I do enjoy the GCN show, and some of the behind the scenes stuff at races is interesting, stuff you just soundly get to see other wise.
A lot of the videos like the how to stuff doesn’t appeal to me, but you can just skip all that. Ollies hour record series was good, sure there was advertising in it but over all it was interesting.
I didn’t see the FTP video before it was pulled but it did sound interesting, hopefully the new edited version will be better.
I miss old gang. Si and ollie are ok, but watching Matt not being able to clip in all the time was priceless 
I know a guy, that knows guy, the knew guy, that knew a gal, who had it from a reliable source that EP was dissatisfied with some of the edits and number of takes required to get a sponsor in, and that a certain other co-presenter was a little bit annoying.
She’s also a pretty intelligent lady, with a PHD from Oxford, or Cambridge, or wherever, and has gone to make use of her engineering brain in Switzerland. I can see the appeal to the less intellectually demanding ‘how to make porridge’ video.
A fellow phd
Reboot:
Reminds me of when I did the Festive500 fresh off the couch.
First 4 days were absolute murder. The last 3 were much more “enjoyable”.
It’s all advertisement with some light fluff to entertain you for 10 minutes a week. No big deal.
For me it falls/fell flat on its face when Emma and Dan were more or less replaced with James and Chris.
They say presenting a TV show is a lot harder than it looks and these two lads certainly rammed that home for me. I enjoyed watching the ‘get to know the presenters’ bit they did last year and I came away thinking both James and Chris were actually decent blokes but for whatever reason it doesn’t come through on-screen.
Chris especially, for all that the big lad looks the part and is dynamite on a bike he is just the furthest thing from a natural in front of the camera and I suspect that had a teeny-tiny wee bit to do with him scrapping the whole idea and going back to racing.
Totally agree. Ive stopped watching now that I can spend all those hours on the TR forum and podcasts :). The only thing that interests me is hack or bodge but now they’ve left that up to the public its lost its charm as well.
I tend to watch most of them (Race News is brillaint) but lots of the obvious promo stuff gets ignored as background noise. I think the ratio of worthwhile info to sponsors fluff is still trending towards worthwhile. Especially if you don’t watch the unboxing videos (although I do enter the giveaway quiz!).
Also right now, I’ll watch anything that isn’t my bloody home office!
Matt Stephens is super hard to replace but Ollie is a good lad. He’s never been pro and owns it. He’s an avid cyclist and a ‘bit keen’ by his own admission. I like him a lot, an honest Yorkshireman.
For me, it’s about the entertainment value. And I do think I can learn from some of their tech videos. For instances, obviously, they are sponsored by park tools. By servicing tubeless, or adjusting your derailleur is similar whether you use park tool, ride SRAM or Shimano, or whether yo run Schwalbe or GP5000’s.
What I do find annoying, however, is that when they are sponsored by one brand (Canyon comes to mind), they more or less tend to ignore most other brands largely. They almost never do bike reviews, and never do affordable bikes (besides Canyon).
I still watch GCN quite a bit but dial out the commercial aspect, in general I buy none of the brands they promote (ok I have some Fizik shoes and saddle) but that’s about it.
If I want power meter reviews / opinion DCR is the only place I trust, so nice to hear what Nate has to say about his refusal of a comp TR account.
For those of you not easily offended by bad language but want some real critique of manufacturing standards (particularly Canyon) in the cycling industry + professional assessment of aerodynamic claims give a chap called Hambini a go… he will not be everyone’s cup of tea but he certainly knows his stuff…the antithesis of GCN
For the record I have no affiliation with Hambini or his channel!!!
For me, GCN produces so much that I don’t have time for most of it. Hambini is interesting, but he seems to have about 25 minutes of useless ranting for each 5 minutes of worthwhile content.
I still enjoy GCN, they make some interesting and funny content and I like the presenters. Doesn’t really bother me if they are sponsored or promoting stuff or whatever, end of the day they need to keep funds coming in to keep making content and I have enough self control to watch it without buying whatever is on the menu that day
This describes lots of youtube for me. I wish people would just get to the point.
He’s hilarious. And crazy. But also smart.
I aggressively use the right arrow key to skip ahead, and not shy about increasing playback speed. A lot of times the first minute or 2 is filler telling you what they’re going to tell you without actually saying anything. And of course the final few minutes is some message from a sponsor, or some other jazz. I do kind of enjoy the game of producer trying to subtly slide into the ad vs my reaction speed to close the video.
I really dislike how he rips a company to shreds with a sample size of one. Everything he says about the frame in question is right but by not showing more than one example it’s pointless.
To be fair, company should have internal QAQC check, none of the bad frames should make it out to the end consumer.
Of course they do but nothing is perfect.
He has previously said when showing charts of BB misalignment that they’re based on a sample size of at least 10 per manufacturer. So not huge, but not 1.