Coverage of the Vuelta a Espaņa will follow OLNs exclusive daily LIVE coverage of The Tour de France in July. Beginning September 4th and totaling a distance of approximately 2,023 kilometers, the Vuelta a Espaņa takes riders through six plains and over 11 medium and high mountains. The race includes one team time trial race, two individual time trials and one hill climb time trial. The race will air LIVE on weekdays with a tape delay broadcast on Saturdays and Sundays.
Sounds similar to the Giro coverage, i.e., it's VCR or TiVO Time again.
I've been reading the OLN message boards and word is out that there will be NO live daily coverage of the Vuelta. Only a one-hour recap show covering the entire Vuelta is planned! Take a look here:
Screw OLN. Seriously, they can go to hell. And I don't care if they gave us lots of TDF coverage, 'cause the only reason they covered it was because of Lance.
Only Lance Network indeed. If there's no Lance, they take little or no interest. I will never watch this network again. A 40 minutes recap for a three week race??????
Let me know when they show an interest in bike racing and I'll give them another chance.
And yes I know they covered the Vuelta last year. Probably because a Postie had a great chance at winning.
Laggard, with viewers like you, why would anyone show cycling? I am sorry we are part of a fringe sport but that is the way it is. OLN showed more of the Tour than anyone ever has and you complain about it. All we need is people like you to complain and cycling will be relegated back to Wide World of Sports like in Lemonds day.
Laggard has a point. Why the heck would they only show a 40 minute recap? Did they feel like because Lance won't be there, then there's absolutely no interest? They really think they can show flyfishing, power monster trucks, infomercials, surfing, poker, bullfighting, etc., but when it comes to ROAD cycling, it's nothing of there's no Lance Armstrong. Like cycling just doesn't exist if Lance isn't there.
You'd think that they would ride the Tour wave and use the interest created from the incredible amount of coverage they gave us for the Tour to maintain their customer base and show more racing. Instead, like the day after the Tour ended, we got zero coverage, and it looks as though they have no commitment to providing anymore coverage until when? I guess whenever it is that Lance decides to ride again? That will probably be almost another year before that happens! Sheesh, give us something in the meantime. Cycling isn't all about Lance- the sooner they realize it, the better. Maybe then they'll really commit to giving us full and complete coverage of all the bike races. If they can't, they should let me know, because my cable provider said I can only have OLN if I have the premium channels, and if OLN is only going to give us the Tour, then I'll just cancel my subscription until late next spring, when the classics start up again. There's no use to paying for OLN if I am not going to use it. Let all those poker and flyfishing fanatics pay OLN's bills instead.
Laggard, with viewers like you, why would anyone show cycling? I am sorry we are part of a fringe sport but that is the way it is. OLN showed more of the Tour than anyone ever has and you complain about it. All we need is people like you to complain and cycling will be relegated back to Wide World of Sports like in Lemonds day.
Trust me. What they choose to show has nothing to do with viewers like me. 99ers are the reason we even get any coverage on OLN and they are also the reason that OLN will have zero cycling coverage once Lance retires.
Why? They've shown the Vuelta in the past. USPS will be there even if Heras doesn't ride for them anymore they're still the team that won it last year.
Heck they showed us the Giro and LA has never ridden that.
Laggard's right, this does suck. I used to wish LA would ride more races just so we could see how he'd do over a season.
Now I wish he'd ride more races just so we can see the races.
Life is not one damned thing after another. Life is one damned thing over and over.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
My guess is that the numbers for last years Vuelta were poor so the decided not to show it again. They went ahead with the Giro this year and if I remember right the numbers were also poor.
Since it was reported that the numbers for the TDF were decent, this can only mean that the majority of TDF viewers do not watch the Vuleta or Giro.
Prediction for next year: If Lance does the TDF only, OLN will show it and only it. No more classics, Giro or Vuelta. If he does decide to do some other races, we'll get to see them. If Lance retires, say bye bye to cycling on OLN.
