On The Road
by: Bill Oetinger 4/1/2009
Helping Versus
I found a big envelope in my mailbox a few weeks ago: one of those soft, padded ones with something squishy inside that suggests, "garment." It was just before my birthday, so I thought maybe it was a present from a distant friend or relative. But the return address rang no bells: Sinuate Media in Baltimore. I opened it up and, sure enough, it was a garment. It was a yellow jersey, straight out of the Tour de France, except for the graphics. On the front, it had the logo of the Versus Network, and on the back, in big, black, block letters--each letter three inches high, one word per line, stretching from the collar to the pockets--were four words: "TAKE BACK THE TOUR."
There was a note in the package too. It was a card with Sinuate Media's logo on the front and a handwritten message inside: "Dear Bill, Thank you for your valuable input on Versus' Tour de France survey. We hope you like the jersey. All the best, Leah Messina & Melissa Machiavelli."
Okay. That solves part of the mystery, but not much of it. For one thing, I have never taken part in any Versus survey of anything. It has been at least a couple of years since I even visited their website. I certainly watch some of their TV coverage of cycling, and I have written about the Tour de France quite often and about other races as well, and have on occasion even reviewed Versus' performance in this department. But the last time I actually wrote about their coverage was way back in October, 2004, when they were still the Outdoor Life Network. (At the time, I was complaining about their decision to not televise the Vuelta.)
So it's a little difficult to fathom exactly what trail of cookie crumbs led the agents of Versus to my doorstep; to actually having my name and street address and to thinking I had earned this complimentary bike swag.
But hey, if they are expressing their appreciation for my help in a survey when I didn't actually help at all, then the least I can do is offer them my own sort of self-directed survey...a feedback form for them, following their first telecasts of this new cycling season. Think of this column as an open letter to the folks at Versus who manage their bike coverage.
So, dear Versus people....
Some of my comments here may seem negative or not supportive, but I hope they aren't taken that way. The last thing I want is for you to become discouraged or frustrated with the audience response to your efforts, so that you give up on the whole bike biz and move on to more bull riding and bass fishing and cage fighting. We--the avid cycling fans of America--really, really want you--Versus--to succeed with this venture. We want you to succeed to the point that it makes good business sense for you to expand your coverage...to give us more of what we want. So don't be downhearted at my little darts. They are meant to be helpful suggestions from your customers, trying to assist you in perfecting your packaging of bike racing. And the fact is, that as good a job as you're doing, you do need to work on a few things. You're getting better, but there is still room for improvement.
This first dart may seem a bit petty, but I have to get it off my chest right at the top. It's about that jersey Leah and Melissa sent me. I thank you for it, but at the same time, I have to tell you that the jersey tells me somebody in your marketing department just doesn't get it yet, and the way they don't get it speaks to all of the decisions you make about how you package bike racing.
The first problem is that it's a maillot jaune...a yellow jersey. In a right and proper world, nobody is allowed to wear a maillot jaune except those who have earned them by leading the General Classification at the Tour de France. It is the most sacrosanct jersey in all of cycling, and anyone who wears one who did not earn it is considered the most clueless poser, a hopeless rube. I will concede that lots of good, veteran riders have yellow jerseys in their closets. I think I have one in there myself. A plain yellow jersey is a relatively inoffensive object. But when you slap big logos on it, front and back and sleeves, so that it starts looking suspiciously like a real Tour de France jersey, then you have crossed a sacred line and violated a fundamental bike-culture taboo. In my humble opinion, no one who really understands cycling would do this.
Then there is that big, bold message filling the entire back of the jersey, that Take Back The Tour rant. Of course I understand where you're coming from with this. In some respects, I'm right there with you. We all want to see cycling--and all other sports--get beyond the swamp of doping. If you tracked me down by reading my columns, you know I've written extensively on the topic. But you would then also know that one of my biggest beefs is that cycling gets singled out in the mainstream media as the worst of the dopers when in fact many other sports are just as bad and possibly worse, and that cycling draws the media spotlight precisely because it has been off the front, leading the anti-doping efforts. More cyclists are getting busted because the sport is working harder at catching them. And so on.
This self-righteous, holier-than-thou, Take Back The Tour scold seems to play right back into that mainstream media bias for beating on biking, for making bike racing out to be the bottom of the barrel. And who in particular appointed you, Versus, to be the voice of righteousness and virtue; to chastise cycling for its sins? Are you going to tell us that the mugs and thugs of cage fighting and hockey--which you also televise--never put anything in their bodies that might send up a red flag at a testing lab? Come on, climb down off your soap box and show a little more respect for cycling, for all the good, hard-working cyclists and team personnel doing things the right way.
