Laggard

bbbean 

This is a huge pet peeve of mine ESPECIALLY when I'm DVRing a pre-recorded race in tghe middle of the night and they off set the schedule by 20 minutes to show some other pre-recorded sporting even that I don't care anything about. I understand that live events can complicate programming, but is it really that hard to schedule your pre-recorded shows so that they actually show when they're scheduled to? Nothing more frustrating that watching 2-3 hours of a bike race and then having the show cut off 5 km before the finish. Racus interruptus.

FWIW, I worked in radio for 15 years, and we knew how to fill time when a live event ended earlier than planned, or a guest didn't show. I can't imagine we were more skilled than MSNBC.

BB

Gerryattrick

I'm beginning to suspect you have a bit of a bro-mance going on with Froome.

dbf73

Because of this, I routinely set my DVR to add 2 hrs to the scheduled end of the program. Works a treat 98% of the time

bbbean 

Yeah, that's great if you have unlimited DVR space, but it doesn't work so well when all that extra time starts bumping other things off your DVR.

Ultimately, there's no good reason they can't run a pre-taped and edited race in the advertised timeslot.

dbf73

but what can they do when the live event in the preceding time slot (or earlier in the evening - trickle down effect) runs long?

Marcus_Ti

Cut the pre-race crap...like they've all taken to showing.

I happily mute Greg Lemond and his pimply-faced hipster teenager sidekick every chance I get.

bbbean 

The same things every other broadcaster does when they cover live events:

1) Budget more time to begin with
2) Edit non-essential portions of the programming
3) cut out station promos and non paid ads
4) etc.

Lets remember that they're in this business, and should have a pretty good idea of how long sporting events take. They're also running lots of pre-recorded and delayed sports events in a row over night. We're not the only ones missing the end of the game/race/match because the posted schedule was running 20 minutes late.

Lets be honest. We all love to watch teh full race, but if you watch a 3-5 hour road race, there's really only an essential hour or two - wrecks, breakaways, and the finish. They could cut out 20 minutes of trivia and watching guys pedal in the peloton and we'd never miss it. But cut out the fireworks in the last 20 minutes of a race, and you've lost the best part.

Gerryattrick

A football match takes 90 mins plus extras for injuries and half time. Here in the UK Sky will often have a 3+ hours slot that involves endless pre-match talk and post-match "expert" analysis telling us what we've just seen for ourselves.

It's not enough to like football, you have to live and breathe it.

Meanwhile lots of "minority" sports such as cycling, squash, badminton are hardly shown outside the marquee events.

Marcus_Ti

Funny fact...Fox (parent of Sky) pulled this stunt in the US for the FIFA women's final:

The Women?s World Cup final starts at 7 p.m. ET Sunday despite what Fox is telling you | For The Win

DiabloScott

Versus cut away from the Amgen Tour of California one stage on the run in to THE FREAKING SPRINT FINISH because the race ran long and they had to go to the pre-recorded hockey pre-game show. (2010, Stage 3)

Laggard

I remember many years ago a UEFA cup final going into overtime and ESPN (i believe) cutting away to show a poker tournament.

Gerryattrick

I take back what I said about little cycling coverage here in the UK

The last two days we've had prime time coverage on BBC of the two day Ride London cycling festival with both the early public rides and the later men's and women's professional races. At the moment I'm watching the pro men's 100 mile race which has been ridden over much of the 2012 Olympic Games course and will be finishing up in the centre of London in just over an hour. They'll soon be going up Box Hill - short but sweet!