Spoilers on live text commentary

[Armchair cyclist]

Why would anyone with respect for their readers post this series of messages?

14:27:05 CEST
Apologies for the radio silence, we've just posted the results and short report from the women's race. No spoilers.

14:28:11 CEST
Massive congratulations to Marta Bastianelli. That's a massive win for the 2007 road world champion.


14:29:56 CEST
Latest from Catalunya is that Bernal has crashed out of the top ten. We don't know if he finished the stage or not. Simon Yates won the final stage, Valverde claims the overall ahead of Quintana and Latour. Simon Yates in fourth on GC.


14:31:14 CEST
Back to the racing here, and it's the same as before to be honest. The only difference being that we've chipped a few more kms off the race total. So, with 124km to go the gap to the six leaders is at 10'20.


14:39:39 CEST
And Catalunya has finished early today too. No spoilers but someone called Simon, who shares a surname with a former British pro who rode for Motorola won today. Here's our report.

That is how Daniel Benson respects readers of the publication he edits.

I tweeted Susan W over her posting spoilers in another text commentary a few weeks ago. No reply, no explanation, no apology, no courtesy, no respect.

 

[Susan Westemeyer]

Sorry, I must have missed your tweet. Spoilers are a difficult subject, especially for a news organization. It is our job to report what happens, when it happens. On the other hand, some -- and note that it is only "some" -- readers prefer not to hear results from other races. We must walk a fine line, and in my opinion, serve the majority.

 

[Armchair cyclist]

Thanks for replying.

That response would make perfect sense if CN only had one channel of communication: to spoil or not is indeed a conundrum for a radio or TV broadcast, as they do not want to divert audience away.

But CN text commentaries are not shy about putting up links to other CN pages, nor need they be. A quick flip to another tab and back to the text commentary: no loss of readers. This is often what the text commentators do, and what they should do. Even gets you clicks on another page.

Really not sure what you mean by the comment that "it is only some" readers who don't want to have later enjoyment spoiled. No-one goes to the text commentary of race A in the expectation or with the specific purpose of finding the result of race B, so given that, there is a choice between annoying "some" readers or annoying none of them.

And nothing you say is explanation or excuse for the attitude of Daniel Benson in the passages I quoted, which amounts to acknowledging that this might undermine some people's enjoyment of something they will watch later, something he had promised not to do, but he will make a joke out of doing precisely that. Will he reply to explain/apologise?

 

[mojomonkey]

Was just coming in to make this suggestion. I'd really prefer live commentary to ONLY be about the race I'm trying to read about. It ruins things when I try to catch up on races using the (archived) live streams for races that overlapped - for example the Giro and Tour of California last week. Or if I'm following one live and will use the live stream to catch up on what happened before a video of the last XX KM.

If I want general race news I'll go to the main page - I don't need the live stream to do that. I could follow you on twitter too. There are lots of options for you to get the news out and I don't see it as appropriate in what I consider a single purpose / focused page. I wouldn't want you to insert a news banner or news items between posts on forum pages either.

 

[RedheadDane]

Re:

Was just coming in to make this suggestion. I'd really prefer live commentary to ONLY be about the race I'm trying to read about. It ruins things when I try to catch up on races using the (archived) live streams for races that overlapped - for example the Giro and Tour of California last week. Or if I'm following one live and will use the live stream to catch up on what happened before a video of the last XX KM.

If I want general race news I'll go to the main page - I don't need the live stream to do that. I could follow you on twitter too. There are lots of options for you to get the news out and I don't see it as appropriate in what I consider a single purpose / focused page. I wouldn't want you to insert a news banner or news items between posts on forum pages either.

To be fair, the Giro and the ToC overlapped, but - thanks to timezones - they didn't actually overlap; the stages of the Giro finished hours before the stages of the ToC began.
However, there are other races that overlaps with the Giro.

 

[mojomonkey]

Re: Re:

Was just coming in to make this suggestion. I'd really prefer live commentary to ONLY be about the race I'm trying to read about. It ruins things when I try to catch up on races using the (archived) live streams for races that overlapped - for example the Giro and Tour of California last week. Or if I'm following one live and will use the live stream to catch up on what happened before a video of the last XX KM.

If I want general race news I'll go to the main page - I don't need the live stream to do that. I could follow you on twitter too. There are lots of options for you to get the news out and I don't see it as appropriate in what I consider a single purpose / focused page. I wouldn't want you to insert a news banner or news items between posts on forum pages either.

To be fair, the Giro and the ToC overlapped, but - thanks to timezones - they didn't actually overlap; the stages of the Giro finished hours before the stages of the ToC began.
However, there are other races that overlaps with the Giro.

OK, but they are multiday events with shared days. With the time zones and different race starts I wasn't always able to watch both live so would still be in a "catch up" mode when I had time. I also sometimes have periods where I can't follow anything and like to use the live streams to catch up on the last days / week of racing. I'll specifically avoid twitter and cycling sites in those times so I can get up to speed as it happened.

I've been bummed out a few times in those cases where one archived live stream spoils another - particularly for races occurring at the same time.

 

[RedheadDane]

Personally I just don't care about spoilers; if I can't watch a race live, I see no point in watching it.