PROFILE JOHN LINWOOD
OLYMPIC LEGACY W
FACT FILE
Career 2009-present: chief technology officer, BBC; 2004-February 2009: senior vice-president international engineering, Yahoo!; 1993-2004: general manager, Microsoft; 1991-1993: chief technology officer, The Dodge Group; 1989- 1991: founder and chief executive, Omega Software Development; 1983-1989: technical director, Mega Lives London Family Married, three children Hobbies Photography, electronics and flying helicopters
hen I meet with John Linwood a few days after the
closing ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics, he is clearly still buzzing from the two-week event. Linwood went to the Games (he is keen to point out he paid for his own ticket), but it’s the performance of the BBC, rather than the athletes’ achievements or Danny Boyle’s spectacular opening ceremony, that is the reason for his broad smile. “There is a huge sense of relief,” he says. “We stayed on air, the audience loved us, the website had huge traffic and the audience figures are stunning.” With 24 live streams, it was the first time the BBC had made so much content available across so many platforms, and it’s fair to say audiences lapped it up. The opening ceremony, with an audience of 27 million, was the highest-rating TV event of the past 14 years. BBC Sport’s online coverage of the
Games attracted 55 million global browsers across the 16-day event, making it the broadcaster’s most successful online event to date. In total, 106 million requests for Olym- pics video content online were received. In comparison, only 32 million videos were served for the Beijing 2008 Olympics. Linwood says he is “delighted” with the technology that under- pinned the coverage. The planning for the Games began four years ago but the legacy is likely to be felt for many years to come, with viewers’ attitudes towards online and multi- platform content now changed irrev- ocably. Having delivered so much, the BBC’s task now is to keep pace with audience expectation. “For
16 | Broadcast TECH | September/October 2012
BBC chief technology officer John Linwood says London 2012 has transformed the way the broadcaster’s online services are perceived. He talks to George Bevir about keeping pace with audience expectation
can, but at this stage, we’re not making any commitments.” London 2012 was the first Olym-
future sporting events such as the Commonwealth Games and music festivals, we are looking at how we can take multiple feeds and deliver them to the audience; that’s some- thing we are keen to do,” he says. “But there is a law of diminishing returns; 24 streams for Wimbledon probably wouldn’t get the same amount of viewers as you would for the Olympics. We set a new standard and we are keen to deliver what we
TOOLS OF THE TRADE
John Linwood is not only responsible for hardware and software that deliver the BBC’s broadcast services, he also heads all of the BBC’s IT technology including business applications, security, technol- ogy infrastructure and software. When he joined more than three
years ago, “niggly” things like phones not working and log-on times of 20 minutes were impacting staff on a day-to-day basis. Since then, the IT used by staff has changed “dramatically”. He says: “I did a lot of work with our vendors and internal teams to give
people the tools they need to do their jobs so that people could get their work done without fighting the technology.” The overhaul included a refresh all of
the broadcaster’s LAN infrastructure, upgrades to the wireless infrastructure, guest Wi-Fi in all BBC buildings, together with software upgrades to Windows 7, Office 2010 and Exchange servers upgraded with new hardware. “It’s dull and boring stuff but it’s also
important; if people can’t do their jobs, there is no point talking about anything else,” he says.
pics to use live 3D, but beyond tak- ing the OBS feed for the opening and closing ceremony, the men’s 100 metres final and a highlights pack- age at the end of each day, the BBC didn’t devote much in the way of production resources to 3D cover- age. Linwood is fairly unimpressed by the technology, describing it as “still in the novelty bracket”. “We’ll continue to show special events in 3D, such as Last Night Of The Proms, Planet Dinosaur and the final of Strictly Come Dancing, but we don’t see any plans for continu- ous 3D broadcasts. The audience is just not there yet.” Linwood is much more effusive
about Super Hi-Vision, the high- resolution technology that delivers images 16 times clearer than HD. Japanese broadcaster NHK has developed camera and display tech- nology, with the BBC R&D team
www.broadcastnow.co.uk/techfacils
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