Hey, Tour de France is on. Why didn't anybody tell me? https://www.france.tv/sport/cyclisme/tour-de-france/tous-les-directs/
Sorry, I thought you knew, otherwise I would have told you.
A Norwegian, Alexander Kristoff (cycling for
UAE Team Emirates), won the first stage, Nice to Nice. That's not how I knew. BBC has dropped out of my "neverending TV news" media bucket and France24 and Deutsche Welle has taken over the spot. Now it is something like 50/40/10 European/Asian/other. "Other" in turn is a mix of African and American, with a very occasional Australian thrown in. I have found no permanent favourite for African, they are not quite there yet. American is a mix of usual suspects from US and Canada (sorry
@Barulheira , still nothing south of Rio Grande (Mexico, not Brazil)).
I dropped out of US "easy listening TV" very long ago, the US is simply not very good at it. The only time I watched CNN was when in some mid-range Chinese hotel with the choice between it and RT. Dropping BBC was more of a surprise. It wasn't Brexit, more a death by 1000 cuts. Less interesting, less relevant, less insightful, and more inconvenient. Maybe it
was Brexit after all. No tiff, just a lack of interest. "See you around some day!"
Sure, forever news is a dying media form (b. 1980 †2020?), and I may not be the most typical news consumer, but for an anglophile to have dropped out of the Anglophonie completely, Britain has been the master of media, may mean something. Mind you, the US is still the superpower of virtual reality. If some American is killed by some other American under weird circumstances, in some suburb of some city of one of those American states, the whole world knows. Some youth in a banlieue in France? Who cares. I know more about the latest US cause célèbre and their family relationship than I know of Timo Haataja, a 35 year old man who died a month ago under suspicious circumstances after an encounter with the police literally a kilometre from here. And I only know
his name because I looked him up.
Anyway I am watching France24 now, a still-recovering francophobe, even learnt a few more French words than
merde (somewhere a Corsican general must be laughing). So I knew about
Tour de France, not out of a newfound interest in performance-enhanced sports, but because of their angle. Not "Who will win?" but "Will they finish?". As it turns out
Tour de France happens in France. Another thing that is happening in France is Covid-19. It's not just a question of which sponsored team gets ahead, but also whether the virus will get ahead of them. Imminent death makes sports more engaging.
Tour de California perhaps, during the wildfire season?
Side-effect of watching France24 is that I get more real-time information on areas like the Sahel, the coup in Mali. And Lebanon, but there I have a pre-existing interest.