During the Tour de France and other bike races in Europe, whoever’s doing on-the-road camerawork can provide often excellent live feeds from canyon bottoms, mountain passes, in driving wind and rain, and so on. In the US, even on a clear day the live feeds are often lacking and viewers spend a lot of time looking at the finish line or some other filler because the feed is down for some reason. And forget about it when the weather’s bad. Why is that? What are the technological differences?
It’s probably more societal. Bike racing doesn’t have the popularity as it does in Europe so less effort/top equipment is devoted to it.
Some of it may be linked to differences in transmission methods and communication networks. How good is reception in the bottom of a canyon in the US? In Spain when you find a blind spot in the telephone network you tell everybody you know, because it’s so unusual; some 10 years ago one of my local parties promised “internet will reach every little corner of the province” and they fulfilled the promise by installing internet via radio (1). When the communications companies know the Big Race is going to be in the area, they make sure every little spot will have reception.
1: that little local company has now been bought up by Movistar and their services are available to all the country, but you have to know the service exists. They don’t publicize it.
Yesss. Agreeing with both. You could cover Bejing to Paris race from the satellites. But it would be cheaper with live camera crew and local Mongolia wi-fi network. Low quality and delays included.
I think you will find the answer is “helicopters”. IIRC the TdF coverage is so well funded they have not one but two in the air above the race at all times, taking the signal from the ground based cameras and transmitting it out.
I doubt US coverage could afford that.
A bit of this perhaps. All the big cycling races are in Europe. The Tour de France, the Giro, the Vuelta, then there are the big one day races. The US would have lower interest as well as lower tier races. That said, I’ve seen plenty of race feed interrupts in the European races.
BTW I was certain your OP was going to be spam with a list of live streaming links.
Moved to the Game Room.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
We had the London and Surrey classic last Sunday, in the UK. The BBC covered (at least) the end of the race. Complete failure. Half an hour of watching blank screen or random crowd shots
How nice to open a thread titled thusly and not see SPAM SPAM SPAM.
If cycling was popular in the US, the networks would have the money. Look at the billions they pay for the right to show NFL games, or the NCAA tournament, or the billion plus that NBC has committed for each and every Olympic Games from now until 2032.
Oh for sure. I wasn’t trying to suggest US *networks *wouldn’t have the money, if they chose to spend it. I was just saying the US coverage wouldn’t support it.
The Tour of California’s TV production is done by the same folks that do the Tour de France. I presume they use the same technical means in California as in France (relays from the motos to heliocopters/fixed-wing aircraft to the ground station and out to the world), but the camera moto drivers are likely not the same or as experienced (I presume they use locals?), so that’s probably the source of whatever difference in production value you get.
At the moment, there is really only one other US cycling event that is at the same level as the Tour of California, and that’s the Tour of Utah since the US Pro Challenge in Colorado is on (possibly permanent) hiatus. That race is going on now and is being aired on Fox Sports. You do kind of get the feeling that the production team in Utah is a very enthusiastic group of locals.
The US Pro Championships don’t even get on TV at all (as far as I know) these days. I presume the diehards watch it streaming on the internet?