RIP GCN+

[Armchair Cyclist]

is it a coincidence that it happens the day before omloop? I think not. 1 month notice. scum.

I think it probably is. I would be very surprised if anyone at WB/TNT has enough interest in cycling to be aware of the calendar. They might have heard of the Tour de France.

 

[Strawberry_Jams]

I think it probably is. I would be very surprised if anyone at WB/TNT has enough interest in cycling to be aware of the calendar. They might have heard of the Tour de France.

when it comes to big companies like this, I don't believe in coincidences. Not when it will make people panic into paying for it.

 

[Eyeballs Out]

I was flicking through the TNT channels at the weekend and noticed Orla Chennaoui presenting rugby union. Eventually the penny dropped that TNT is now her employer. To be fair, she seemed to have done her homework and/or she's a rugby fan. I wonder whether we might see Adam Blythe as an analyst for superbikes or NBA basketball?

 

[repre]

I wonder whether we might see Adam Blythe as an analyst for superbikes or NBA basketball?

That's payback for Brexit!

 

[awavey]

Exactly but in the end it all comes down to cost and WarnerBrosDiscovery are apparently desperate to dump loss making sections and boast up the share price again (it's lost 50% of it's worth in two years).
Going from https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/uk...hike-to-pound3099-per-month-from-february-28/

Pro cycling's a loss making niche in the UK & Ireland so if you want to watch, you have to pay up.
The technology is there to stream so maybe some European company will see it as an opportunity to beam across their own feed to the UK at a later point. Watching the Tour with a French commentary team would not be so bad if it were at a small price (compared to WBD's).

The thing is WB share price is so bad because they keep making dumb decisions like this, and losing money, they're estimated to be 40billion, yes billion, dollars in debt.

They no doubt think millions (ok thousands then) of UK cycling fans will stump up 30quid a month, but it won't happen.

 

[awavey]

I was flicking through the TNT channels at the weekend and noticed Orla Chennaoui presenting rugby union. Eventually the penny dropped that TNT is now her employer. To be fair, she seemed to have done her homework and/or she's a rugby fan. I wonder whether we might see Adam Blythe as an analyst for superbikes or NBA basketball?

In fairness she's always done that as a freelancer host for broadcast tv, i think she actually styles herself as a sports journalist, I don't know if the Eurosport takeover by Discovery put them all on contracts, istr discussing it at the time but can't remember the conclusion.

But the whole Eurosport name thing has been an outlier since that deal, the onsite reporters Hannah, Jens etc have been wearing WBD branded clothing since, so internally at least Eurosport has been WBD since the beginning of their deal.

And it appears we're also losing the channels completely on Sky, not just rebrands, the timing might be linked to Sky's deal to host Eurosport and how they were packaged in their subscriptions.

 

[Rob5091]

The thing is WB share price is so bad because they keep making dumb decisions like this, and losing money, they're estimated to be 40billion, yes billion, dollars in debt.

They no doubt think millions (ok thousands then) of UK cycling fans will stump up 30quid a month, but it won't happen.

It seems all the big media companies are trying to work out what to do with sport streaming. Disney's supposed to start a new ESPN streaming service later this year, but it's all getting very messy.

 

[awavey]

Well Adam Blythe fans will be glad that he does n't have to go and find a real job.
https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/uk...hike-to-pound3099-per-month-from-february-28/



Interesting to see how Discovery's part then full ownership of Eurosport mirrors the timescale of Team Sky's/Ineos success, then now demise. Reflecting viewer numbers in the UK I suppose.

Blythe gets a new cycling show with Orla on Quest...which I'll not bother to watch.

 

[search]

On Reddit I read that TNT is included for free in some EE phone contracts, so maybe it's worth to have a look into that.

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

Use the blue "Contact Us" button at the bottom right of this link and once you get onto a human*, say that you are so disappointed that you see no option but to cancel your subscription.
They don't delay with platitudes for very long before they will offer you a 50% reduction for 7 months from your renewal date: still a hefty increase, but not as bad. Puts back the worst of the impact until after the Vuelta (for me, my next renewal is 21 Feb), gets time to investigate alternatizves.

