Independent Sources is proud to bring you our special coverage of the 2005 Tour de France. Luke will be weighing in with a more race specific posting but having watched twenty or so hours of race broadcasts I thought it was time for some observations on how OLN is doing.

First off, we’re not even a quarter of the way into the race and the “Survivor Lives” ads are getting grating. It is particularly painful to hear Phil Liggett be forced to read the Survivor promo copy off of the teleprompter as he talks about tribal councils and getting voted off of the island. It seems so below him as is are the plugs for the “All-Star BBQ Showdown.” Couldn’t they let Bob Roll fall on the sword for that one? With regard to “Survivor Lives” the only thing they haven’t done is name a highlight segment after it as they have done with the “Energizer Keep Going Athlete Profile.”.

As we predicted, Paul Sherwen and Phil Liggett have been outstanding yet again. Even during a 5–hour broadcast, they don’t get repetitive or boring. When it comes down to the last minute of the race, no one is better in sport than Ligget in calling the action. I do have to admit that I also enjoy Phil and Paul’s banter whenever there is a lull  in the action and Paul fills it with odd anecdotes about whatever location the riders are in. This information is most certainly provided to the broadcasters by the race organizers who get it from the various towns and villages along the way. Sometimes the information is so trivial that they can’t keep from breaking character. For example, on today’s stage five we heard:

Paul Sherwen:  This is a great bird watching place. In fact if you walked through these forests you can see osprey, short-toed eagles and a booted eagle. Have you ever seen one of those?

Phil Liggett: Paul, I’ve never heard of what-did-you-call that little one? The toe-eagle?

PS: The short-toed eagle.

PL: I’ve never heard of the short-toed eagle.

PS: We better get down there.

PL: Ha, ha. Oh dear…

I feel immensely lucky that OLN has gotten into the Tour as much as they have. It seems like just a few years ago that we were limited to 30–60 min a day on ESPN2. To get 3-5 hours of every stage with multiple runs during the day in various forms is pure bliss. Judging MTV by their “pathetic” coverage of Live 8, they could take a lesson from OLN on how to cover significant events.

As for the other commentators, Bob Roll is a clown, but a moderately likeable clown. Al Trautwig is not so great, but he doesn’t do much on the early morning coverage that I watch. Kirsten Gum was, well, better as a blonde. The good news for this year is that OLN”s “cutters” aren’t back. They were universally considered the low point of last year’s coverage.

See all of Independent Sources’ Tour de France 2005 posts here and for a great TDF Blog go here.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 6th, 2005 at 4:33 am by Insider and is filed under Cycling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.