Lots of interesting chatter in comments about the coverage of bicycle racing in the Age of the Internets. I’ve been at it for about 20 years now, and the changes I’ve seen have not all been for the better, any more than they have been in the mainstream media.
We in the press were late to realize how easily we could be bypassed. Think of the media as this great stone edifice, an imposing castle standing athwart the road from News to Youse. None shall pass — not without paying tribute, anyway.
Well, Al Gore and his pals done went and built a bypass — the high-speed Infobahn — and now sleepy Journalism Lane gets about as much paying traffic as the frontage road alongside I-25, formerly known as Highway 85-87, if I recall correctly.
The organizers of the Giro are giving their video away — I’ve been watching the race on the Gazzetta dello Sport website. The Amgen Tour of California folks were doing the same thing last year. In neither case did I have to install any extra bits of this and that to make it happen. Other events, like the spring classics, can be had via pirate video — sites like cyclingfans.com hunt down high-quality streams like fly fishermen on meth.
Nobody invites me to the strategy sessions at Competitor Group Inc. HQ in San Diego, for obvious reasons. But if they did, I’d ask whether we’re trying to secure the rights to stream video from the grand tours. And if we’re not, then how come?
Sure, it has to be expensive, if it can be had at all, especially when those millions of eyeballs start a-buggin’ and the server farm commences to smokin’. And yeah, there are still plenty of cube dwellers who will settle for a text-based live update (easier to hide from the boss, don’t you know). Charles does a great job with the VN live, especially when it comes to promptly answering questions from the tuned-in tifosi. Me, I’m more of a color guy, especially if that color is blue.
But a text-based live update, no matter how well it’s done, seems so … last millennium.
I’m guessing most cycling fans want to watch the actual race, preferably augmented by some informed commentary. The CGI boss-fella is Peter Englehart — the Outdoor Life Network honch’ who was responsible for OLN’s acquisition and production of the Tour de France — so who knows? We may yet see some action on that front.
If not, things are gonna get awfully dark around the ol’ castle.
Mad Blog Media 
I don’t think it is unusual to realize too late that you have been strategically bypassed and your analogy to the fort in the road rings true. Battleship Row. Maginot Line. IBM Computers. Buying porn at the dirty bookstore. ICBMs and nukes, undoubtedly. Yeah, one has to learn how to win the next technological round, not how to preserve one’s superiority in Old Fartdom.
One would have thought the French would have known about the futility of forts in the road in 1940 after nearly losing WW I to the Schlieffen Plan, but I guess we are all slow on the uptake. By the time the French troops manning those Ouvrages knew what hit them, the Huns were drinking their wine and fraternizing with their women in Paris.
Me? Lately, I’m more amused by your sarcastic takes on all things to do with racing than with the races themselves. Its more interesting to me to flog myself up Camp May Road to the local ski hill than to watch a bunch of guys sprint around France looking way too young and buff. Now if the major outlets webcast La Grande Boucle Féminine, that might be different.
Good live text isn’t gonna die. I keep both running while watching my pirated video feeds. The bottom line is that the gaggle of drunks watching the same live feed I’m watching and commenting in Dutch, German, Spanish, Italian, or gods forbid English are very often full of shit about who is off the front, who is off the back, who just face planted at 75k, and even who just won the stage! Sharp eyes with good feed, quick hands, and the start list with racer numbers (no, Phil, he’s not in the race this year….) can really help when you have to take a shit, or make a sandwich, or satan’s mittens go to a meeting for an hour…..
I agree the print media has got to adapt to survive, and it’s so unfair to all the print mags having to pump out free content on the web to stay afloat. I can only hope the web advertising offsets any losses. Problem is, no one has come up with a profitable web scheme yet. Fee subscriptions to web sites or live feeds is about the only answer, and I think the New York Times has a fee model for their web edition. I would like to see those fees somehow waived for those who already carry a print subscription like myself, of course!
