BBC Olympic Games Coverage ...

I recently went to a lecture at the British Library given by Dave Gordon, Head of Major Events for BBC Sport, on the Transmission and Viewing of the Olympic Games ...

BBC Coat of Arms
"Nation shall speak Peace unto Nation"

Having the Olympics in London gave the BBC a huge opportunity to showcase their work to the world, yet we, the audience, had a huge expectation ...

... we would want to have the possibility to watch every venue (40+), every event start to finish, every session, every sport, every aspect, every day – so not a moment could be missed ...

... they had all the strands of the Beeb to consider – Radio, TV, World Service, local tv stations too – then the 24 digital streams going out with 2,500 hours of coverage – at Sydney ... the BBC only had 300 hours of coverage on BBC 1 and 2 ....

British Library: sculpture -
Sitting on History

.... here they also had to make arrangements with Sky, Virgin and the Beeb Facebook page ... there was BBC Twitter (which was monitored 24/7) ...

... of course they had to stick to programme listings ... and there were the big screens around the country, allowing the community to come together during the Games, torch ceremonies, etc etc

Then we need to remember the other events that were going on around Britain during this year, the different audiences who needed to be catered for – Children’s TV (CBBC), local tv and radio stations ...

CBBC Website

CBBC had its own website, children’s story recording, the torch route, Blue Peter (the flagship children’s tv programme) ...

The Torch Relay was broadcast from a converted horsebox,  which  followed the torch all the way around its 70 day route ... 8,000 miles, 66 evening celebrations ... and more.

Torch Relay Horsebox - BBC 

The Cultural Olympiad and London 2012 Festival ...  what an array of artistic, musical, architectural, literary et al events – the “Pentathlon of the Muses” ... all needing to be taken into account in the scheduling.

Then there’s the normal BBC scheduling of their regular programmes that needed to be taken into account.

The BBC Proms had to be catered for ... the annual 8 week (mid July – mid Sept) Promenade Concerts predominantly at the Albert Hall, but with events being staged around Britain – including tie-ins with the Olympic theme.

Now I’m re-reading this ... what an amazing quantity of broadcast coverage ... standard broadcasting, digital opportunities, not forgetting radio, nor more importantly the social media aspects, journalists working in the field ...

... then there’s the technology we expect now – all the interactivity ... the ‘extra’ slots, the ‘see it again/play it again’, the alarm calls for specific events, all the stats ...

Adding Cables

And I don’t understand that last paragraph at all really!  I hear the word “smart” bandied around ... and I guess that’s what technology is ... who does the glueing I’ve no idea!!

The International Broadcast Centre at the Park was the size of 5 jumbo jets and is provided by the host broadcaster, whose parameters are set by the International Olympic organisation to ensure there is neutral coverage of all events for all broadcasters, which the BBC then customised its coverage for the British audience.

International Broadcasting Centre in
June 2011

The BBC is decentralising from London and BBC Sport was one of the departments scheduled to move .... conveniently this happened in the 2012 summer!? 

The heart of the BBC Sports’ web operation, Olympics news coverage and distribution was now located in the north of England at the new MediaCityUK in Salford (just outside Manchester).

MediaCityUK

Still the BBC Olympic Studios had to be at the Olympic Park ... so they hired 18 reusable shipping containers at a cost of £2.50 per day!!  This had been tried out for the Football World Cup 2010 in Cape Town – so the BBC reused that studio, customising it as necessary.

Radio 2 also broadcast from one of the containers ...

c/o The Metro - Lund Point and the
unfinished Olympic Park in 2011

The BBC rented vacant areas of the top five floors of the 22 storey tower block, Lund Point, with views across east London and into the Park as a base for their Olympic and Paralympic coverage:

... BBC News and the BBC World Service used this space ... they built a studio on the roof, accessible via laddered scaffolding, to which ‘everyone’ climbed!

There were commentators at every sport – whose commentary and feeds  were available for other countries to tap into ...

 Each day the BBC1 was allocated to the Olympics and its events ... BBC3 opened at 9.00 am (instead of 7.00pm) – all the BBC Parliament bandwidth was transferred to the BBC3 transmission.

White Water Canoeing at Lee Valley

A nation was united:  28.7 m of us watched the opening ceremony, 27.3m of us watched the closing ceremony ... their target audience for Beijing was 75%, this year the target was 85%, but 91% was reached.

They took stats of everything, and are still evaluating those ... fully researched ...

Sport-On-Line reached 24million, while their mobile reach was 12million ... for breaking news, results, video, audio and analysis ....

The advent of Digital gives us, the audience, (seemingly) a never ending choice ... as well as High-Definition Television (HDTV) providing a resolution that is substantially higher than standard ...

Hadleigh Farm in Essex - Mountain Biking

... to which we’d all been subscribed to in the digital roll-out, the south-east being the final region in May of this year – new tvs or converter boxes being required ... and retuning, while it was all fine tuned.  I only use the basic tv set up – so am not aware of all the ‘goodies’ available – I’ll get there!!

Then Dave Gordon gave us an idea of the future for TV ... in about 20 years a much more interactive system, when the resolution would be sixteen times greater than today – Super Hi Vision tv screenings would be wall size.

BBC boxes!

The BBC had to work with all organisations to ensure they meet their public service charter ... so BBC Sport is looking at the lessons learnt from the Olympics and readying up for the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow 2014 ...

... they thought they might have 3,000 schools participating in the Olympic coverage – but it was 5,000 schools from around the world ...

The IOC has a Youth Olympics every four years (winter and summer) following the style of the Olympic Games ... the next one will be in 2014.

After Sydney 2000 there was a pile of letters to answer ... at London 2012 the BBC receive instantaneous feedback and need to react accordingly ...

Portland, Dorset - Olympic Sailing venue

They have social scientists on board to monitor, help with planning, scheduling and generally study society and human behaviour ... so improvements can be introduced.

The BBC had first call at the London Olympics, but usually get preferential treatment at Olympic Games due to the BBC’s worldwide coverage ... there is a lot of give and take amongst broadcasters during these international events – there is very little in-fighting.

The BBC is a broadcaster ... not a narrowcaster – and for the not so popular events they would include extra coverage within other programmes: the sport would get coverage, yet the probably tiny audience would have a sampling of the British aspects to the sport, but the sport and its successes would be highlighted elsewhere – eg in the One Show, or on Breakfast TV ...

Olympic Village

During the Olympic and Paralympic Games – the newly gained British expertise was being tapped into by the Brazilian authorities – for their Olympics in 2016 and the 2014 football World Cup ... and the BBC would be at the forefront broadcasting these events to its UK and global audiences.

Looking back on the talk and giving myself a better idea of the challenges the BBC and broadcasters face – it has opened my eyes as to how much is involved in just getting the sport into our sitting rooms, cars, mobile phones, high streets etc ... and the BBC costs us just 40p a day for all the pleasure and information it gives us.  There are no adverts - bliss!

BBC Sport covers a vast array of events, is constantly evaluating itself, has a global scrutiny going on – for the Olympics by the IOC, other events by the various sporting bodies  - the BBC values its position in global broadcasting ... while the British public have a first rate reputable broadcaster ... which cannot allow itself to be seen as biased in any way.

Look at what can be achieved with a few boxes!

The logistics of it all is immense ... the technicians, the electricians, the camera crews, the artistes, the journalists, backroom boffins and administrators, the actual broadcasting – all has to be assembled, co-ordinated,  scheduled ...

... and that was just BBC Sport ...

This is a piecemeal post – but gives an overview of what goes on behind the scenes in getting any sporting event broadcast ... it was an interesting British Library event ...

Hilary Melton-Butcher

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