At present on UK television I'm enjoying ITV4's the Cycle Show ( Mondays 8pm ). The show covers all aspects of cycling so there should be something of interest for most people. To cover subjects from downhill mountain biking through to cycle trailers shows the enthusiasm and thoughtfulness of the production team. It's something I'm sure Top Gear could take lessons from. Fortunately the programme doesn't follow such a style or we'd only have one hour of £8000 Tour winning race bikes every week. So well done to ITV4 for giving us an eclectic cycling program hopefully it'll continue to be produced for years to come. In a similar vein the recent Tour de France coverage was excellent, a pleasure to watch with live coverage, highlights and a fantastic team of presenters. Gary Imlach and Chris Boardman complement each other perfectly with Chris Boardmans technical input very welcome. The main commentary of Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen again being consumately professional and educational as well as entertaining. I really fear the day this team disband as they make the cycling come alive. Many sports have commentators who I personally feel simply make the sport, Murray Walker was F1, Peter Alliss is Golf, Steve Cram and Brendan Foster are track athletics. One final point is that I hope ITV4 will continue to be able to fund presentation of sport in general on terrestial television. So many sports and sporting events are sold to the highest bidder, normally Sky but now BT Sport too and it limits coverage to those willing to pay a subscription. Sport on television should be inclusive not exclusive so I hope ITV4 will be able to continue with their excellent service. Hopefully we have the Vuelta to look forward to.
No comments:
Post a Comment