Not to be too selfish, but I want it all. I want facts AND opinions. I want pre-race, race, and post-race coverage. I want live video broadcast, and and I want post-race highlights. I want slow-motion hi-def 3-D. I want a soundtrack. I want a scorchingly hot weather bunny. I want retired pros chiming in. I want drunk locals. I want live text. I want cartoons. I want graphics. I want a telestrator. I want to win free stuff.
I think Khal is spot on about sarcastic commentary. I like Patrick’s and CP’s takes on the live text feeds. To me, they’re not over-the-top. They’re informed. They make me laugh.
Example: CP commented that Vino got busted for having too much blood in his blood. I thought that was a funny, simple way of explaining Vino’s suspension. Some guy wrote in and told CP to leave the snarky bits out. Immediately a poll opened to vote on keeping or excluding snarkiness. Brilliant! And of course, VN voters overwhelmingly voted for snarkiness.
I do need some basic info about the day’s course, who’s in, and who’s out. Other than that, I want play-by-play and color, just like listening to a baseball game on the radio. Paint me a picture, tell me a story, and entertain me.
I think VN hit on a great commentary team–Patrick, CP, and Hoody. Beats hell out of the talking heads who feel like they’ve got to explain to me what a rotating echelon is and how drafting works.
Jeff,
The problem is that cycling is not a ball sport. It can’t be squeezed into a nice two or three hour block of time with commercial breaks every five minutes to sell you crap beer. Try watching a football game (that’d be ‘the beautiful game’) that is NOT the World Cup and you’ll see what I mean. When ESPN/ABC/NBC/CBS finally figured that out…there were a few more games on the TV! They just took forever to find it.
As for finding it on the net, I am sure that it is out there. And I am sure that it is free. If you want it in English though you may be SOL. Turn down the sound…and learn a new language by trying to read the script. It can’t hurt. Besides you can always pretend to be Jim McKay and call your own game. You will probably be better at it than any of the “pros” who are ‘working at it’ at the event….calling it from the same TV coverage in a nice truck in the finishing town.
James,
I was being a bit facetious about what I want. Actually I’m happy watching the races live in Flemish and Italian, or catching highlights on all the different cycling websites. When I watch live, I catch the VN live text for details I can’t either sort out visually or can’t pick out from whatever language I’m hearing. However, I still want the scorchingly hot weather bunny.
I wasn’t joking about Patrick, CP, and Hoody. For the brief time they were doing the race text before CP had to leave, I thought they were great as a three-man broadcast team. I’d like to see all of them together for the rest of the Giro. It’s entertaining for me, and I assume VN would have to cut Patrick a bigger check for the increased time in the barrel.
One thing you guys CAN do is the snarky comments! Shill Phigget and Paul Lerwen won’t be doing any of those unless it’s by accident. There’s room for both but of course whether any money can be made at it is a different story. Reminds me of the bit I posted earlier about BiciSport/CicloTurismo — ZERO web content that I know of, just a wonderful, timely print magazine each month for 5 euros at the local newsstand. I suspect they’re making a profit somehow…quality journalism is the key for me, guys write for these mags who’ve done their PHD thesis on Gino Bartali or Fausto Coppi…like O’Grady, they’re damn fine WRITERS who write stuff that’s enjoyable to read and worth every euro it costs.
The Marshmallow Project is an exercise where you put together a group of about ten people, then give them a box of spaghetti, a yard of tape, a yard of string, and a marshmallow. They have to build a tower in 18 minutes, with the marshmallow on top, and the point of the exercise is to see who works together better.
(Marshmallow … now there’s a funny word for you.)
Anyway, some researcher did this project with all kinds of groups, different professions, different age groups.
Of course, engineers, architects, and mathematicians did the best. As we would hope, given we drive over their bridges to take their elevators to the top of their high-rises.
