Globally, Tour TV ratings down

Hmmm...

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/07/21/business/tour.php

This also ran in the NY Times. Same byline.

 

Not too surprising for the US, but I was a little surprised about other countries. I think that OLN could have done more to better promote Americans other than Lance in the tour starting 2-3 years ago instead of this year. Also, more interviews. Until this year, they rarely interviewed non-American riders. I don't recall ever seeing an interview on OLN with Ullrich, for example. Granted there are those folks who only tuned in for Lance and didn't really care about the sport of cycling. But, I think that OLN missed an opportunity by focusing solely on Lance for so long.

 

The article isn't very good. In the Netherlands and Belgium the ratings are pretty good. Only the first week they had a minor problem which was normal because of the football/soccer world championchips (this happends every 4 years, highest ratings are almost never in years that there is a soccer/footbal worlds or European championchip..). In Germany the ratings where going up at the end of the TdF, the ITT on saturday July 22 had the highest ratings of all German stations...

But ofcourse they are right that Puerto has hit hard and that especially in germany and France it has had a big impact. As it's normal that it didn't hit hard in the Netherlands and Belgium, they aren't shocked that fast as it comes to doping stories and non of the suspended riders came from Belgium or the Netherlands.

 

Yes, let us keep in mind that for the first half of the tour the competition was the World Cup, here in Europe, with games on from the afternoon through the evening. And Germany, France and ITALY cool: ) three big 'consumers' of Tour coverage involved through to the semis and finals.

Then there was the doping scandal just before the Tour, with most 'non specialist' tv-watchers here in Europe aware of the purported Jan vs. Ivan battle.

 

The article only uses ratings for the first 16 days.

Of course those ratings are down. The tour program for the first 16 days was the worst setup ever. 14xflat. not even a TTT to spice it up. It was boredom deluxe, especially if you didnt have some sort of interest in it before. To contrast that, they jammed the goodie stages into probably the most explosive ending schedule ever.

 

It is simple. There is what amounts to a heatwave in western europe or certainly the cental parts and people are out instead of being indoors watching television.

Puerto obviously had some effect but let's be honest the cycling public are innured to doping stories now. The soccer had a small effect but its effect is usually a lot more marginal than people think. it is the weather in the main part

 

The World Cup was in the forefront..

Anyways, those people certainly blew it by not watching it!

 

It wasn't trekkie. Weather has far more effect on TV viewing figures in Summer than any other factor. Indeed initiative reveal that some at least world cup figures were down in England. why? Weather.

If it is a poor or normal summer next year figures will be up again.