off all transmission in California? There is a lot I don’t understand about Satellite communications, but I expected more.
They filled the dead space with commercials. I was watching the 1 hour rebroadcast last night and dozed off during the 40 minutes of commercials and missed the finish.
Having worked in broadcast engineering, I think that budget and experience had a lot to do with the problems. The TdF has a huge per day broadcasting budget compared to the ToC. I recall past US marathon and auto race live broadcasts also having problems when bad weather kept the helicopters on the ground. The on the ground remote cameras send their signal to the helicopters which then relay the signal to the broadcast headquarters, I don’t that that satalites have much to do with the show production.
Having worked in broadcast engineering, I think that budget and experience had a lot to do with the problems. The TdF has a huge per day broadcasting budget compared to the ToC. I recall past US marathon and auto race live broadcasts also having problems when bad weather kept the helicopters on the ground. The on the ground remote cameras send their signal to the helicopters which then relay the signal to the broadcast headquarters, I don’t that that satalites have much to do with the show production.
Whenever something doesn’t work in my life, I blame satellites. I just expected higher production value from something out of California, which I’ve always viewed as the center of ‘stuff like that’, video, movies, etc. But what do I know? I’m just a Wisconsinite.
In a way, the crappy production value made it feel more authentic to me. Like old school TdF.
We are lucky that it is on at all. I did not think there was much of a difference between yesterday and the VS TDF coverage really. Weather sucked so they could not fly planes and copters and therefore they could not relay the signals. Did not look like fun riding conditions at all. Reminded me of Harriman a couple of years ago. Nothing better than 47 degrees and pouring
x2. It wasn’t so long ago that race coverage was relegated to the back pages of the sports section, usually a couple paragraphs’ worth if that. For better or for worse, these are the golden days for U.S. cycling fans, considering we all have multiple ways of finding race coverage–as it happens. I’ll take it, happily!
I watch it on the Amgen site which I’m guessing is the same feed as Versus and it is pretty much like last year - when the weather sucks, so does the coverage, but when the weather is good, the coverage is also. I don’t recall seeing any ads but I only caught the last 30-45 minutes. A one minute delay doesn’t bother me.
Too bad its not on Universal Sports. They like to broadcast their events live. I guess only the TdF and ToC are the only two cycling events still on Versus.
As far as I know, it isn’t the rain that is causing the transmission issues, its the wind. The last few days we have been having sustained winds up to 15 miles per hour and gusts up to 60. I wouldn’t want to be in a helicopter in those kind of conditions. I’m not sure about that, but I think that is the issue.
Can I just say, I’m totally disappointed in Versus’s use of the Indian female reporter…I get it, they are trying to go with the “dumb reporter” and trying to bring in more viewers, but I honestly think its more of a slap in the face of the real cycling fans. I could care less if it was trying to be funny, it was more stupid than funny. Last time I checked this is Versus, they arent going to all of a sudden just gaining viewers. People are going to watch because of the cycling, thats it.
And I get that she was trying to be “funny”. I get that, but its funny to start with a joke, but to have her whole segment as a “joke”, it kinda voids the whole point of her. It was more about making sure she was funny than having a fun segment with the unknown bike rider, and I think thats where it went wrong.
Another note…I guess from some of the comments from teh riders, it totally looks as if todays cyclists are so dependent on race radios in races. It sounded like yesturday the riders didnt want to chase, but Chris Horner basically told them that they had to chase down Mancebo to get the time gap closer. I knew race radios helped alot, kinda cool to see that Horner stood up and said, “screw it, lets go chase him down”. I have to say, it is disappointing though that riders basically are so dependent on race radios to do anything in races now.
