Le Tour-ITV Coverage stats

[dellzeqq]

I think Imlach and Boardman are great.



As far as advertising is concerned people should realise that some of the minor commercial channels (FiveUS, for example) have now got unsold ad slots. The market has gone down the tubes. Hopefully ITV will be able to promise to get Wiggins on the podium for next year.......

Karlos - how much did you pay for the show? Would £50,000 an hour be near the mark. (I know that you're not going to tell me....)

 

[andy_wrx]

Imlach, Boardman and Boulting were good, the problem is Liggett and particularly Sherwen.

I guess the issue is that their video feed and commentary are supplied to all English-speaking countries - Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, plus of course the USA.

They thus feel compelled to talk-up 'local heroes' like 'big Julian Dean' for the benefit of the NZ audience (although no Robbie Hunter this year for SA viewers)

Which is OK for riders like Dean & Hunter who don't feature that much - but does mean we had to put up with non-stop drivel about Lance Armstrong for the USA market : at times it sounded like the pair of them were trying to outdo oneanother with their jingoistic fawning towards The Great Lance (although of course Sherwen won).

Their commentary was blithely innocent of any intrigue or politics within the 'Astahhhna' team, in amusing and marked contrast to the much more balanced comments from Gary Imlach at the top & tail of each show.

As a programme aimed to be accessible to the casual sports fan rather than just to a much smaller market of hard-core cycling fans though, it's a very good effort and hopefully with these viewing figures we'll get more cycling on ITV4

What ITV4 have also one in the past is show highlights programs from other ASO races, like Paris-Nice and Roubaix, but the problem is that these have had so little announcement previously that I've never actually seen one, so this is an area in which you can improve, Karlos.

 

[Molecule Man]

Unfortunately I just cannot stand Liggett and Sherwen's incessantly shouty style of commentary. It's like a caricature of sports commentary, like what actors might do in an advert.

Actually, maybe I'm thinking of an advert that they have done themselves... Ring any bells with anyone?

 

[Tim Bennet.]

with their jingoistic fawning towards The Great Lance

That's not just driven by their need to cater for the US market.

Sherwen and Liggett are themselves the high priest and priestess of the Armstrong fawning sycophantic sect (European Division).

 

[Molecule Man]

As a programme aimed to be accessible to the casual sports fan rather than just to a much smaller market of hard-core cycling fans though, it's a very good effort and hopefully with these viewing figures we'll get more cycling on ITV4

I guess there is a bit of a mismatch between what I like in sports coverage, and what's good for the casual, once a year type of viewer (that's not meant as a criticism, obviously it is important to get new people interested).
I like the fact that the Eurosport commentary teams work together throughout the whole season, so are very relaxed together, they can provide snippets of gossip, they have little in-jokes, etc.
I watch a lot of their cycling coverage now, and a lot of their tennis coverage, and not much other sport, so this style of coverage works best for me, but I can see how it might be a bit off-putting and impenetrable to new viewers.

 

[karlos_the_jackal]

I don't know how much we pay for it now, but must be quite a bit. Its an indie that does the production for us, sunset & vine ( very good sports production pedigree, they do the cricket quite a bit)

Found out via this link thats its all looking good for 2010 and more live coverage

http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news...o-broadcast-live-tour-de-france-coverage.html

States that previously we paid £1m for three year rights (2001) and it would take it up to £5m with production costs.

with all ths enthuaism in cycling coverage you'd have thought we would of had a cycle to work scheme!

 

[girofan]

By the time you factor in the advert breaks and the previous days recap, you get little, coverage of the actual race. Thank goodness for Eurosports live coverage where you don't mind a few breaks over the course of 4-5 hours viewing.

Spot-on trusty!

It was the same with the crit. series recently aired, so many ad breaks you probably got 20 minutes of actual racing!!!

I know these programmes have to be funded but the ITV network can't resist putting in advert time to the max.

 

[Skip Madness]

Imlach, Boardman and Boulting were good, the problem is Liggett and particularly Sherwen.

I agree with this; the team are excellent apart from the commentary. It's true that Eurosport's entire package (both the commentary and the British Eurosport studio folk) are more aimed at the hardcore fan than ITV4's coverage, but considering the latter stuff is aimed at catering to casual fans as well, the presentation side of it is all well attended to.

 

[User269]

to many adverts

Absolutely right. The coverage should be on one of the main channels which are regulated, and where you don't have to endure 10min long commercial breaks.

 

[marinyork]

Absolutely right. The coverage should be on one of the main channels which are regulated, and where you don't have to endure 10min long commercial breaks.

Given ITV offloaded F1 due to pressure on it's main channel I'm not sure how realistic this is. I'm not a fan of ITV4 because of the pq and adverts but it's available free to air on satellite and free on DTT. I think additional races on ITV not on a red button service would be brilliant. The viewing figures have been better this year than last year too.

 

[Stig-OT-Dump]

Can I just say that me and my boys (9 & 7) thoroughly enjoyed ITV's coverage of Tour de France and of the Tour Series before that. We don't have satellite or cable but rely on the set top box (and ITV player on-line). It inspired them to get out on their bikes more and they now have cycling heroes (individuals and teams). Job's a good'n I reckon!

 

[yenrod]

Seems our coverage went really well (work at ITV doing risk management) should help with future coverage of other tours.

The tour de France has turned out to be a tour de triumph for ITV.

A fantastic 4.2m people tuned in to ITV4's coverage of the race across the three-week run, with nearly 300,000 individuals watching the highlights show each night - doubling the channel's average slot share for the year.

On ITV.com, the dedicated Tour De France online destination had nearly 1.7m page impressions - up by 17% on 2008. There were also 1m video plays, a massive 714% increase from last year.

The site, which included video catch-up, animations of every stage of the race, additional clips, Twitter updates, blogs, rider profiles and a podcast, was a hit with 324,000 unique users in July, up 58% year-on-year.

And the success also spread to our red button service. For the first time, full-screen live streaming was available via the red button and this interactive service received around 0.5 million interactions, with 0.25million of those being views of the video – an increase of 250% year-on-year.

And it wasn't just about the numbers. There was plenty of critical acclaim for our coverage too, with Esquire magazine calling it the "the greatest show on Earth" and the Daily Mail also singing its praises.

The red button wasnt availble when I tried so EUROSPORT !!!!!!!!!

 

[jpembroke]

How long until Sky Sports have exclusive rights to the TdF? If they are pouring money in to the new Sky Team then surely they'll want to showcase them on their own sports channel?

 

[Will1985]

2014 is the earliest for the Tour as Eurosport has the rights up until then (Eurosport being the subscription provider as opposed to FTA). Sky have made little effort with any other cycling events - we had the Tour Down Under at the beginning of the year but that's it. They are going to have to make more of an effort to make the armchair sports fans sit up and take notice.

 

[Ludwig]

300,000 is a fairly small figure. Back in the 80's million watched on Channel 4 and could be the saviour of this Channel with flagging figures for Big brother and other programmes if it was to renew its interest in cycling.. . Also I find the constant coach trip style commentry onf the castles and stately home a little irritating. If I want to listen to this stuff I will tune into the History Channel.