*Be nice to the poor guy: it's not his fault that his employers are trying to kill our sport.

 

[scribers]

It seems all the big media companies are trying to work out what to do with sport streaming. Disney's supposed to start a new ESPN streaming service later this year, but it's all getting very messy.

$€199/mth all inclusive subscription (no ala carte) with premium event ticketed access streams, is where it’s heading

 

[Rob5091]

On Reddit I read that TNT is included for free in some EE phone contracts, so maybe it's worth to have a look into that.

This is how it reads at the moment, BUT it might well change before the end of February!
https://ee.co.uk/help/tv-sport/tnt-sports/set-up-my-tnt-sports-subscription

The TNT Sports add-on for EE mobile accounts is £20 per month for access on multiple devices with TNT Sports Ultimate included.

The cost of the subscription will then be added to your monthly mobile bill and will appear as a separate line in the add-ons section of your bill. Note that you will not be charged until you have completed activation with discovery+.

 

[topcat]

$€199/mth all inclusive subscription (no ala carte) with premium event ticketed access streams, is where it’s heading

Tiz is where it's heading. everyone will watch on Tiz, then they'll start charging and all we'll have is the romantic memories of Lance and Froomie.

 

[Netserk]

Tiz is where it's heading. everyone will watch on Tiz, then they'll start charging and all we'll have is the romantic memories of Lance and Froomie.

As English speakers are already accustomed to no valuable commentary, they should be fine with a VPN and foreign feeds where they can't understand what is said.

 

[Sciatic]

As English speakers are already accustomed to no valuable commentary, they should be fine with a VPN and foreign feeds where they can't understand what is said.

That is true! And besides we can still hear the riders names (often identified with more accuracy) and read the race graphics for distance and gap splits. And if we want silly commentary we can just read the race thread as the race is in progress 😊

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

Orla Chennaoui on the new chat show (on Free to Air Quest channel, so expect a half hour advert for TNT) with she is doing with Blythe (sourced from Cyclist.co.uk but almost certainly a press release rather than an interview with them)

You only get to touch on a story [on The Breakaway] before you’ve got to move on quickly. With this it allows us to deconstruct the sport in a way that that reminds me why I found it fascinating to begin with. And we’ll be able to have more fun with the topics and be a bit less filtered with it because we won’t have to rush on to the next thing.‘It’s like the crossover point between traditional television coverage and what you might see on YouTube. It’s injecting more fun, spontaneity, unpredictability into a magazine show every week. Our online interaction with the audience is something that we take really seriously, even if it looks like we’re being frivolous. We want to showcase a bit of personality so that people on social media say, “They’re having fun. What’s that about? They’re talking about cycling; I don’t get why that seems to be such fun.” And we bring them in that way. I see it with my kids – that’s how they stumble on something new.

So the future of the sport depends on Chennaoui and Blythe acting like teenagers. Kill me already.

 

[awavey]

Orla Chennaoui on the new chat show (on Free to Air Quest channel, so expect a half hour advert for TNT) with she is doing with Blythe (sourced from Cyclist.co.uk but almost certainly a press release rather than an interview with them)


So the future of the sport depends on Chennaoui and Blythe acting like teenagers. Kill me already.

oh god an entire show devoted to the bantz

 

[Sneekes]

Does this mean that the Discovery+ online streaming service will disappear from 28-Feb as well? Or just that to access it one will have to pay the exorbitant subscription?
Asking as my Sky TV and Broadband contract says I get Discovery+ for 'free' until December

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

Does this mean that the Discovery+ online streaming service will disappear from 28-Feb as well? Or just that to access it one will have to pay the exorbitant subscription?
Asking as my Sky TV and Broadband contract says I get Discovery+ for 'free' until December

As I understand it, Discovery+ is moving from 3 price levels to 2. The £3.99 subscription ("Basic"), which seems to have nothing but trashy reality programmes on it, continues, and is what those who have Discovery+ Standard will by default be put onto on their next renewal date. Unless you are paying a supplement on your Sky deal, I suspect that this is what you have.

