Sky Cycling Channel

Funny enough Mr. Kirby mentioned the 'waiting for the tennis to finish' frustration in yesterday's coverage of the Tour of Algarve.

I recall my frustration last year when BRITISH eurosport chose to show cricket instead of coverage of a race in Canada, it was showing cycling on European versions of the channel, but of course UK is the land of cricket, so cricket was chosen over cycling.

Sometimes Eurosport are victims of bad scheduling from the host broadcaster, events don't always turn out as planned, if the live satellite video feed is scheduled for an hour between 1400 and 1500 hours, for example, it could be that the race finishes early, due to an incident or favourable conditions, the host broadcaster may not be expecting to fill that hour with anything other than live video, and if Eurosport don't have any video, then they'll choose to show something else.

I am joining the Eurosport rant.

Once again they mess up. I sit down to enjoy the live tour of algarve only to find women's tennis. Ok the match hadn't finished but the series link records the time not the programme. Now that is annoying. Therefore the viewer misses out despite there surely being the technology to stop this happening.

Don't even start me on how the other 2 Eurosport channels were showing the same snooker match at the time too.

Aarrgghhh !

This point got me so irritated last year too.
Eurosport keep mixing the times of coverage of the races that you lose track of where they are and they never seem to series link either. I complained to Eurosport about this but unsurprisingly I never heard anything back.

I noticed last year Sky just seemed to cover the Grand Tours and maybe some of the smaller one such as ToC IIRC.

When you need your riding fix and you can't get it this gets so frustrating.

Given James Murdoch's public standing at present he could do with a bit of positive PR. I understand he is a recently converted cyclist and was the main protagonist behind sky's investment in the sport.

Why doesn't he make a grant gesture and screen all cycling free-to-air? If he's as passionate as his PR people tell us about cycling and getting people out of cars and into their saddles, then what better to do than this?

Imagine what it would do for Sky and cycling if Cav won Milan-San Remo again in the Sky-liveried World Champs jersey on free UK TV?

Of course, it'd never ever happen....

...Only watched the match because it was on ITV

charliemac74 - you have my sympathy, being a boro fan is not much fun especially as you should have beat the mackems.

NOOOO! I'm all for increasing coverage of cycling, but as soon as I heard Sky were getting involved in sponsorship I have been counting down the days till they get together with the big organisational guys and start working out how to divide up the potential spoils of the UK TV contracts.

I'm not bothered about watching football (unless it's a real team like Boro Stumps!) but I remember when you could watch First Division football on TV at no extra charge, and it looks like other popular sports are going the same way now and moving over to pay TV

Sky has changed their pricing structure recently but I have always had Eurosport (along with the news and documentary channels) for £1 on top of the base pack charge. I would not be happy if I had to start paying Sky Sports charges to watch, but I can see it happening in a few years time.

Checked the screening times last night and we also have the Tour of Algarve (was that cancelled last year over viewing rights ?) being shown on Eurosport, however neither are on the HD version which is a shame.

It will be interesting to see who is commentating on the Algarve but i wont get into the arguement over commentating quality - a bit like the hlemet arguement

I think everyone is in agreement though about a dedicated cycling channel - it's a must, just the pricing to sort out.

It's hard to draw a line, maybe a few hardcore cycling fans would buy it, casual cycling fans might not, and then where do the sponsors get the exposure they want?

I think pay tv in the UK has a problem, it's not the most open or accessible, it's not subjected to the same regulation and fierce competition as a mobile telephone service for example, it has no incentive to offer better services or more customer friendly ways of doing things.

If they can make a channel out of the dull sport of Formula One there might be some hope

Great idea Gkam, but I wouldn't pay extra for the sky sports package, and theres no chance they'd do it as a free channel,so I feel that people who did pay for a sky sports package just for the cycling would end up effectively funding more pay rises for premiership footballers! I'd be dissapointed if I lost the coverage on Eurosport! maybe they should do more cross and track?

...and Rupert is a little distracted at the moment.

I think Sky sports showed the TdU but i agree, with the team and all the money they have for sports they should at least show the races.

They are to busy discussing the merits of having a tax cheat to run the national football team....blah blah blah