Eurosport, Home of Cycling
Once again, the "home of cycling" is showing tennis in stead of the the final stage of the Giro - tennis is overrunning and Giro was scheduled to start from 13:40.
This happens so often.
The other day they had literally 10 or more channels devoted to each different tennis match - why can't they do that when matches overrun to keep everyone happy?
Is it just me, because I never ever seem to see anyone else mention it on here? Where are you all watching it??
I'm on Europsort Player via Samsung TV.
PS I know there is coverage now on the 3rd Eurosport channel, but it's without any commentary - the commentary coverage is the one cancelled / delayed for the tennis match overrun.
This happens so often.
The other day they had literally 10 or more channels devoted to each different tennis match - why can't they do that when matches overrun to keep everyone happy?
Is it just me, because I never ever seem to see anyone else mention it on here? Where are you all watching it??
I'm on Europsort Player via Samsung TV.
PS I know there is coverage now on the 3rd Eurosport channel, but it's without any commentary - the commentary coverage is the one cancelled / delayed for the tennis match overrun.
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Hugely frustrated as have packed and rushed so much this morning to get tuned in at 13:40!
Sorry, rant over now.
They ruined the highlights with that ridiculous bit of programming.
Out of frustration I emailed and tweeted them and didn't get any sort of response, and at no point did Eurosport put up any sort of "Sorry for the technical difficulties" banner.
I must admit that coverage this year has been better than the last couple of years when it was dire (constant freezing, loss of commentary and scheduled races just not being shown with no explanation), but Eurosports approach to customer satisfaction / quality is extremely poor in this day-and-age.
The problem is, they enjoy a monopoly in a (relative) minority sport so why invest when us mugs have no alternative?
I'll allow them the odd WATTS to fill in the gaps.
The Tick-Tock Grunt ball game and the motorised bikes did over run Live Cycle Racing which had a low priority and David Duffield did so much on our behalf to improve our allocations with the classics (RVV & PR) then being put on Live for a couple of hours.
There was no Giro on Eurosport except in the ES News roundup.
The 1973 Liege-Bastogne-Liege Highlights (only) was scheduled that evening and instead they put an International Ice Hockey Match on Live. I phoned my wife on my way back from Liege to be told about this and in the two hockey intervals is where ES slipped the L-B-L highlights in so I told her to record the fooking lot.
Later the German "Analog" ES did show the Giro (and other races) as this became the International ES while we continued with English Speaking Analog ES.
I'm on Cable with British ES (& Bike) because my satelite has got blown off location, viewing these days is so much better.
https://youtu.be/q8LaT5Iiwo4?t=94
@deejay's post reminded me more of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo
My blog and pod...
Beers of Belgium Cycling Club UK
It'd be really nice to have some docs like BIKE do, Incycle or movies or suchlike.
(I actually know the answer - 2015 numbers - for those two races. I was just wondering what people perceive the audience to be)
Small. 50k ish.
Anyway, for each of the cobbled monuments they got about 120,000 in 2015. The highest watched race of the year was the Paris stage of the Tour which was 220,000
ITV4 gets a lot more for the Tour. Close to a million for highlights of big Tour stages.
Viewing figures are on the up though.
I am always amazed at how viewing figures tail right off as soon as you move away from BBC1 and ITV.
The likes of Strictly and the talentless shows owned by Mr Obnoxius would only get a couple of hundred thousand viewers if they were on BBC4 or ITV2.
Iirc* a good day for top flight Rugby League on Sky is around the 300k mark, so those are actually pretty strong numbers for a minority sport on a minority channel.
*from memory of an argument on a rugby board years back which was started by the resident treiziste. censored if I'm actually googling to check the veracity of my memory though.
This is the best thing about Eurosport. Generally they show the sport, then when the sport is finished, they show another sport.
It goes downhill when they decide they need to do previews, analysis and podiums and stuff.
Read a number of years ago that snooker pulled in their biggest numbers.
Pretty decent viewing figures there. ES highlight shows are a bit dull, just the last 30km or so, shown 'as is', C4/ITV show has always been a much more polished highlight show. But I guess a bigger budget.
Whilst, yes i concur that some other sports over run their slot, i don't so much mind if the snookerists are finishing a frame, or the grunters are finishing a set. If that was my sport, I'd be pretty peeved if the coverage abruptly ended mid flow. I do think it is very different when (for example) motorsports are being shown; the car/bike/hgv race has ended, presentation made but still we are shown key highlights of the action, again and again, delaying coverage of the cycling even further. Save that for the highlights show, when it isn't stopping the broadcasting of live events. Agree with abrupt endings though - fair enough if live coverage of another sport is replacing it, but another 15minutes of WATTS?
Cycling
214k Tour de France
141k Vuelta
91k Giro
Tennis
464k French Open
321k Australian Open
78k US Open
Snooker
186k World Champs
108k Welsh Open
Football
134k African Cup of Nations
93k Women's World Cup
200k World Superbikes
70k Athletics World Champs
Now over at ITV4, their peak Tour de France audience was the live coverage of the Paris stage - 1.19 million - beaten all year by only three Rugby World Cup games and a Europa League tie. Their best for a highlights show was 880k - the stage Froome won. The Vuelta highlights peaked at 386k.
Source: www.barb.co.uk
For instance while checking the Giro Young Rider qualification being !st January 1991 which to me was only yesterday and these people are fully grown 25 year olds. So if you blink, then you too can be as old and that goes so fast.
They whinge about a Yellow Jersey who can't change gears and expect the other racers (who can change their gears) to stop and wait, or a rider runs out of road and into the snow etc.
Do these people ever race or even ride a cycle.
Oh, we know why we should leave the U.S.E. (EU) and govern ourselves democratically.
My blog and pod...
Beers of Belgium Cycling Club UK
None of this came from the help section on ES. I don't know how many times I have sent help queries and I have never got a reply.
W - Wiggle Honda
"This year will be harder than last year. But that is good news; this year will be easier than next year."
I'm having the same problem, with ESplayer freezing at times. If you do a Google ' video freezing on Windows' you'll find it's not confined to ES, adjusting hardware acceleration does help. Unfortunately for me, having integrated graphics I can't adjust that setting, so, been doing a lot of refreshing lately.
W - Wiggle Honda
"This year will be harder than last year. But that is good news; this year will be easier than next year."