So just incase they read this forum, what as cyclists do we want to see on the programe,

me,
commuting riding tips,

electric bikes and electric assistance mtbs,

getting into road racing,

cycling road rage vids and the police responce,

any other ideas.

Anything to do with bikes or cycling

Guest appearances from Dougie Vipond, knocking himself unconscious at various biking events.

I’d quite like to see the show axed, does that count?

It was awful

more than 90seconds of what was clearly a long involved interview with Eddy Merckx 🙁

longer features, trying to cram them in doesn’t work, better to take time and do one or two things properly

fewer adverts, it’s the only programme I’ve seen that had 5x5min slots in an hour compared to everything that has 4×5

A new presenter…..

Gramme Obree as new presenter please.

I quite liked it for bring eclectic as I see cycling as a very broad church. My roadie mate, now heavily into TTing didn’t like because it was eclectic and too broad.

😕

thought it was poor, but it got better through the series and clearly had been a rush job. This time around theyve had more time to make it, I’ll be giving it a second chance.

Kudos to ITV4 for committing to cycling, their TdeF coverage has always given them good ratings, they jumped on the cycling popularity “bandwagon” before it got rolling and deserve to have benefited from last year’s explosion in profile, and are devoting resources to it.

Enjoyed their national champs coverage and female/male equality, only marred by some prat from Emmerdale co-hosting and making a comment about the course “being difficult and technical, especially for the women and under 23s” 🙄 , tell that to Alex Dowsett…

itv 4 coveraage of the national road champs last night was really ggod, lot better than the tour series, but a different comapny did it, and brought new ideas, and not so much repeated stuff.

Don’t be scared to go into detail, its a show for people who like cycling, so odds on we know some stuff already, and if we don’t we can find out. So how to put a helmet on your head etc can be skipped for more detailed helmet/kit reviews. If you want to provide full info for utter novices provide a glossary or something on your website.

Also, we generally have an attention span, so segments can be more than 5 minutes long, the world won’t end 😉

More importantly Top Gear is back on Sunday! 🙂

longer features, trying to cram them in doesn’t work, better to take time and do one or two things properly

^this^

Articles focusing on:-
routes (road & offroad)
skillz (lets have some super slow-mo with commentary)

…why not combine the two, a different route each week focusing on the skills required to tackle a key technical section.

Speaking of, I’d like to see a bit more Top Geariness on The Bike Show. How about 3 guys spend max 250 on ‘mountain bikes’ and try and get round a trail centre on them etc?

Then have a proper bike shop assess the damage at the end of the ride.

I think that they should invite Grayson Perry on. 🙂

If its coming back on how about an interview with Lance Armstrong? Or Jan Ulrich? Or both at the same time??

Other than that I applaud the programme but won’t watch it.

Hear me out on this, and have a think….

Do we really want a show which does reviews of kit, technical stuff etc?? Think about the old Top Gear, yes it had worthwhle reviews on it but it was a bit “dry”. I like the new Top Gear as its entertainment with cars.

Soooooo transfer that to bikes. Have 2/3 presenters, maybe a downhiller/trick rider, one roadie, one beardy touring/singlespeed person. Programme could mix a bit of banter with some Top gear ish features – challenges, races, visits to special events, larking around on bikes. That’d make a great show and I think would entertain people and get them interested in cycling if they weren’t already but were curious.

If you make a sports programme geared towards the people who already cycle, you’r never going to please a decent amount of people as they’ll always say “why isn’t there more x, less y”, or “its too technical/not technical enough” or “too much/little mtb/road/bmx/track blah blah”.

An entertaining programme would interest the cyclists (Im already thinking some challenges – coast to coast on £100 bikes maybe??) and show the non-cyclists that cycling can actually be fun. Might shake the kinda non-mainstream image that cycling has (I know this is changing steadily though).

no reviews of anything, please

maybe more behind the scenes stuff with pro teams

the coverage of events was alright

a searing expose of the unjustness of our current access rights as MTBers

EDIT: I was very slowly typing my post while robdob made the same point, reviews are dull dull dull

I like your thinking robdob.

