right here, Anthony and Brian will be in the commentary box and the coverage starts at 9:30am eastern.

CTV getting MSR rights it reads:

Note: cyclingfans.com is a cycling.tv affiliate partner

I didn’t know that. Interesting.

without any guarantee that they will be showing the Giro, or Lombardia. Thanks, but no thanks.

“Also, if you look at the description of the "Giro d"Italia Package” on the cycling.tv site, it says you get "live, as-live, and highlights" of Milan-San Remo, but only that you get "access" to the Giro d’Italia and Giro di Lombardia. What does that mean, I wonder. Live coverage, or something less than that?"

It’s just a poor choice of words on my part. I updated the page this morning by rehashing the old copy that was already there and it seems to have led to that abomination of the English language you’re referring to.

has Eurosport.

…I’d be willing to stake my reputation (as a stone-cold badass, of course) on CTV having the Giro. I don’t know if it’s 100% confirmed or not (I really don’t, this isn’t some secret code), but even if it isn’t, there’s a difference between the races that have the final stages of contracts signed and those that are genuinely uncertain, the “COVERAGE TBC” ones. Don’t hate on CTV too much for this, since it’s the case for everyone dealing with rights.

Anyway, that’s just me as ROLD, not CTV-ROLD. I’m here as a cycling fan tonight. Now I’ve read all the news AND got roped into replying to this thread, I’m out.

I’m the one who spoke to Ben Golding of CTV today. I cannot and will not reveal everything we discussed but I will say this: these kinds of negotiations are very complex and CTV usually work with Versus in the U.S. If you look at the Versus schedule for Saturday, I think you will see that they are not carrying M-SR.

Now, as I mentioned in my post and as I’m sure many of you know, RAI bundles the rights for several races, including M-SR and the Giro. If Versus doesn’t want to get in the game, then you should be complaining to them. The “home of cycling in the U.S.” hesitating or outright passing on something as big as the Giro only results in a pinch on everyone else. As of today, CTV don’t know if they will be dealing with Versus or with RAI directly. Ben Golding’s move to at least rescue M-SR coverage from oblivion was brilliant and we should all be appreciative. As Chris suggested, we need to separate issues here.

I also am in regular communication with people at companies like Universal Sports. The economy has really hurt them and one of my main contacts there recently lost his job because of it. A real shame because like Golding, this guy really understood internet marketing. Alas, the poor economy has NOT resulted in rights owners giving out any great deals on rights acquisitions. Thus, Universal Sports felt the ToC organizers were asking too much money, especially for non-exclusive rights. Armstrong is back so no one is getting any good deals.

Anyway, it’s not fair to blame CTV for things that they have little to no control over. I personally was not happy to see that Versus renewed their deal with A.S.O. for their races. I had hoped they would get out of the game and let someone else take a shot at it. There were even talks at one point that CTV would deliver directly to set-top boxes. Almost ANYTHING would be better than the way Versus treats this sport. And also, I’m tired of getting threatening letters from their lawyers, particularly when they fail to secure their own video feeds.

To the person who suggested I might not know these races are in Italy, if you check my profile you will see that I haven’t just started following this sport. I arrived back in Paris a few days ago for the spring Classics; this is the center of the cycling world….and I am minutes from Eurosport headquarters, France 2/3/4, A.S.O, L’Equipe, LNDD. Cyclingnews doesn’t even have a reporter based here anymore and it shows. In addition to covering races, I’m meeting with people at France TV and Eurosport who have rights in their respective markets. What you refer negatively to as “some top secret deal in France” is simply my having respect for people I work with. When someone asks me not to talk about something, I’m not going to talk about it until I get the green light. Should it be any other way?

Do I think CTV will have the Giro? Yes. It is inconceivable to me that they won’t. And if anyone can make it happen, it’s Ben Golding. And either way, on cyclingfans.com we’ll list options….so I’m confident we’ll have you covered one way or another. We’re in our 5th year of doing this and there have been more and more options each year. And this despite only having one pre-paid banner ad on two occasions, for an Italian jeweler, for a total of about 3 months of pre-paid advertising in 4+ years. I haven’t even had time to respond to requests for ad rates.

Finally, I’d like to point out that since the arrival of Ben at CTV around two years ago, I haven’t received any pressure from CTV regarding feeds we link to that might infringe their rights. I didn’t enjoy “working with” CTV prior to Ben’s arrival….promoted them for years, never saw a penny, felt there were attempts to intimidate us. So I actually banned CTV from my site for a year and my UK correspondent Bernie and I found alternative video feeds for every race except Paris-Roubaix if I recall correctly. I have a great working relationship with Ben Golding and he understands they’re coming out ahead in all this……and everyone gets to watch some kind of feed whether they are paying or not. Hopefully more and more people start to sign up so CTV can do more.

CTV does have issues….and some people there are frustrated too. (Or have you never worked in a job where you or anyone else was frustrated?) But let’s separate the issues and go from there.

And that in my application.. So here

It’s a great pleasure having you here. Sorry I slept on this thread, better late than never, I guess. All I can say on behalf of the community (which speaks pretty well w/o me) is that we all rely heavily on CyclingFans.com and truly appreciate your commitment to something as vital and sketchy as identifying how the cycling broadcast/webcast universe operates.

“He was dressed as a hobo and he was carrying the Lindbergh-baby”

is about 45-50 seconds behind the live video, but I still prefer that instead of the Finnish one who could be compared with Duffield, clueless most of the time. I refuse using the Swedish commentator. :D

For CTV, I go directly to the site to begin the login ritual. Then usually, I am here following along. I don’t know that I ever go to cyclingfans for ctv information. I go to your site for all of the other links as I don’t have subscriptions to them and you’re the master at putting up places to view from. And I love you for it. For me, it’s just a simple case that I don’t put CTV with you, thus wouldn’t email you on it. If you want us to start (ha ha) just let us know and you can be copied on the emails. LOL.

Brian is here:

http://twitter.com/cyclevox

(ie pretty much fine previously but not this year) – in previous years, I had occasional problems such as having to try a few times before being able to log in, or the feed cutting out/buffering at inopportune times, but generally I would be able to log in and watch (and would just be aware of what it took to get through).

However, this year, almost every time I’ve tried to log in to watch a race live I’ve been able to log in, click on the links for the live races, and get nothing. not even an indication of buffering (ie such that I’d have hope that maybe soon the video would start). I think there was once that I could actually get on, otherwise mostly I’ve watched races via other feeds. I admit that quite often, being in the mountain time zone (so, much more western than eastern North America) and being pregnant and needing my sleep I’ve not tried to watch right at the start of a broadcast – but as far as I recall, ctv has said many times that they have more than enough capacity to deal with however many people are watching, so theoretically (supposedly) it shouldn’t matter when I start watching (and the average viewer would rightly expect that it should be like TV, you can tune in whenever during the program). and seeing as I’m using the same computer, same ISP, same browser etc as last year I can’t figure out why ctv isn’t working so well this year …