The £6.99 "Standard package", which includes cycling, skiing, snooker and possibly some other sports, is not offered any more, and will cease to exist when the last of the monthly subscriptions expires in the next few weeks. This is where most of us are, for the next few days or weeks, as cycling fans who have not wanted to pay for 'higher profile' sports.

The "Premium" package is what they seem to think we will meekly transfer to, at £30.99, and is our opportunity to subsidise soccer, rugby, boxing, basketball, UFC (which is almost exactly what I said when I opened the email last night) and others. If you are getting all these in your Sky package, then I think Discovery + is the way that they offer those on-demand rather than as scheduled programming, so it should continue, but I don't have it so can't be sure.

 

[Tim Cahill]

Would like to add that the football shows on TNT that you are paying £31 for will feature punditry from Michael Owen and Rio Ferdinand.

You will be longing for Blythe and the lads after 5 minutes trust me.

 

[YavorD]

Would like to add that the football shows on TNT that you are paying £31 for will feature punditry from Michael Owen and Rio Ferdinand.

You pay £31 to get Michael ****** Owen? People have to actually be paid to suffer that.

 

[awavey]

As I understand it, Discovery+ is moving from 3 price levels to 2. The £3.99 subscription ("Basic"), which seems to have nothing but trashy reality programmes on it, continues, and is what those who have Discovery+ Standard will by default be put onto on their next renewal date. Unless you are paying a supplement on your Sky deal, I suspect that this is what you have.

The £6.99 "Standard package", which includes cycling, skiing, snooker and possibly some other sports, is not offered any more, and will cease to exist when the last of the monthly subscriptions expires in the next few weeks. This is where most of us are, for the next few days or weeks, as cycling fans who have not wanted to pay for 'higher profile' sports.

The "Premium" package is what they seem to think we will meekly transfer to, at £30.99, and is our opportunity to subsidise soccer, rugby, boxing, basketball, UFC (which is almost exactly what I said when I opened the email last night) and others. If you are getting all these in your Sky package, then I think Discovery + is the way that they offer those on-demand rather than as scheduled programming, so it should continue, but I don't have it so can't be sure.

depends what the deal is, and Sky have so many its impossible to keep track of them all anymore, but I think if you have Sky Q or Sky Glass, that deal with Discovery + is only the "Standard" version, not the premium sports from TNT included.

but then Sky were bundling Eurosport with what they used to call their entertainment package, which meant you were paying for it, noticed quite alot of the cycling press today claiming it was free, it was originally free way back when it started and was probably 10-15years ago they made that change, and since most people had the entertainment package by default no-one really noticed unless they cancelled Sky completely and wondered where Eurosport went.

and I thought I remember for a while there was kind of a weird setup they did with TNT back maybe when BT Sport started to try to get marketshare, that they divided the channels into a premium sports channel bit, so say TNT1 & TNT2 now, where all the live premium sport happened, but TNT3 & TNT4 were like the heres the rest of the sport weve got thats not so premium, and that was bundled in as part of your entertainment package, so you again got to watch some sport live but werent really subscribed to TNT or BT for it.

you may find the result is similar now and your Standard version that Sky gives you for "free", gives you some sport but not all sport, and it depends how TNT label it whether you get access to it.

 

[Rob5091]

A death spiral in the UK for pro-cycling?
https://www.cyclingweekly.com/racin...eginning-of-the-end-for-pro-cycling-in-the-uk

I expect fewer people are going to be watching cycling in the UK and Ireland from the end of next month. Let's hope it isn’t time for the last rites for the sport.

 

[Savant12]

Tiz a sad day to see the end of Eurosport. Tiz a disgrace to pay 31 quid just to watch cycling, no thanks.

 

[RedheadDane]

Would like to add that the football shows on TNT that you are paying £31 for will feature punditry from Michael Owen and Rio Ferdinand.

You will be longing for Blythe and the lads after 5 minutes trust me.

Or, you could just not watch football...