Do we know of any other alternatives? I'm considering cancelling my cable package and just getting the Dish or something like that. I have comcast right now, but I'm also going to put a call in to other cable providers to see if they have some other channels not in comcast like Eurosport or some kind of European channel. Maybe if I can find a cable channel that offers cycling on a different channel, I can bypass OLN completely and still get my cycling in. I didn't get my OLN package finally just so that I have to wait a year just to get cycling shows! Sheesh!
Trust me. What they choose to show has nothing to do with viewers like me. 99ers are the reason we even get any coverage on OLN and they are also the reason that OLN will have zero cycling coverage once Lance retires.
Yep you got it.
But I'm also not going to complain about it, it's at least one race (and one of the races I want to see) that I can watch with plenty of coverage. As opposed to years ago where we still had ZERO coverage of the other tours and classics (re-caps once a week are a LOT more than we used to get), and we had a 1hr show on CBS once a week that highlighted very little cycling. Or many years ago when we had to watch the 20 minute blurb mixed in with other sports. And then having to wait a month so we could get a 5 page article in a cycling magazine.
Do we know of any other alternatives? I'm considering cancelling my cable package and just getting the Dish or something like that. I have comcast right now, but I'm also going to put a call in to other cable providers to see if they have some other channels not in comcast like Eurosport or some kind of European channel. Maybe if I can find a cable channel that offers cycling on a different channel, I can bypass OLN completely and still get my cycling in. I didn't get my OLN package finally just so that I have to wait a year just to get cycling shows! Sheesh!
I don't think the "mini" Dish packages have any decent Euro sports channels, if you have the room for a big dish you may have better luck as they usually are able to pick up quite a bit more international stations.
In 2001 and 2002 OLN's Giro and Vuelta coverage was almost the same as it's TDF coverage - live in the morning, replay of the live coverage in the afternoon, then a 1.5 hour replay in the evening. It was almost heaven. Last I think they only showed the live AM show, and it seemed like that got pre-empted sometimes. Because of travel and and a dying VCR I did not see a single Vuelta stage last year.
I would be happy if they at least showed 1-1.5 hour recap each day, even if it's aired at 2 in the morning. Those of us who work days can't watch the live show anyway so it really doesn't matter when they show it if it's not prime time.
If we want to see coverage then we have to let OLN know that there is a market to show the race, there was a petition floating around the net somewhere, tell all your friends, post info about it on every message board you go to, etc.
TV is just business, OLN has to pay money in order to "win" the broadcast rights to the race, if they don't have enough viewers they can't sell commercial time for the race, which means they lose money on the deal. Show them there is a "big" audience and I'm sure they will change their minds about it.
I could see what you're saying, Ajay, but if you look at their forums, it's the cycling forum that gets the most posting and threads. The other forums they have for stuff like bullfighting, fishing, hunting, etc. have very little participation. You'd think they'd see the popularity of cycling just by looking at those forums, yet they decide that their hunting and fishing shows are going to generate more business, so they devote quite a bit of time and airtime broadcasting those types of shows. If they actually put the effort into the Vuelta that they put into the Tour de France, they would find that they could generate more viewership and interest (and therefore, more money) than deciding that their hunting and fishing shows will be the moneymakers.
Well, I'm going to drop OLN from my package if this isn't figured out by the Vuelta. No use in paying them when they won't even broadcast shows that are of interest to me.
... than deciding that their hunting and fishing shows will be the moneymakers.
Not disagreeing, but maybe the decision isn't entirely in OLN's hands. If, say, a fishing lure or boat company wants to spend more advertising money, then fishin shows is what ya get.
I'm still trying to figure out the logic of OLN sponsoring a bike racing team. What good did having their logo on a USPS team jersey do?
Make your banana pancakes, and pretend like it's the weekend.
I'm extremely suprised. I really don't get it. Cycling viewing has been as big as ever for them this year, and the Vuelta has been excellent on OLN since they started live coverage. I thought I read something from them saying they had been trying to show other monuments besides the TDF to the public.
September without watching the Vuelta is really a more empty September.
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Originally Posted by dws5b
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