Sports Video Group

As the Paris Olympics come to a close, look back at the incredible at-home production effort at NBC Sports' Stamford facility. Nearly 2,000 NBC Sports staffers — nearly two-thirds of the entire Olympics coverage team — worked in Stamford, handling what ultimately amounted to more than 7,000 hours of programming across NBCUniversal’s linear and digital platforms. The facility? 17 production-control rooms comprising 12 full PCRs, four RIEDEL Communications Simplylive rooms, and one Mobile TV Group mobile unit. That is up from the 11 PCRs and three mobile units deployed for Tokyo 2020. “The period of COVID production expedited a lot of technology and infrastructure that would have been implemented down the road but out of necessity were fast-tracked. We are now one unified team: there’s no evidence of distance between us [in Paris and Stamford] because of three years of planning between production, operations, and engineering. There is no latency in our interaction. Aren’t you always on a headset anyway [no matter where you are]?” - Molly Solomon, Executive Producer/President, NBC Olympics READ: https://lnkd.in/esUC3wJd Tim Canary | Kevin Callahan | Tom Popple Gary Bartunek | Stacey A. Georgiou | Merrick M. | Paul Dryden | Pat Tolster | Mike Moutopoulos | Marc Silverman | Tom Locovare | Sam Sagarino | Adam Simon | Alex Kourelis | Trevor Cannie | Molly North | Chris G. | Colin Whitehill | Eric Poellot | Ian Kuchta | Robert McKnight | George Pace | Kal Almandalawi | Andre Veenhuis | Matthew G. | James Purefoy Jr | Douglas Weisman | John Pastore | Brian Shepherd | Riley Brady | Andre Vawdrey

Say "Au revoir!" to the Paris Olympics in your latest edition of the SVG Saturday Fax!

Fans. Families. The energy. And, yes, even the celebrities. It's all back at these Paris Olympics after a long stretch of COVID-impacted Games. From social-media content creators and silver-screen superstars to the best announcers in the business, NBCUniversal has found engaging ways to diversify studio programming and live broadcasts and keep viewers coming back in big numbers, especially in Primetime. At the broadcaster’s headquarters in Stamford, CT, NBC Sports SVP, Olympics and Paralympics Production Amy Rosenfeld explains how a top-tier infrastructure in the U.S. is assisting with operations in the French capital, why deploying commentators on specific sports provides expert analysis of each event, and how the talent of numerous celebrities supplies an endless amount of entertainment for viewers.

Although NBC has several impressive studios in Paris, including the primetime and daytime studios, more live content than ever originates from Stamford’s robust complement of studios. In this behind the scenes interview, NBCUniversal VP of Studio Operations Tom Popple takes SVG behind the scenes at NBC Olympics’ studios in Stamford, CT during the Paris 2024 Games. Studio 1, usually the home of Football Night in America and Golf Central, has been split to serve the end of the West Coast daytime broadcast (6–9 p.m. ET) and Live From golf coverage. Studio 2, handling USA Network’s 24/7 coverage, has three eight-hour shifts per day. Studio 3, a new state-of-the-art facility normally housing NBC’s Premier League coverage, serves Gold Zone (5 a.m.–5 p.m.), and Studio 7 is home to E! and CNBC Olympics coverage. Meanwhile, Studio 6 is dormant but is available should any issues arise with the other facilities.

The Paris Olympics are in their second week and SVG was able to sit down with Yiannis Exarchos, Olympic Broadcasting Services, CEO and reflect on the effort to get the Games going, the innovations, the changes in storytelling, the challenges around gender equality, and much more. 🏅: https://lnkd.in/e_utqzHR

Years ago, fans relied heavily on traditional televised coverage of the Olympics on their dedicated domestic broadcaster. Now, digital outlets have become a 24/7 outlet for live and on-demand content that can be digested at a leisurely pace. For this summer's competition, the strategic partnership between Play Anywhere, Inc. — a company that enables new revenue streams through interactivity — and dentsu — the entity assisting with broadcast rights for many nations in Asia — has resulted in a live-stream offering that displays pertinent information like medal count, daily schedules, trivia, and more. Play Anywhere's Chief Strategy Officer Peter Scott details how their workflows are being used by various broadcasters, how this feature is augmenting linear viewing via a second-screen experience and creating robust mobile viewing, how the choose-your-own-adventure nature of the product is informing and entertaining fans in different ways, and the impact of this solution on future Games.