It’ll never happen though, it would be critisesed for trying to impersonate Top Gear.

Features like Guy Martin building a bike at the Orange factory (as in that YouTube video ) – entertaining and informative, and watchable for non-cyclists.
NOT NOT NOT a biking version of The Gadget Show!

Oh, and ‘Beardmanship with Ed Oxley’.

As a cyclist I found the first 2-3 episodes embarrassing to watch so gave up, and am unable to comment on the rest of the content.
As above, things were just too short, and/or too little content. I wasn’t keen on the climb up box hill footage they did though can’t really explain why .. I think looking back on it, there wasn’t much depth to it.
They did something about commuting too but in five minutes all it really said was .. ride back streets, wear a helmet and bright colours.

May be a cycling magazine show just doesn’t work on telly?

I’ll try the first few episodes of the next series, but stuff that may get me watching.

-In depth/balanced on the great helmet debate.
-In depth/balanced on ‘road tax wars’
-The rare things of cycling (Mountain Uni cycling/downhill handcycling)
-Some topgearesque challanges (I’m not geeky about cars but find top gear entertaining .. though I always go put the kettle on when they do that celebrity in a car spot)
-Some cool video diary/documentary things .. like some of those Vids and interviews of the characters we see on midweek movies hear (thinking about the guys with the bromptons up to shetland, or the guys riding around canada trails with trailers recently)
-The odd race report
-Not necessarily specific route report but something like a location guide.
-Fat Bikes
-Great Divide
-La Routa ..

I’m sure theres more

It can’t be as bad as last time surely?

Lets have it from a different bike shop or café every week, not just in that Kondon

Last year it went from aweful to something with real promise very quickly when you consider how fast it was thrown together, so I have some real hope. For structure alone, TG is a great example. They have 5 sections pretty much, and “The News”. That works well, allows an amount of deapth but if its not something you personally care about then its only 8 minutes or so. I wouldn’t try to turn it into TG< but a few challange type segments might be good. Coast2Coast is a great idea as that’s something alot of people, even none cyclists, do.

Would say a section dedicated to trail centers/natural trails, mtb skills etc..some info about forestry commission work they do, volunteer builds like chase trails etc. The feature about the lakes on bbc that sort of thing.

Maybe comparing 26″ 650b and 29ers, kill the debate once and for all.

Road wise, some proper rides and routes.

Maybe comparing 26″ 650b and 29ers, kill the debate once and for all.

😆

– don’t be lazy and get out of London for one big feature every week
– make it feel less like a secondary school newspaper
– more exposure for UK DHing – get the Athertons on
– prize giveaways every week

As above – make it about the people who design/build/ride/race bikes rather than the bikes themselves, and make it entertaining. Also (in contrast to that) as a lot of viewers will be MAMIL types do something sensible about positioning and safety on the road, HGVs, riding in groups etc. etc. with a ‘live and let live’ attitude rather than ‘war on the streets’.

And finally Rob Warner to do at least one voice over per week of a viewer video, maybe on a ride to the shops, a commute through traffic or a loop of the Green at Swinley.

don’t be lazy and get out of London for one big feature every week

I suspect the issue was one of budget rather than intentions.

I think they have been further afield this time from what I’ve seen on twitter.

go further afield even

-Copenhagencyclechic interview/oggle
-San Fran Critcal mass
-Dare I say the NYC/Chicago or any major us city bike messengers
-Indian bicycle factory
-are there really 9 million bicycles in Bejing?