Suffice it to say I will never wear that jersey. Nothing short of a prolonged course of waterboarding could make me put that on anywhere any other cyclist might see me. I thought about donating it to my club for our holiday dinner door prize pool, but I would hate to think of any other cyclist winning it and having to decide what to do with it. The fact that I have yet to see a single one of these jerseys out on the road tells me other cyclists feel pretty much the same way I do about this.
Now, about your actual coverage of races on TV. For the most part, I give you high marks. You're doing a good job and getting better at it. But there still are a few lumps in your gravy. So far this year, I've seen most of the Tour of California and your Paris-Nice show. Let's begin with the AToC...
First things first: please get rid of Craig Hummer. I noticed he was missing from your Paris-Nice coverage, so maybe you already figured this one out. I hope so. But in case that was just a brief hiatus and you plan to bring him back in the same role for the Giro or the Tour, let me make my case about the boy.
I'm not a mean guy and I hate to hurt anyone's feelings. I also like to think I'm some sort of responsible journalist who wouldn't resort to a cheap shot, such as noting that Hummer rhymes with dumber. So I won't do that. I will simply observe that his inclusion in "the booth" with Phil and Paul seriously dumbed down the presentation of the Tour of California. He was too loud and overbearing and hogged way too much air time. Whose idea was it that this upstart take the leading role over Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen, the two most senior, most experienced, most respected biking commentators on the planet?
I just about threw something large and heavy at my television when he loudly and energetically mispronounced Vicenzo Nibali's name about 50 times in the last 15 minutes of the last stage. Phil would pronounce it correctly--ni-BALL-y--and Craig would come right back with the mangled version--NEE-billy--over and over and over. Arghhh! To be fair, I suppose I shouldn't make too much of that one gaffe, for Paul Sherwen has created a virtual mini-industry of mispronounced names over the course of the years. And I would be completely and utterly thrilled if Sherwen never again used the phrase, "completely and utterly." It may not seem fair, but for some reason, I think most of us can accept these bloopers from Sherwen. He has earned the right to express himself in his own, idiosyncratic way by having been a bona fide, hardcore, professional racer and by years of intelligent, if somewhat fractured, sportscasting. I don't see the cycling community every cutting that kind of slack for Craig Hummer.
I'm only guessing here, but I think I have an idea why you put this obnoxious bore in the alpha role, stepping all over Phil and Paul. He appears to be doing the same job you had Adrian Karsten doing in past years. (I never thought anyone could make me nostalgic for Karsten, but Hummer has done so.) It seems you feel a need to reach out to some hypothetical mainstream sports fan who may have tuned in to a bike race for the first time; to bridge some cultural divide between this uninitiated newby and the informed, jargon-rich expertise of a Phil Liggett. Hummer's the intro and outro guy...the human segué...who can bring these disparate intelligences together. That's the theory anyway.
The thing is, first off, he's not very good at it and is in fact a source of constant irritation. Second, and more importantly, we don't need anyone--good or bad--in this role of dumbing down the sport for the uninformed, mainstream fan. Do you have someone in this role for your bull riding shows? Do you have someone to dumb down hockey for those who may not know all the rules? You do not. Nor should you feel the need to do this in cycling. It's patronizing and tiresome for seasoned fans, and I doubt it does much to bring along the newbies. Let those new fans figure stuff out on their own. They will feel better about it all by not having been talked down to.
I do think some of your efforts to explain the finer points of the sport are valuable. You had a nice little graphic for explaining riding in a crosswind. That was well done. It could have been better if you had taken it a step further by showing the wind as a straight headwind first, with all the riders lined up nose-to-tail, then showed it veering to the side and the riders shifting over into an echelon. And unless I missed it, you never once used the word echelon in the explanation. What, is that word too French for you? But all in all, that was good. You could do another one in the same style to show how a smoothly rotating pace line works. If done well, such tutorials won't bother experienced students of the sport and can be helpful for those just getting a grip on details that might not be obvious.
But just say no to anyone in the role of designated translator from bike-speak to standard American English. We don't need it; we don't want it; we don't like it. If you already have Hummer locked into a long-term contract, here's an easy fix: swap him out for Bob Roll; put Bob back in the booth with Phil and Paul and have Craig do the on-the-street interviews or, better yet, those infomercials about the lastest frame or derailleur that you insert every so often. Roll has proven himself to be a very likeable and competent sportscaster for cycling. In spite of his hokey Tour DAY France schtick, he knows the sport and has the resumé to prove it. He did a very good job at Paris-Nice, and that whole package worked much better than what you tried at the Tour of California. So please: out with the Hummer and in with the Bobke.
