Media Life Magazine: “One nasty spill for the Tour de France.” The article’s gist: The “cume” — the number of people who watched at least once, was up. But average viewership for the broadcasts was down as much as 20 percent. The reasons: Number One–no Yank stars (sorry, Christian Vande Velde). Number Two–le dopage. Quote from the article:
“Versus says that a larger number of people than last year tuned into at least some portion of Tour coverage, but average viewership took a hit, meaning many of them did not return after sampling.
“Doping deserves some of the blame.
“ ‘Obviously it’s the elephant in the room,’ says Marc Fein, Versus executive vice president of programming, production and business operations at Versus. ‘Some people might be turned off a bit by the bad things that have happened, the doping in the sport.’ ”
Technorati Tags: cycling, doping, tour de france, tv, versus
Number 3: having to watch the same annoying commercials that run EVERY single commercial break
You mean you didn’t love those Saab “we recycle the exhaust” commercials?
It can’t measure the number of people who watch the race on outlets like Comcast On-demand (fast forward through commercials!) or streaming video on-line. But the lack of a recognizable American star no doubt hurt, along with the every-other-day doping revelations.