The last broadcast

Ned rues the demise of GCN+ and lost afternoons glued to minor pro races in Portugal

- Ned Boulting

I want to talk to you about the sudden absence in my life of a dear, albeit short-lived friend. While they were part of my life, we shared huge tranches of time together, idling away the hours in a contented haze of contentment, letting time slip past like a strung-out peloton on an alpine descent, threading its way through an afternoon, or scything with zen-like grace through the rolling fields of Limousin. And all this, ad-free and on demand.

In my two decades-and-more association with road racing, I have lost track of the numbers of shinily trumpeted false dawns; those new initiatives with catchy names that have been announced with great social media fanfare, only to fall apart with sudden, surprising, and occasionally brutal rapidity. One of the latest in this sad series is the demise of GCN+, to which I was a very happy subscriber for the last two years. It was tremendous value for money, for a start. The fact that I can't actually remember how much my annual subscription cost (whereas I know very well how much Netflix and Spotify are taking me for each month) is suggestive that maybe they weren't charging enough.