Road Bike Racing - will there be any live coverage in the U.S. sunday?

i know OLN isnt broadcasting stage 8 live, anyone know if someone else will be showing it live? ESPN or one of the major networks maybe?
and will OLN's prime time coverage show the full stage, well atleast the last 3 hours, like they've been doing?

Originally posted by shaharidan
i know OLN isnt broadcasting stage 8 live, anyone know if someone else will be showing it live? ESPN or one of the major networks maybe?
and will OLN's prime time coverage show the full stage, well atleast the last 3 hours, like they've been doing?

No... OLN shows the tour.

There is this hour thing on the tour at 1PM or so on ABC sports or something (I don't know as I never watch it when they show those on the tour weekends).

The coverage for OLN in the evening would be just like the live coverage, I would presume.

well thats better than nothing i guess. wonder why they arent doing live coverage, that usually only happens if someone else bought the rights for that day since it's always appeared that it would be an important stage.

The CBS show at 2pm (EST) Sunday will be their usual review of the first week of the Tour. So Stage 8 will get short shrift. In feeble defense of the CBS show, sometimes there are some better-quality video clips than the pixellated mobile-cam stuff we see on the regular coverage.

We're probably lucky that OLN was able to retain any rights at all to Sunday coverage, so we can at least watch the replay in the evening.

I just keep reminding myself that what we have now with OLN is an absolute banquet compared to just a couple of years ago, when we had essentionally nothing.

RichC

I agree, OLN is cool. We might still be able to listen to the broadcast online.

Apparently more Americans want to watch a taped program of "Shotgun Journal" than watch le Tour live. This is the unfortunate state of the popularity of cycling in America. :mad:

The reason is because CBS has had a long standing contract to air Tour coverage on Sundays. Back in the old days (read a few years ago) this was our only TV coverage and we were overjoyed to get that! You johnnycomelatelys need to realise how lucky we are to be getting the coverage that we do now.

i dont know if the johnnycomelately coment is directed towards me, but i am happy with the current coverage. i was just curious if there was live coverage, not complainin about what we have.

Originally posted by shaharidan
i dont know if the johnnycomelately coment is directed towards me, but i am happy with the current coverage. i was just curious if there was live coverage, not complainin about what we have.

It was not directed at anyone. I was just make a general statement. It was more of a joke really. Kind of like an old man saying, "Kids these days have so easy. In my day we had to walk 1000 miles to listen to some one read about tour stages in december inthe snow backwards!":D

Didn't ESPN used to show daily live coverage?

hehe ok Kev ya got me :)

I was more depressed than angry. I too suffered through the ESPN and ABC years.

Originally posted by brent_dube
Didn't ESPN used to show daily live coverage?

Probably. In the pre-OLN days the Canadian sports channel (TSN) did daily tour coverage. It was just a few years though.

Originally posted by brent_dube
Didn't ESPN used to show daily live coverage?

I dont know. Maybe? I took most of the 90's off from watching/owning a TV.

They did a nightly 1/2 hour recap of the days stage.

Originally posted by KevinG
I dont know. Maybe? I took most of the 90's off from watching/owning a TV.
You didn't miss anything worth feeling bad about.

I recall the CBS coverage... the usual sort of "this is bordeaux (sp?), known for its wine" yada yada history yada yada local color yada yada commercial break. The high point of a TdF day was locating a post on usenet news describing the stage and providing results, 12 hrs ahead of the newspaper (if you could find one that covered it at all).

Yep. Compared to now, almost as bad as walking 1000 miles backwards in the snow.