Long Distance Competition/Ultracycling, Randonneuring and Endurance Cycling - PBP Television Coverage?

I was wondering if any of the cable sports networks had plans to report anything about the 2011 PBP.

I might be tempted to actually have cable TV for a month.

Last I heard, rando wasn't much of a spectator sport. ;-)

SP
Bend, OR

Last I heard, rando wasn't much of a spectator sport. ;-)

Well, I don't know about live coverage, but with the right editing, you could turn it into a huge human interest story. Could easily follow four or five riders from around the country through their early season training, qualifications, preparation, the start, and footage and interviews on the course and at controls. Would be good for a dozen episodes of reality-format TV. For networks less devoted, they could do something similar for one week's worth of one-hour episodes, with the last three dealing with the ride itself.

I can't imagine there being any coverage. I certainly haven't ever heard of there ever being any TV coverage of PBP. Not a single cyclist I know outside of rando events themselves or rando forums like this one has even heard of randonneurring, let alone PBP. To the general TV-viewing public in America, this stuff is archane/obscure in the extreme. I don't even think I would watch it, and I am way more interested in PBP than 99.999% of the population. No, I think they'd rather watch the world championships of poker or another next top model show or something like that. This is not a put down, but it's obvious you don't know what kind of garbage is on TV these days.

I've been interviewed at PBP a couple of times, usually around Villaines la Juhel. Local French TV, of course. No international TV coverage but several folk have done DVD documentaries before and during the past couple of PBPs.

Google search came up with this interesting result:

http://www.pbp-films.com/index.asp

2011 videos, photos, and other content.

http://www.parisbrestparis.tv/index.php/en/web-tv