Le Tour

It's on again. Thank goodness for the digital recorder, since SBS starts its coverage just before midnight. I record 2-3 hours per night, and watch it the following day when I'm sitting on the couch with laptop on lap (like now). It's like the cricket - you can just keep it on in the background.

One nice thing about cycling is we will hopefully never see "bike cams" mounted on any of the entrants. Since cyclists are paranoid about every gram of weight, no one would want to take on a camera, battery pack and transmitter. The stupid gimmicky cameras that most sports now seem to employ have gone too far.

When it comes to most sports, I never devote 100% of my viewing attention to watching the game - even if I am there live. If I go to the cricket, I take a newspaper and read the paper in between balls. I even like to have something to read at the footy. Tennis is the pits when it comes to continuous action (or a lack of it). I might spend a maximum of 50% of my time actually watching what is going on - unlike just about everything else on TV (apart from music videos), it does not require continuous attention.

Unfortunately, producers of TV sports seem to want to grab up to 100% of your attention, which means endless gimicks designed to keep your eyeballs on the screen. I don't know why - if the sport is half decent, I won't be changing channels, and sometimes the ads are more interesting than the sport. They should only really care about getting my attention when the ads are on - that's what's paying the bills after all.

The beauty of recording Le Tour of course is that I can fast forward through the minimal number of ads that SBS screens.