But business school grads, lawyers, and government bureaucrats … they did among the worst. Lower than 1st graders. Mostly, it is believed, because they are trained to believe there is one right way to solve every problem, the most efficient way, and that they are uniquely trained to tease out that one right way.
(CEOs of Fortune 500 companies did better than the adult average, but worse than the 1st graders. But when you put a secretary on the team with the CEOs, they improved their average tower height by 50%. Kinda says that it’s the workers making the company great, and not necessarily the leadership.)
There’s one other psycho-cultural aspect at play. Mass consumerism has created a product-centric (and not user-centric) environment, where the idea that the road to success is by securing the success of your products. But products are just solutions. Solutions to a problem. Actually, they are attempts at a solution, and there’s nothing to say that they are the only or best solution, or that the best solution is necessarily the same solution year after year.
And when you take your eye off of the problem and focus too much on the product, you forget what problem you were trying to solve. And sometimes there’s a better answer than the one we came up with X years ago.
One more thing to mix into the equation is the relationship between institutions and open collaboration. Institutions provide direction and a moral compass, but are slow to change and spend a significant amount of their time worrying about the health of the institution and not the problem they were created to solve. (Has a government agency ever declared success, announced that the problem they were created to address is fixed, and then disbanded? When Lincoln formed the Dept of Agriculture, there was one government employee for every 10,000 farmers. Now there’s practically a 1:1 ratio.)
Collaborative bodies, such as the blogosphere, Wikipedia, or the Linux community, are quicker to move, more responsive to the will of the people … but often rudderless and morals-neutral, with the question of good/bad harder to answer for each of their moves.
Interesting times, to say the least.
WRT cycling coverage … next time you’re watching football, try to call the game yourself … but instead of telling anyone who has the ball and how far he’s running, try keeping track of every offensive and defensive lineman, who’s blocking whom, and which blocking technique each is using. That’s cycling. Tiny race numbers on tinier jerseys on even tinier bodies, all doing their impersonation of electrons in a U-235 molecule. So I just expect nothing but dry wit from the commentary, if I get anything else, Bonus!
Gotta add, CP has the live update down. He zigs when you think he’ll zag, g’nips when you’re looking for a g’nop.
(But he was wrong on my Tyler / Cipo comparison question! Tyler was clearly wearing one white shoe and one black shoe cover when he took stage 2, a la Cipo’s old two-toned Northwaves. )
It does scare me that someone would pitch a fit and storm away, feeling the need to tell us that he’s leaving, just because of a stray sarcastic comment. (Calling Cadel “Cuddles” seemed to piss off a few.) Guess it’s the equivalent of canceling ones subscription, and I’m also guessing lifelong pros like you guys have seen more than your fair share of such behavior over the years. Makes me want to direct them to Patrick’s “Ok, listen up!” section for a little reality check.
The “color” is often as interesting as the race. But you gotta be pretty keen to do good color and otherwise, you (Phil & Paul) are just giving me more time to raid the icebox. Which is why the VN team does so well. Patrick may not want to brag, but he is a damn good writer. My ever critical wife, the English professor, is rolling on the floor after some of his posts. The VN crew is good stuff.
There is a place for print media, whether printing with ink or with electrons. It just has to figure out what it is and how to make a buck. We still get the Atlantic and a few other mags around this chateau for those days we don’t get home too worn out from life at the Bomb Factory to put on a thinking cap. Speaking of factory…gotta run.
Was listening to the EuroSport feed during one of the spring classics and Sean Kelly and his partner (can’t remember who) were going on and on about some green socks that some fan mailed in for Kelly. After five minutes of discussion on the art of knitting, one of them finally said, “Listen to us … we sound like we’re covering a cricket test match, not a bike race.” Still, over a six hour race, you need moments like that.
Classic Pelkey:
[Comment From JBaldy ]
Does the time trial champion of Canada really count?
C.F.Pelkey: Well, I suspect that it counts more than anything you or I have achieved over the course of our illustrious careers.