For our neighbors up north, their Olympic approach was different than the rest. The CBC had their technical center on site at the IBC, all studio and production operations were based at Canada House, at Cité des sciences et de l’industrie. This included a main studio with full LED walling and interview set ups, a second studio for morning shows back home with live audience seating, and various activations and fan zones. To accomplish this was a team of 150 in Paris, 200 in Montreal and another 50 in Toronto. From a technical set up, router was used at the IBC to allow the CBC team to sub switch signals that went back to Canada. Signals from Canada House also followed the same pattern. “We’ve been creating stories and making sure that the audience know the athletes before we’re showing them during the Olympics, so we added a series of pre-game shows and giving people some idea of what to expect.” - Francois Messier François Legrand TVU Networks 🇨🇦 : https://lnkd.in/eQeHAw6G

Get a deep dive into NBC Olympics' production workflows in-country at the Paris IBC and various venues, as well as back home at the Stamford Broadcast Center. +20 more reports from Paris 2024!

Opening its doors after the 2012 Olympics Games, the NBC Sports Stamford broadcast center has become a core part of Olympic coverage. This year, the center has more technological infrastructure, personnel and live studio shows than ever before. With the impact of COVID-19 forcing workplaces across the country to go remote, the same can be said of the broadcast industry. With the technology put in place during the pandemic, it allows for the NBC staffers to broadcast the Games from their home turf. Nearly 2,000 staffers are working in the Connecticut headquarters creating more than 7,000 hours of programming. Stamford is housing 17 production-control rooms, the lion’s share of NBC’s live studio productions, 28 off-tube announce booths, a dozen “flex rooms” that can serve a variety of needs, 24/7 live ingest and editing, the massive Highlights Factory operation, the broadcast-operations center, and more. Akin to the work in Paris, the operation in the U.S. is fully 1080p HDR, 50-Hz production with 10 channels of Dolby.io Atmos across the board. Almost the entire operation is relying on SMPTE ST 2110 for video and ST 2110-30 for audio. For the studio side, four studios in house are being used for a variety of content from NBC’s Gold Zone coverage, to handling USA Networks 24/7 coverage and more. "I’m immensely proud of the team. We haven’t stopped building since Beijing. We went straight into constructing all these new remote workflows for USFL and golf while also building up for the Paris Games. To finally be here with the building fully up and running for the Olympics is amazing. Our team has been able to help production members get quickly acclimated to the new systems and new facilities, as well as deal with any problems that arise and find quick solutions for them, thanks to the flexibility we’ve created here.” - Kevin Callahan Tom Popple SMPTE | Cisco | Grass Valley | RIEDEL Communications | Evertz | Sony | Calrec Audio | Ross Video | Mobile TV Group | Chyron | EVS Broadcast Equipment 🎙 : https://lnkd.in/esUC3wJd

NBC Sports' Stamford, CT broadcast is very much at the center of of its Olympics efforts during the Paris 2024 Games. Almost 2,000 NBC Sports staffers – nearly two-thirds of the entire Olympics coverage team – are working at the division’s headquarters in Stamford, handling what ultimately will be more than 7,000 hours of programming across NBCUniversal’s linear, streaming, and social platforms. While the team in Paris is focused on capturing the Olympic action as it plays out, it’s up to the crew Stamford to take in thousands of those live and ENG feeds from Paris and package them for the millions of viewers watching across the U.S. During the 19 days of Paris 2024 coverage, Stamford is housing 17 production-control rooms, the lion’s share of NBC’s live studio productions, 28 off-tube announce booths, a dozen “flex rooms” that can serve a variety of needs, 24/7 live-ingest and editing, the massive Highlights Factory operation, the broadcast-operations center, and more. SVG had the chance to chat with Darryl Jefferson, SVP, engineering & technology, NBC Sports & Olympics, about how the facility is handling such a tall task.