I'm a Verizon FiOS customer pained to have lost Universal Sports and the Giro.

Both Uni Sports and the old Versus (now NBC Sports) are a part of the NBC Sports network, which is now a Comcast property. I'm afraid Versus is going to disappear from my FiOS, too, at some point in the future. This whole segmentation, monopoly, competitive marketplace, antitrust stuff is going to be something. I may have to sacrifice some small furry animals to keep a large flightless brightly feathered peacock that shows my cycling. Alternately, as much as I hate to pay for things on the internet, it's probably going to be in my future.

As for Versus, it seems to be a simple programming decision -- they picked the TofC over the Giro and opted out of doing both since they still needed time to run all those back episodes of Babe Winkelman and the fishing dudes.