For Tour Coverage, CBS Asleep at Wheels

Thank you, Mike Penner, for saying what I was thinking [July 30]. After getting my cycling fix from the great coverage of the Tour de France on OLN for three weeks, it was sad to have to miss live coverage of the finish so CBS could air the ‘infomercial” that afternoon. I once believed that you never knocked cycling coverage on TV in the U.S., because if you tell them it was poor, they won’t improve it, they cancel it. No wonder so many people in the U.S. don’t understand why the rest of the world is so taken by cycling. This show is what they see. No drama, no flair and no real coverage of the stage they kept off OLN that morning. CBS should be ashamed to take all that “commercial” money generated by Lance’s sponsors and air that show.

Americans love winners and people who beat the odds. Lance is both. His dedication to his sport and OLN’s coverage of it are making more Americans into cycling fans. CBS just doesn’t get it.

Craig Kundig

Director, Redlands Bicycle Classic

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Mike Penner’s Tour de France media analysis was right on. The diminutive little Outdoor Life Network trounced CBS’ shallow coverage of the tour. Surely Edward R. Murrow is rolling in his grave over Black Rock’s dumbing down of the world’s most grueling sporting event. OLN was feeding dozens of hours of live coverage to my DirecTV TIVO combination that allowed me to zip through the coverage to see as much or as little of the tour as I desired. In fact I genuinely enjoyed the commercials for the first few times. When will these executive producers realize that not all Americans want to see an up-close-and-personal fluff piece on a single athlete. It’s no wonder that the French think Americans are idiots, they must be receiving the CBS satellite feed.

Bob Festa

Calabasas

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U.S. television has long spoon-fed us what sports American viewers should watch, and what their producers think is “boring” for us.

I suppose a three-hour block of golf is more exciting than watching the peleton (pack) of cyclists race through spectacular mountain passes of the Pyrenees and the beautiful French countryside, despite a promised third-time win by American Lance Armstrong.

Marcus Mendes

Alhambra