Next up on my gripe list: that Heidi-game cut-off at the end of the stage into Modesto. With the peloton nearing its destination, and with all the important stuff just about to bust loose all over the road, you chopped off the coverage to switch to...a hockey game? Are you kidding me? Okay, I know hockey is considered a "major" sport, just a bit less of a big deal than football, baseball, and basketball. That is subject to some debate, as the sport doesn't even have a major network contract anymore, but we'll let that go for the moment. But geez, you have one week of arguably the biggest bike race in America with only that many stages to show, and on the other hand you have how many possible hockey games you could show, in how many other possible time slots? Was it so important to catch the first ten minutes of that one hockey game for you to so rudely slap all the cycling fans in America upside the head with a dead salmon like that?
Put it another way: if it were ten minutes to go in a hockey game, with the score tied or even close, would you chop that broadcast off without one word of apology to go to the start of a bike race? No, of course you wouldn't! Your decision there was a huge insult to all of the cycling community, one that did not endear you to any of us. Things like that make us much less likely to cut you any slack when you get some other detail wrong.
Look, you must think there is some value in broadcasting cycling events. You appear to have made a pretty big commitment to that. We applaud you for it. But we keep getting the impression that you are doing us some kind of favor; like your bike coverage is akin to some public service broadcast or C-Span. What you should be thinking is how to grow your cycling market over a period of many years. I'm certain you think you are doing that, but I have to say it doesn't always appear that way from our side of the televisions screen. Things like that hockey stunt will cause fans to drop away like autumn leaves after a hard frost. The diehards will keep coming back for more abuse, but the marginal-maybe fans you are hoping to cultivate? They will give it up as a bad investment and will never come back for more. We all know the saying: you only get one chance to make a good first impression. Think of each telecast as your chance to make a good first impression with some new block of potential fans. Think of the impression left with those folks when you cut off the race coverage just before the finish...
You and we both know bike racing is still a bit out of the normal range of sporting events on American TV. But it doesn't have to stay that way. Look at Europe: many hours of coverage for many bike races, with terrific ratings. Those bike fans in France and Italy and Spain and Belgium are not all whackos inhabiting some oddball subculture. They're mainstream, everyday, normal sports fans who just happen to live in a world where bike racing is a very big deal. It may never be quite like that here, but it's certain that the sport will continue to grow here, both as a participant pastime and as a spectactor entertainment. But it will take awhile, and you need to be committed for that long haul.
You need to show events like the Vuelta and the Giro and not just the Tour. You need more than just a two-hour digest once a week on Cyclism Sundays. Digest shows, with little snips of highlights, are okay in their place, but to truly understand and appreciate the sport--to grow to love it and become a serious, knowledgeable fan--you need to see long, uninterrupted sections of stages. Come in halfway through the stage if you must, but show the last half in its entirety. Show all the decisive mountain battles--both the climbs and the descents--in full. Show not only the last 200 meters of the field sprints but also the fast and furious miles leading up to those crazy finishes.
You will never grow your market--never rope in the new fans--unless you give them the opportunity to experience bike racing in all its amazing subtlety and complexity. You cannot do that with little highlight shows. You cannot do it with dumbed-down commentators like Craig Hummer, and you most definitely cannot do it by throwing the telecast in the dumpster with 15 minutes left in the race to switch to a frigging hockey game. It ain't gonna happen that way.
You have made a great beginning in your several years of being our partner in this passion we have for bike racing. You are worlds better than what we used to have to put up with in the bad old days. But you're at something of a tipping point here: you complain that bike racing's ratings are not all that great, so you treat the sport like an unloved stepchild, and then you wonder why the ratings don't get any better. You need to make a bigger, better commitment to bring the sport along: more events; longer time slots; more sophisticated packaging (no more pompous Take Back The Tour jerseys).
Bike racing is a beautiful, magnificent sport. Let it sell itself. Go with its strengths: the great live feeds from those wonderful camera crews; the witty and informed commentary of Phil and Paul and Bob; the amazing skills and stamina and panache of the riders... Concentrate on that and skip the dumbing down and the silly promotions. Give the sport the room and light and nurturing it needs, and it will prosper...and so will your ratings.
Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net