German TV Ratings For The Tour de France Are Way Down After German Rider Is Nailed On Illegal Doping, But With A Danish Rider Leading Although Also Under A Doping Cloud That Country’s TV Ratings Have Gone Through The Roof

Throw in French customs searching foreign team buses looking for illegal drugs, the Kazakh leader of the Astana team who won two stages is booted out after failing a blood test, and the embarrassment of the International Cycling Union (UCI) that Michael Rasmussen, the Danish leader, failed on two occasions during the year to let officials know his whereabouts in case they wanted to spring surprise drug test and three such “misses” equals a doping offense. That caused UCI President Pat McQuaid to utter, “From an image point of view, it would be better if it was not Michael Rasmussen but one of the youngest riders winning the Tour.”

So how does the public react to all of these images? One of the best ways of judging is to take note of the television ratings for this year’s race in those countries most affected.

Take Germany, the second largest cycle watching audience after host France. WithGermanT-Mobile cyclist Patrik Sinkewitz testing positive for testosterone, the ARD and ZDF public broadcasters pulled the plug. Nicolas Brender, ZDF chief editor, said "We cannot show an event with teams and riders who are suspected of doping.”

ftm background

Live Earth Concerts Bomb on UK TV (Many Complaints on Foul Language Used) , And NBC’s US Saturday Night Ratings Lower Than Usual , But The Internet Sets Streaming Records – Maybe Viewers Thought The Pussycat Dolls Wiggling Their Bottoms And Lecturing Us On The Environment Was Just Too Much?
Live Earth was supposed to set television history – nine shows on seven continents with 150 of the best music acts around – surely that had to be a global TV ratings extravaganza attracting two billion viewers? But the first ratings from the US and the UK shows it all to be one terrific TV flop, but it set records for online streaming.

BBC World and CNN Need To Get Back To Basics – It’s The Coverage Of Live Events, Stupid!
For all the magnificent coverage that BBC World and CNN have provided from the Middle East in the past month both networks are increasingly guilty of forgetting their roots – that it is live event coverage of news conferences, speeches, and crucial UN votes that put them originally on the map – rather than packaged reports -- and their ever stricter adherence to set program schedules are diminishing that coverage. Look no further than the terrible live coverage provided of the UN ceasefire resolution vote.

CBS Has A Huge Hit By Streaming the College “March Madness” Basketball Games During the Day, Which Has Created New Problems For Employers: It’s One Thing To Let Employees Use The Internet For Occasional Personal Use, But to Watch Sports For An Hour or More?
Last year CBS sold a $19.95 broadband streaming package for the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament and got about 20,000 subscribers. This year it has offered the opening rounds played during the day for free via advertising support, and at one time had 268,000 concurrent streams passing through its CBS Sportsline.com.

Thanks to NBC for Basically Financing the Olympic Games Where We in Europe Get To See Everything Live While In The US Its Prime Time Tape Delay
The financials for television coverage of the Torino Winter Olympic Games starting this weekend are staggering. For the US rights to Torino NBC paid $613 million, and by the time production costs and everything else is included it won’t see much change from $750 million. That’s a lot of commercials it has to sell and Madison Avenue figures NBC, if it’s lucky, may just break even compared to the $70 million it made on each of the last two Olympics.

ARD and ZDF last year inserted anti-doping clauses into all their sports rights contracts following a series of scandals that included 2006 Tour de France winner Floyd Landis being stripped of his title and top sprinters Justin Gatlin and Marion Jones testing positive for banned substances.

But sensing a commercial opportunity, the satellite channels Sat 1 and Pro Sieben immediately picked up the poisoned chalice and began live daily coverage the day after ARD and ZDF quit, perhaps figuring it wasn’t really the role of the public broadcaster to determine morals – if people didn’t want to watch the cycling because of doping irregularities then all they had to do was turn off the coverage, but for those who did want to watch the coverage should remain. As a Sat1 spokesperson said, “Viewers have a healthy distance from these scandals – they make up their own minds.”

And, yes, that’s exactly what the German public did. They are staying away from the replacement coverage in droves. A poll released over the weekend said that 59% of those asked supported the ARD and ZDF position. And Michael Konken, chairman of Germany's journalists association, said, “This is a logical and resolute decision on the part of the public broadcasters. Doped sports are a farce and do not justify daily hours-long live coverage on tax-financed television."

A couple of years back and cycling in Germany would draw some 3 million viewers daily, partly because Jan Ullrich, Germany’s best rider who had won back in 1997, was usually in contention. But he retired under a doping cloud (he now says he is ready to talk about that) and with his retirement so, it seems, a lot of German viewers retired soon. This year the public broadcasters were getting around 1.4 million viewers daily, but the day Sat 1 and Pro Sieben started their replacement coverage the numbers were down to just 530,000. At the weekend it was up to 770,000 but still far behind what the public broadcasters had been drawing.

“We want those ratings numbers up quickly.” said Sat1ProSieben chairman Guillaume de Posch, not unsurprisingly.

Now we all know everyone loves a winner, but do the Danes love their race leader, or are they ashamed? He has a doping cloud over him and Danish cycling officials are taking the high road on this, dropping Rasmussen from the national team for the world championships and also he will not represent his country at the Beijing Olympics. And when was the last time a head of an international sporting body said he wished someone else besides the current leader would win a race

Add to that a couple of months back Bjarne Riis, Denmark’s 1996 Tour de France champion, admitted to doping. So with all of this going did the Danish public stay away in droves, too, to express their indignation? Not at all. Since Rasmussen has started wearing the yellow jersey (indicates he’s the leader) the daily coverage has gotten up to an 80% share. So no doping worries there, then, as opposed to neighboring Germany.

And if all of that wasn’t bad enough one of the pre-race favorites, Alexandre Vinokourov of Khazakstan, winner of two stages has been thrown out after a test showed he had two distinctive types of red blood cells indicating that he had received an illegal blood transfusion from a compatible donor before the first stage he won. And his team is gone, too. An Astana team statement read: "According to the ethical code of the Astana cycling team, Alexandre Vinokourov has been suspended with immediate effect. Informed by the Astana management, the organizers of the Tour de France invited the team to withdraw, which was immediately accepted."

As for the host country, France, sports lovers have made it clear they believe that whomever wins the race is basically a crook, because the winner will have had to have cheated with drugs, illegal blood transmissions or the like to have the edge over anyone else. Le Journal du Dimanche said a poll showed that 78% of those interviewed believe the winner will have done something wrong, the same percentage as in a similar poll six years ago.

But that doesn’t stop the French from watching it all on TV, in fact this year their numbers are up 6% according to France 2.

Ullrich, the retired German rider, says he now has the sound on when he watches the race on television as opposed to when the public broadcasters were televising the race, and he had sound off. “When I was watching the coverage on ARD and ZDF I cut the sound because the commentary was always about doping," he explained.