The Tour of Britain is from Sunday 7 September – 14 September. I should be at Tuesday’s stage finish in Burnham-on-Sea and I’ll try to post some pictures from there. If you’re going to be at other stages, let me or cyclingfans.com know.
This year, itv4 takes up the baton with much-improved coverage every night at 8pm – see times from TVGuide.
The ITV4 coverage might be better than we got from the Beeb, but the daily shows are excruciatingly poor. Especially when compared with the Tour of Ireland shows. Out of an hour-long ToB show, we seem to get about 15 minutes’ worth of actual racing coverage! And they have so far failed to show any of the incidents (eg crashes, punctures) that have affected the overall placings – preferring to give us pointless vox pops and infant school level travelogues.
Or is it just me being ultra-critical?
Comment by kate — 2008-09-09 @ 03:58+00:00
I think Kate is correct about the poor quality of the current ITV4 output. They didn’t even show a replay of the confusingly mickey-mouse finish yesterday (Monday), making it difficult to work out how the sprint was won. I was at the London finish on sunday, it was an excellent race with a strong narrative to keep the viewer interested, which didn’t really come across on the tv highlights (the wretched advert breaks don’t help creative editing to be fair).
Comment by Dave — 2008-09-09 @ 04:50+00:00
Yes, I’m disappointed by the show too. Mainly, I was expecting Phil, Paul, Gary, Chris and Matt, as well as Ned. Paul Manning instead of Chris Boardman is OK, but Hugh Porter and his co-commentator fluff far too often even though they’re not doing the commentary live (as you’ll know if you go to a finish and have Hugh rambling between bad dance music and tinny mobile phone reports every ten or fifteen minutes).
I think missing the incidents has been because they’re using fewer motorcycle cameras than the Tour de France and/or the operators are less experienced and/or they’ve been unlucky. I don’t understand why the helicopter camera didn’t capture them. Local TV also seem to all be at the finish area (Westcountry and West were both in Burnham yesterday) which seems an unnecessary waste of cameras. I know the stage towns want to get their money’s worth in travelogues and so on, but if local TV were out at key points on the course more, they might capture incidents as well as get their vox pops.
However, BBC seem to have thrown a massive sulk and aren’t covering it on local radio at all and hardly at all online. So much for supporting cycling – once again, the olympics end and BBC coverage ends too.
Let’s give some thanks for what’s good. This isn’t as good as the other itv4 tours yet, but it’s much better than previous Tours of Britain. It seems to be about 30 minutes of coverage most days, which is pretty good. Ned and Paul are doing OK (Ned’s a much better presenter than interviewer – his usual interview style is to make a random statement then shove the microphone towards the guest) and the on-screen displays (distances and so on) are better than the Tour of Ireland equivalents, so there’s something to build on – I hope they do. Replays of the finish seems a quick fix that could happen this year, but I guess better commentry, theme music and live online coverage will have to wait for future years.
Comment by MJ Ray — 2008-09-10 @ 01:39+00:00
[…] Tour of Britain stage finish in Burnham-on-Sea this Tuesday – I then rode back which was pretty exhausting with my current poor legs and the terrible road surfaces […]
Pingback by Away From Keyboard | Software Cooperative News — 2008-09-11 @ 11:51+00:00
Agree with much that has been said. Compared to the ToI and Le Tour the coverage is poor and disjointed. It is a bit like watching snooker on ITV – break, long pot, colours ..yes you see the winner but not the “how they won”. Commentary at times is banal… All that said its much much better than nothing, lets hope ITV4 stick with it and things improve. Now need to find my waterproofs, looks like I am going to get wet this afternoon!
Comment by Pandora — 2008-09-14 @ 08:55+00:00