SBS in australia
 

well i was just watching the tour de france on sbs as virenque was in the last km up mt ventoux then without warning the broadcast ended. i thought it was a broadcasting error of some sort. then looked at the tv listing and it says 1:00am - 5:00am, temporary closure.

they boast they're showing the stage live then cut it off at the worst possible moment as the stage was about to conclude! i am gutted! b@stards!

cabledonut.

you didn't miss much, Virenque, won the stage and Lance retain the yellow jersey.....,

I actually taped it because it was on too late for me. I don't want to sound incredulous, but I can't believe they could do that. Actually, having seen the general standard of television sports coverage (which only barely exceeds the general standard of television) in this country, I probably could.

When we were in Australia we saw the SBS coverage at 6:00 and thought it was very good. Is SBS considered cable? If not you are getting better coverage than we are here in the states. We have basic cable coverage (no sports) so we have no coverage. We are following it on the internet. Tomorrow (Sunday) one of the channels will do a recap and that's all we'll get to see.
Here we get a 1 line report from the sportcaster that basically says that Lance is so many minutes ahead of the other riders.
I agree that Australian TV leaves a lot to be desired but, in this country, with so many channels there's not much to watch either.
So you might as well go for a bike ride!

SBS is what you in the states might refer to as 'network television'. It doesn't cost anything to subscribe to it. I suppose we shouldn't complain about it, but to cut-off a stage like that to go to a 'temporary close' is pretty poor in my view.