Finally got OLN today, Woo-Hoo! Got to watch the Ventoux leg. Probably old-hat to some but it's new to me!

And what a "natty looking maple leaf, Isnt it?

Congrats, I upgraded my service to include OLN for this month only

Truth is that the Ventoux stage was probably the stage to see. Virenque was amazing... what panache! What elan!

Yes, watched the recap of stages 10-14 tonight. It was great!
I've had a C-band dish since 1988 and was a hard case about it. But with the increasing prices of analog programming I finally switched to digital. Plus the addition of OLN. It was only available on KU band on the big dish, and I didn't have an KU LNB. Also got a TIVO unit thrown in on the deal. TIVO is pretty cool.

One of the better stations but still lacking in mountain bike coverage. They have some great extreme sports shows though

I have the At&T cable, and unfortunately, we don't get OLN. My beef is that since OLN took over broadcasting the Tour, the other networks don't even bother to do any type of coverage. I heard more about the Tour back in the old days than now. So I've heard almost nothing about the Tour, and I'm thinking that next year, I'll probably just go to France. At least I'll have an idea of what's going on.

For what it's worth, whenever Lance does something, there's plenty of coverage. I like and admire Lance tremendously, but at the same time, I do want to see more about what the other members of the team AND the other teams on the Tour are doing.


Koffee

Yes, OLN does need to boost its Mountain bike coverage, playing shiprwrecked over and over.. but I have yet to catch a mountain bike race!
And the "Ride Guide" is too short!

so there!

I discovered to my surprise that my cable service includes OLN. Then I discovered that it's channel 239 and my Samsung TV apparently only goes up to 125!

I saw the OLN schedule and it does include mountain biking. Apparently, OLN canada is going to start showing MTB next week, if the tv guide is right. I hope so- something to watch between grand tours.

Rumor also has it that OLN canada may air the Vuelta this year, but it's not certain. Truthfully if they don't improve their coverage of cycling I'll delete it from my service until next year's tour! I could care less about fishing and dog shows.

I do agree that it sucks that with OLN buying the rights, no other station can air the tour. That's why we got OLN in th first place- that's how they suck you into cable!

Down here anyways, Thursday is cycling night! There is usually a Norba or WC race coverage and a gear guide specific to cycling. It's not great, but better than nothing!

L8R

That would be great. Some of the toughest races are in mountain biking. Test of Metal in Squamish/Whistler comes to mind. Generally I have always been disapointed by sports coverage in Canada especially by TSN (damn pool, darts and curling). OLN is the closest thing to my area of sports with extreme sports at times.

Besides shipwrecked they also show a lot of those dog shows.

You're lucky! My cable provider doesn't even offer OLN. I can, however, watch 1/2 hour of Tour coverage on FoxSports channel. It's on during the day... times vary from day to day, but I set the VCR and watch later when I can.

Still, it would be nice if OLN struck some kind of deal with ESPN or another more dominant channel. Oh well.

I'm glad that OLN has live audio coverage on the internet at least! I can listen to that when I'm at work.

Part of the reason that OLN has exclusive rights stems from OLN taking a chance on bringing road racing to North America at a time when it was thought to be unpopular. ABC and CBS had been attempting to "introduce" their viewers to this type of cycling with little success. They didn't realize that the way they were cramming it down our throats (a TV technical term) was not the way viewers wanted to see the races. The networks had synopsized, condensed coverage of the week that consisted mostly of graphics, brief highlights and (hey look at my make-up) talking heads.
Along comes OLN and signs deals to bring live and replay coverage with almost what Europe is seeing, and they find the viewership skyrocketing. Several years down the road (now) OLN has a vast following for cycling and doing a relatively good job at it.
I commend them for taking the chance and admire them for their success. If you want to see what coverage was like before OLN, watch the CBS wrap show on weekends. Yuk! (another TV technical phrase)
Signed,
Another pompous know-it-all

Ain't that the truth!

Tarantula is absolutely right- OLN has finally brought cycling coverage to TV, and we can onlky hpoe that it will improve as the audience grows.

And yes, sports coverage here in canada really does suck. Every time we get a new sports network, they show endless crap- darts, curling and other stupid stuff like speedboat racing. However, one thing we have over the americnas is Olympic coverage. The olympics are only every two years but I wouldn't trade our coverage for the horror movie that NBC has made of the Olympics. When all the americans were cursing NBC, we had three networks showing Olympic coverage- CBC, Radio-canada and TSN (who broadcast the longer events such as curling and some of the hockey games).

ANyways, in terms of cycling coverage, we have a long way to go but it's still great that OLN is doing this. Now I'm hoping that during the Upcoming Commonwealth games, the CBC will show the track, road and MTB events.