Last series was crap so the y def need to make some changes, I guess it depends on who their target viewer is though. Joe public that’s a bit interested in bikes or actual cyclists, they can’t appeal to both properly in a short magazine style format.
If appealing to ‘proper’ cyclists then I agree the TG approach makes sense (but without the big foreign expeditions, until they get a decent budget at least). But covering general cycle news, a couple of features, a more in-depth look at something (e.g. DH racing) and a super bike ‘review’ each week (but without the shite you get whenever one appears in a newspaper’s Sunday magazine. Agree that reviews of bog-standard stuff is dull but as per TG’s getting super cars in you need something to covet and drool over.

a super bike ‘review’ each week

I don’t think that’s a very good idea.
it would just read like a MBR review – lots of chat about ‘vertical compliance’ and ‘lateral stifness’.
they could maybe do a ‘tech’ section on Di2/ electronic gears, suspension, carbon frame construction etc. instead.

I’ll probably watch it in some pointless show of support, but I’m not expecting too much. Let’s face it, we’re not the target audience. There just aren’t enough bike geeks to produce the sort of audience figures needed to attract advertisers. Also, while Top Gear is a great example of a show that can appeal to geek and mainstream viewer alike, that sorted of opinionated approach also can’t be done on a commercial channel that has to appeal to advertisers. Just imaging the fun as some bloke in tight jeans announces that “only c0cks ride Orange Fives” 🙂

Them there whoppers lurking in the background at that cafe are annoying. I watched 2 eps and was out, as did my other cycling fwends. We found it a bit embarassing TBH.

certainly no poxy kit reviews, boring corporate sponsored rubbish, you might just as well get the head honcho from Spesh in to do an ‘advert’

some of the topics discussed here would translate well imo.
4X and BMX racing
DH racing, the UK is right at the top right now, so lets share that
Tour Divide is a great example, a look at long distance touring/racing/bikepacking the real world options, times, prep levels

the odd ‘cheap bike challenge’ could work

need to think about if you are covering a hobby (mtb) or a sport (TdF) the program can cover both, but each requires a different approach, not sure how you tie it all together in a single show – but thats for the production team to sort out.

they are active on FB and Twitter. It was evident through the first series that they are listening and the improvement from the first show to the last was incredible.

for those of you who gave up after two episodes, i think you should take another look.

is it a sport or a hobby

I’d like to see sections on the backroom guys who are developing the new bike designs & components, and what goes into the development of the components themselves

They used the cafe cos it was cheaper than a studio and was supposed to give some atmosphere. The first show was thrown together on very little budget and with little time, it was literally a case of banging it all together and trying all things but it improved very quickly.

It’s got huge potential so hats off to ITV for giving it another go.

And please God, no reviews. Dull as ditchwater and only appeal to a tiny minority.

I said it last year but it stands repeating I’d certainly like it to be less of a “London-centric” fashionista/hipster wankfest and more about actual cycling. but perhaps that’s just me being a bit wishful

I did think they had some good guests across the first series, but most of the interviewing wasn’t generally up to much, Same level of guests would be good but more in depth & longer interviews are needed IMO.

The “out and about with Lispy girl (or whatever her name is)” pieces were at least an attempt to look at different forms of cycling, and it’s probably good to use a novice to do that sort of thing, but they were generally a bit too lightweight and didn’t really get into much detail or give any particularly useful tips.

I suppose the thing to remember is that it is “The Bike Show” not the “MTBing show” or “The Road Cycling Show” or “Cycle Commuter show” but I would expect them to give more or less similar levels of coverage to most of the different forms of cycling.

I don’t think there’s much point in them trying to do technical pieces, there’s too much to cover on most topics and TBH most people either do some web research or talk to the LBS, there’s very little value to be had from them covering Suspension Forks, Brakes or Gears…

TBH I don’t think it needs to be “Top Gear with pedaling” it should be its own show, but I think they’d be better off trying to do three or four good pieces in each show than five or six lightweight/crap ones which was the way Series 1 panned out for the most part.

I will be watching, but my expectations are not high…

I’d like Lizzie Armistead.
Sorry, what was the question? 😉