Tour de France coverage

Has Harry Enfield written the commentator's script? Sounds very Smashie and Nicey in some of the shoehorned anecdotes about the local area

I heard the line "to continue watching our coverage re tune to itv4 on your electronic programme guide", I'm not even sure freeview teams helping the elderly for the switchover used such wording.

The caption was branded correctly, but reads wrong - something like "Viewers on ITV will need to switch to ITV 4 for continued coverage" . Surely someone watching on ITV 4 is watching ITV (the network).

Apologies if already noted, and maybe not the best place to post this, but there is an ITV Yorkshire opt-out for Tour de France highlights at 2235 on Monday according to the TV Choice. Exceptionally rare for an ITV English region to have an opt-out apart from the news and monthly political show

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but when the tour passed us yesterday in York there were 2 helicopters and I think 2 motor bikes with cameras. I just wondered how to pictures 'make it to air' so to speak?
Are they transmitted from the bikes to one of the helicopters then using a satellite link on the helicopters?

There were some cars with these on the roof, but they passed through ages before the cyclists.

There's five camera bikes on the tour this year.

Lots of details in this post from the Sport thread.

Thanks, I'll have a read!

Really enjoyed the last three days, taking the Eurosport coverage. Must say that the France Televisions 2+3 coverage from their event producer Euro Media Sports has been exceptional, Nothing was skimped from their usual exemplary pattern,

Just a shame about the graphics package.

Yeah, I've always been a bit puzzled by it. Certainly I think it looked a lot better about 5-7 years ago. It had a very flat design in the years before flat design was really in vogue like it is today.

I was out watching the race go through my neighbourhood today so didn't catch the live coverage today - a few thoughts on watching it back later.

• ITV don't have the live race available online, just the highlights
  
• ITV Player looks atrocious
  
• the commentary was a little ropey too - commentator gives a fact about the Millennium Dome; co-commentator repeats the exact same thing as if it's never been said before. And not great on the race either - I'd have thought the route of the last couple of kms would be familiar from London Marathon coverage. Calling the last turn onto the finishing straight, then correcting yourself because there's another corner just sounds a bit silly, especially when it's right next to your commentary position.
  
• maybe I'm being picky here, and maybe the poor weather had a bearing on it, but there was a bit of a disappointing helicopter shot at the peloton entered Parliament Square:
  
  because it was following from the rear, as soon as the pack made their right turn, they were obscured by Portcullis House.
  
  Compare with this year's London Marathon leader:
  
  where the shot tracked round to follow the runner past Big Ben.
  
  this page shows that they had their own helicopter fleet with them - perhaps a case of newbies to London v Arena's pilots who have to get nice shots of London all the time?

Yes I thought there were a few oddities with ITVs coverage too, like the repetition of the fact about the Millenium Dome just after the other commentator said it, as you mentioned. Some of the other facts as they moved along were a bit odd too, and also repeated, like the fact the Aquatics centre from the Olympics is open to the public, which must have been mentioned three or four times, and the warning that as they'd be going into a tunnel they might lose pictures soon, including thinking they'd already gone through it after a brief helicopter shot before seeing that tunnel and the front of the pack go into it. I think that just shows some infamiliarity with the route though, as a couple of times there were mentions of 'I think there's a roundabout here' when it was just a corner, or things to that affect. However, it was a good effort, and good for them to be showing it on ITV instead of ITV4, which I believe is normally the case.

Also agree that the helicopter shots were dodgy from time to time too - at one point the camera spun around about 90 degrees on air as it wasn't even pointing in the direction of the cyclists! And speaking of cameras, in the last 20k when the camera quality kept dropping, why would the quality reappear in a sort of 'scanning' way? I noticed that it would drop down and there'd be a fair few artifacts, but that the quality would then go back to normal gradually in a horiziontal wipe sort of manner, from left to right. Why was this?