GCN shutting?
Comments
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What did discovery get for their £70m that's still worth £4m?
"Unfortunately these days a lot of people don’t understand the real quality of a bike" Ernesto Colnago0 -
Viewers.
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I did wonder with the closing of the website mentioned above, whether Cillian Kelly would be leaving, and just saw a tweet from him to confirm it.
If you are not aware of him, he's the Irish chap who used to maintain the website, and also is a treasure trove of cycling facts from across a huge timespan.
In more recent years he has been involved in some actual articles/filming as well, the most notable for me was when he trained for, and completed the Etape, probably 2022 I suspect.
He was also a really natural and at ease presenter, sorry to see him go.
Regarding the website, I'll be honest and say I never visited, I only watch some of the content on youtube, and used to have the GCN app.
Felt F70 05 (Turbo)
Marin Palisades Trail 91 and 06
Scott CR1 SL 12
Cannondale Synapse Adventure 15 & 16 Di2
Scott Foil 180 -
No they didn’t. The rights were with Eurosport/discovery. They paid for a platform. It always frankly looked like a daft acquisition. The intention was to get the return on the documentaries. But the market just wasn’t there. Even people in the industry barely watched them, let along Joe Public.
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Dan Lloyd is the only crossover I think. The rest of the team were always contracted by Discovery/Eurosport
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I really enjoyed the documentaries, and watched a good volume of them, the travel bike packing ones, easily watched a dozen of them, plus the profiles on notable riders of the recent past (Kittel, Schleck etc), and then the 'projects' they had, I forget the exact names, but they had some KOM challenges with teams of amateurs, and then there was a project with a few amateurs where they tried to train them up for a road race, all those last few with that DS from EF, Tom Sotham.
Some of them were a bit lengthy but on the main, I found them very entertaining, and sometimes informative as well.
They just officially announced on the gcn show yesterday that they are now separated from Discovery, that they will be finding a way to return to being able to watch the back catalogue of films and documentaries, and will be making new ones, so from that I would take it they had decent viewing figures from the previous platform, as I can't imagine making these lengthy documentaries/programs half way across the world is going to be a cheap affair, so they must have a decent level of confidence to go back there again.
Felt F70 05 (Turbo)
Marin Palisades Trail 91 and 06
Scott CR1 SL 12
Cannondale Synapse Adventure 15 & 16 Di2
Scott Foil 180 -
So what's the tl;dr on what happened? GCN sold to disco and then disco cut it up and chucked half of it away?
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Yes, move on.
I jest....
GCN (PlaySport). In effect Warner Bros bought Playsports several years back. Warner own the broadcast rights for live cycling & launched GCN+ to access a market for live cycling, then having captured that closed GCN+ so all that viewership moves to their Discovery+/Eurosport subscriptions. Selling GCN back to previous owners simply means GCN is exactly the same as it was pre-buyout of Playsports by Warner. Everything that GCN+ had (including the excellent documentaries) was during the Warner period.
The GCN website has also closed.
GCN intend hosting the documentaries on YouTube for a membership fee, which will allow them to complete unfinished ones and create more.
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Disco found that they couldnt make the money they thought they could out of cycling. I am also guessing that the guys at Discovery/Eurosport that wanted to "double down on cycling", are not there anymore.
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Lloyd has confirmed he will no longer be on the breakaway or doing any commentary for cycling.
Massive miss that from Discovery, for me he's been one of the very best finds over the past few years.
Intelligent and humourous comments and observations.
I was hoping we'd hear more Lloyd and less Kirby if I'm being honest.
Felt F70 05 (Turbo)
Marin Palisades Trail 91 and 06
Scott CR1 SL 12
Cannondale Synapse Adventure 15 & 16 Di2
Scott Foil 186 -
"I was hoping we'd hear more Lloyd and no Kirby if I'm being honest."
FTFY
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I occasionally watched the GCN features, but I can’t imagine paying extra subs.
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They've got rid of the sensible one - and left the others......
All Road/ Gravel: tbcWinter: tbcMTB: tbcRoad: tbc"Look at the time...." "he's fallen like an old lady on a cruise ship..."0 -
It beggars belief….
But if it’s Daniel’s decision then I am cool with that.
Edit. I won’t bother with “The Breakaway” any more. For me, it was on the balance of fun & insight and I fear that the Blyth element will tip it the wrong way, without Daniel nudging the handlebars back towards the racing line.
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You are assuming it was a discovery decision? (I am not saying it wasnt, but I can imagine that the split might not have been amicable)
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We can all imagine what we like, it’s the internet.
I personally believe that it’s all a nefarious plan by Tharg The Great and that Dredd will eventually sort it all out, but that’s maybe just showing my age
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Ah it wasn't me that made the call, they are just rumours 🤐
I couldn't really tell from his tweet whether it was his decision, or made for him.
Felt F70 05 (Turbo)
Marin Palisades Trail 91 and 06
Scott CR1 SL 12
Cannondale Synapse Adventure 15 & 16 Di2
Scott Foil 180 -
Surely you would watch the first few 'breakaways' and then decide. Seems foolish to decide that if Dan's not on you won't watch. He wasn't there for every Giro stage.
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You'd think its not beyond the realms that Dan could still be contracted by Eurosport / Discovery alongside his GCN work. How hard can that be?
How do we go about starting a petition ?
Scott Foil RC
Scott Addict RC
Trek Emonda1 -
Looks like Dan is out in Florence at the moment
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Nah, I didn’t watch it for the Giro.
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Is / was Breakaway only on the main ES channel during Giro? Didn't get any episodes appearing, but then I was using the ad free multilingual stream option, usually on catch up.
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There's three streams, the e1 with adverts, the premium one with no adverts but the UK eurosport, and the multilingual which is just the racing.
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Depends if they fell out. Which is perfectly possible/likely.
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Let's not forget that Dan Lloyd was with GCN from the outset (as far as I recall at least) and it might be that he thinks he's going to enjoy that more than being just another voice/face on Eurosport.
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It's possible isn't it, or they might have demanded he worked X amount of hours that he wasn't prepared to do, OR they could have even said we want you but you need to leave GCN - maybe.
Felt F70 05 (Turbo)
Marin Palisades Trail 91 and 06
Scott CR1 SL 12
Cannondale Synapse Adventure 15 & 16 Di2
Scott Foil 180 -
I seem to recall him popping onto this forum from time to time?
Hopefully he'll see this thread and give us the lowdown. Or better still, tell us he's continuing with ES
Scott Foil RC
Scott Addict RC
Trek Emonda1 -
Ah yes, I had forgotten about that - his tweet sounded like it was final, I can't see there being any changes this year in the situation.
Felt F70 05 (Turbo)
Marin Palisades Trail 91 and 06
Scott CR1 SL 12
Cannondale Synapse Adventure 15 & 16 Di2
Scott Foil 180 -
Looks like he’s being replaced by Dani Rowe who I think I remember isn’t high on your list of favourites?
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