Tour Ambiance
For a couple years the other cycling blogs poked fun at Al Trautwig, co-host of Tour coverage on OLN/VS, and not because of his name, either. The guys at tdfblog.com g
leefully announced that he was ditched this year. I don't know if VS. didn't want him back or if he decided to work the Olympic Trials & Olympics instead. Whatever the case, I don't join the ongoing Trautwig-bashing party. Yes, he asked a lot of neophyte questions--that was his job. If the network only wanted hardcore cycling fans who do 100 miles a week to watch, they'd never have a large enough audience to pay their bills. He wasn't brilliant, but I didn't find him annoying or pompous. I thought he was actually good at his job--the desk jockey who gets the discussion rolling on the topics at hand. But have you seen what they replaced him with? It's only been two days on the job for Craig Hummer, but jeez...it doesn't take long for me to hit the mute button or change the channel when he's talking. 
Trautwig photo lifted from http://bp2.blogger.com.
The other ambiance note has to do with VS. commercials. Poseur already ripped the commercial featuring the dopers. I thought that the visual effect of showing those guys in reverse was clever, but the music is depressing. The commercial is too much art and it misses the mark, plus it's pretty tacky to show Erik Zabel's son in a commercial about cheaters. There is a second commercial that hits the bullseye. We love this sport because these guys are masochists. Voeckler is a great poster boy for this ad. Screw the critics, the dopers, and the doping police. We watch because guys like Voeckler are willing to suffer.
leefully announced that he was ditched this year. I don't know if VS. didn't want him back or if he decided to work the Olympic Trials & Olympics instead. Whatever the case, I don't join the ongoing Trautwig-bashing party. Yes, he asked a lot of neophyte questions--that was his job. If the network only wanted hardcore cycling fans who do 100 miles a week to watch, they'd never have a large enough audience to pay their bills. He wasn't brilliant, but I didn't find him annoying or pompous. I thought he was actually good at his job--the desk jockey who gets the discussion rolling on the topics at hand. But have you seen what they replaced him with? It's only been two days on the job for Craig Hummer, but jeez...it doesn't take long for me to hit the mute button or change the channel when he's talking. Trautwig photo lifted from http://bp2.blogger.com.
The other ambiance note has to do with VS. commercials. Poseur already ripped the commercial featuring the dopers. I thought that the visual effect of showing those guys in reverse was clever, but the music is depressing. The commercial is too much art and it misses the mark, plus it's pretty tacky to show Erik Zabel's son in a commercial about cheaters. There is a second commercial that hits the bullseye. We love this sport because these guys are masochists. Voeckler is a great poster boy for this ad. Screw the critics, the dopers, and the doping police. We watch because guys like Voeckler are willing to suffer.
posted by uberschuck at 12:51 AM
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