6 TVBEurope


www.tvbeurope.com September 2012


London 2012 News & Analysis Inside the Olympic Park


Olympic streams By Fergal Ringrose


IN Apiece for the 2012 IBC Daily (published by TVBEurope), the EBU’s Head of Media Delivery & Services Peter MacAvock writes, “broadcasters are all about reach — making sure your customers can view your content. If you’re a commercial broadcaster or a subscription provider, then the devices your content is available on need to represent economically viable vehicles. If you’re a public service broadcaster, then this reach is an obligation.” This obligation of reach is one


that host nation broadcaster the BBC took very seriously indeed when planning to cover London 2012. On top of regular television coverage, the BBC undertook to stream 24 different Olympic events live and simultaneously on 24 different HD channels, all day every day — a broadcasting feat never attempted before. (For Beijing 2008, the BBC streamed just six channels simultaneously). What this did was revolutionise


the way a major sporting event was consumed — even if it caused serious productivity dropouts in workplaces all around the UK! Viewers could watch two or more events simultaneously, as they flicked between computers, tablets, mobile phones and TVs. The much talked about Digital Olympics became reality… and took flight during two memorable weeks in London last month.


Aims and visions In the head of battle, on Day 8 of the Games, it really was very good of under-pressure BBC Sport Technical Executive Charlie Cope to take the time to give us a guided tour of the central BBC operation at the Olympics IBC. “As host nation this a slightly bigger challenge for us in terms of our coverage! TV-wise we are transmitting 18 hours a day on our main output BBC 1 and our secondary output BBC 3. And we also do some coverage on BBC 2 TV as well. We’re also — very much new for us this year — putting out all our content effectively live on 24 interactive streams,” said Cope. “Those streams go out for us


on Freesat (our domestic satellite system) and also on Sky channels and on the Virgin service as well. Quite a large proportion of UK viewers can access that, and anyone with broadband can call


EDITORIAL Editorial Director Fergal Ringrose


tvbeurope@mediateam.ie Media House, South County Business Park, Leopardstown, Dublin 18, Ireland +3531 294 7783 Fax: +3531 294 7799


Deputy Editor Melanie Dayasena-Lowe melanie.dayasena-lowe@intentmedia.co.uk


Staff Writer Jake Young


jake.young@intentmedia.co.uk


Intent Media London, 1st Floor, Suncourt House, 18-26 Essex Road, London N1 8LN, England +44 207 354 6002


Editorial Consultant Adrian Pennington Associate Editor David Fox USA Correspondent Carolyn Giardina Contributors Mike Clark, Richard Dean, Chris Forrester, Jonathan Higgins, Mark Hill, Dick Hobbs, John Ive, George Jarrett, Heather McLean, Bob Pank, Nick Radlo, Neal Romanek, Philip Stevens, Reinhard E Wagner


Digital Content ManagerTim Frost Office Manager Lianne Davey


Head of Design & Production Adam Butler


Editorial Production Manager Dawn Boultwood


Senior Production Executive Alistair Taylor


Publisher Steve Connolly


Inside the Olympic Stadium on Day 8 (3 August), the first day of track & field competition at London 2012


Charlie Cope: “We were very nervous about the 24 streams when they went up on the first weekend”


it up as they’re all carried live as web streams. So all UK viewers can access pretty much any of the live content, with commentary, coming out of the Games. This has been one of our big aims and visions, to provide access to all our audiences. “We’re also running 5 Live


Radio from here, wall to wall, and also a pop-up network which is a DAB service called 5 Live Olympics Extra for the duration of the Games. “And of course we’re also


linked to our North operation up at Media City in Salford,” he said. “From there we’re actually taking final production of all our 24 interactive streams. Both here and Salford are pretty much 100% utilised in terms of kit and output — [Salford] is very much a mainstay of our operation. It’s connected in terms of baseband links and network as well. “There’s a switching and commentary control operation that happens here — managing commentators is a huge operation — and that feeds all the streams up to our North operation and there we have two galleries that each take 12 of the


streams. There’s a constant switching process, taking streams up and down. The 24 streams are all HD,” said Cope. “An awful lot of coordination has to go on here, because it’s not only switching, it’s co-ordination of the commentators, commentary management, and making sure that everything is fed into the EPG systems to ensure the EPGs are actually pointing at the right place. “All the web streams are


powered by what we call the IVP — Interactive Video Player. What that means as a viewer is that at any stage from the live stream you can go back to a point in the coverage and jump forward again to live. And once it’s finished, you then have that as an accessible clip — which has still got all its tagging and metadata so you can jump to different points in the actual clip. So just because it’s finished as a live stream doesn’t mean all our viewers can’t have access,” he said. “One of the key pieces of this


[operation] is a desk called the multiplatform hub, and that draws together the key editorial leads around all of the outputs.


So when a story breaks, the coordination of our resources around PSC crews gets managed through that hub. It’s all very well having centralised technology, but actually this hub is a critical part of bringing it all together and making sure that the way the workflows are enabled supports that technology.” “Our post production hub is designed and run very similarly to our North operation. It’s what we call a Sport Production System. It’s made up of primarily, down here, three elements: the EVS side of things, which is all our front- end server ingest and playout, along with the IP Director system. That feeds content into a Work In Progress (WIP) bucket, which is Harmonic MediaGrid. And sitting off that are the edit clients, which down here are Avid Media Composers. “That makes up the structure,” said Cope, “and out of that we have a lot of third-party links into our radio teams and content back into our news servers in Television Centre and exchange content with our off-site areas. We can pull stuff off the host servers here locally. “Commentary is obviously the other big one for us. This year, compared to previous Olympics, we have a lot more commentators and in fact much of it is not only for our network but also for our interactive streams. Additionally we’re running all the host commentary back to OBS. Commentary is one of the


steve.connolly@intentmedia.co.uk +44 207 354 6000


Sales Manager Ben Ewles


ben.ewles@intentmedia.co.uk +44 207 354 6000


Managing Director Stuart Dinsey US SALES


Michael Mitchell


Broadcast Media International, PO Box 44, Greenlawn, New York, NY 11740


mjmitchell@broadcast-media.tv +1 (631) 673 0072


JAPAN AND KOREA SALES Sho Harihara Sales & Project,


Yukari Media Incorporated sho@yukarimedia.com +81 6 4790 2222 Fax: +81 6 4793 0800


CIRCULATION


Intent Media, Sovereign Park, Lathkill Street, Market Harborough LE16 9EF, UK


FREE SUBSCRIPTIONS


www.subscription.co.uk/cc/tvbe/mag1 Subscriptions Tel +44 1858 438786


TVBEurope is published 12 times a year by Intent Media London, 1st Floor, Suncourt House, 18-26 Essex Road, London, N1 8LN, England


Intent Media is a member of the Periodical Publishers Association


© Intent Media 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the prior permission of the copyright owner. TVB Europe is mailed to qualified persons residing on the European continent. Subscription rates £64/€96/$120.


Allow 8 weeks for new subscriptions and change of address delivery. Send subscription inquiries to: Subscription Dept, Intent Media, Sovereign Park, Lathkill Street, Market Harborough LE16 7BR, England. ISSN 1461-4197


Printing by Pensord Press, Tram Road, Pontllanfraith, Blackwood NP12 2YA


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84