Talking to Karl Malone, senior director of audio engineering at NBC Sports and Olympics, about the sound he intends to capture and deliver during the Winter Games in Milan-Cortina reveals a passion and excitement for the event he hopes viewers will sense at home.

A critical part of making that happen will be the extensive use of immersive microphones to take advantage not only of the five speakers and subwoofer of a 5.1 surround mix, but also of four height channels dedicated to picking up mics elevated to capture a fuller soundscape and immerse the audience in the moment.

“It’s usually quite cold and potentially not too windy up there [in the starting hut of downhill skiing], but it’s isolated, and I think immersive mics are really going to give us that feeling of isolation,” said Malone, offering an example of how channel-based immersive audio will benefit the coverage of one event.

“How we mix these normally, you’ll never hear any crowd in the mix because it’s all about the athletes and their time and the focus on them, the zoom in on the eyes and listening to the audio,” he said. “You see the breath, and you hear the breath. Then, as they go down the hill and they’re vying for a world record, you start to bring in the crowd and immersive.”

Dolby Atmos and Audinate Dante
Delivering immersive audio leveraging 10 channels of Dolby Atmos audio will be a major priority for the network during the Games. “We have large 8.0—basically four height and four sort of lower-level—arrays that we will use for the general ambience at pretty much all venues just to get that larger immersive crowd sound whether indoors or outdoors,” Malone said.

“Then we have some smaller immersive mics as well, which are Dante-based,” he continued. “That’s a huge advancement in being able to get immersive audio into tighter spaces and also being able to do it on a single Ethernet cable, which is wonderful.”

Using Dante enables the A1s mixing coverage at the NBC Sports hub in Stamford, Conn., to control mics strategically positioned around venues in Milan-Cortina. Accessing the mics through a remote desktop, the A1s can not only operate them, but also steer pickup in real time, as necessary, from 4,000 miles away.

“One of our hopes is to get these types of mics into the starting houses of the downhill races where the venue is smaller,” he said, specifically identifying how he hopes sound will convey “the pressure and the tension of being very high and very alone on the top of a mountain.”

“You can feel it, and you have to be able to hear that, too,” Malone said.

Meanwhile Back in Stamford
NBC will use 14 control rooms in Stamford, four of which can be considered primary control rooms, he said. One will be used for primetime, a second for daytime coverage, a third for USA Network and a fourth for NBC’s “Gold Zone,” its whip-around streaming coverage on Peacock, presenting the most exciting action from various venues. Each primary control room will handle 5.1.4 immersive mixes.

The remaining control rooms in Stamford are what the network refers to as “venue control rooms,” used to mix audio for ice hockey, cross-country skiing, speed skating, Alpine sliding, aerials and moguls, as well as at the Olympics Snow Park, where freestyle skiing and snowboarding will take place.

“Those control rooms act like trucks, feeding into a master audio control room where they’ll take the eight channels of immersive height information and mix that down into four,” Malone said. “So, it’s a finished product in 5.1.4.”

For this year’s Games, the network is giving its editors in Stamford the ability to edit 16 channels, not simply 5.1 surround. “Ultimately, you want those 16 channels to go back into a control room so that the A1 can play it back as live and have access to those eight channels of height microphones to be able to mix down into four channels,” Malone said.

“We championed the ability to maintain that whole 16-channel workflow through the building—from the venue all the way through edits and then back to a live control room,” he said. “That’s pretty important.”

There will be two exceptions to this remote integration model (REMI) workflow, however: the opening ceremony and figure skating.

U.S. viewers and the network regard figure skating as a “top-tier sport,” Malone said, and as such, NBC wants to have more production personnel on site.

“They [NBC Olympics reporters and talent] have more access to athletes,” he said. “It’s a bigger production with more cameras and more NBC cameras. There are more NBC microphones. It’s just bigger.”

The same is true of the opening ceremony, so both will be produced from an on-site mobile unit.

Distribution to Various Platforms
Audio from Stamford will be handed off as discrete 5.1.4 PCM to be encoded to Dolby Atmos and delivered to Comcast, Peacock, multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD) partners and the network itself. At that point, the network will remove the height channels for distribution to affiliates. “All of the NBC O&Os will get AC-4 [the codec used by Dolby Atmos and integral to ATSC 3.0],” Malone said.

“What we did for Paris [2024 Summer Olympics] is they [the owned-and-operated stations] took our network 1080i and up-res-ed it to 1080p HDR with Dolby Vision and Atmos for NextGen [TV],” Malone said, adding that some affiliates transmitting NextGen TV will do the same this time.

“The AC-4 pipe has already been laid out to NBC O&Os,” he said. “It’s really testing the pipe at this stage, and we’ve done very successful AC-4 tests with both immersive AD [audio description]—being able to take audio description and present that in a 5.1.4 presentation.”

To ensure its 5.1.4 immersive audio presentation is available to Peacock subscribers, the streaming service has conducted extensive testing of home devices, such as Roku boxes, Amazon Fire TV Sticks and others, to ensure glitch-free decoding and presentation, Malone said.

“That’s why it took a long time in my mind for Peacock to go immersive,” he said. “It’s because there are the creatives, including me, saying: ‘We’re ready to do this creatively. We can give you 5.1.4.’ But Peacock had to test every single device. They aren’t going to launch without making sure everything is right.”

Planning for the 2026 Winter Games started right after the Summer Olympics, with the goal of one-upping NBC’s award-winning coverage of the Paris Games.

“You don’t sit on your laurels,” Malone said. “You think: ‘What can we do better? How can we engage the audience more? How can we tell the story our directors and producers want to tell?’”

For the Milan-Cortina Games, when it comes to audio, the answer is clearly immersive.

The Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics promises to be momentous both on screen and behind the scenes, in terms of new technologies and the consumer viewing experience. As Team USA heads to Milan with high hopes for its strongest performance in decades, NBC, Peacock and Comcast are readying a host of new technology and viewing experiences that they hope will strengthen, if not reverse, challenges to their business models that have been years in the making.

Addressing those challenges is particularly important for Comcast NBCUniversal, which spent some $7.75 billion for the U.S. rights to the Olympics between 2022 and 2032 and another $3 billion to extend those rights through 2036.

“The Olympics in Paris proved the Olympics are back and remain an unrivaled media property,” NBC Sports President Rick Cordella said at a press event, where he noted that NBCUniversal had already sold out its ad inventory for the Winter Games. “We expect Milan…to carry on that legacy…[by] mimicking and building on” NBC’s successful strategy for the Paris Olympics, he said.

Stemming the Decline
How well Comcast and NBCUniversal deliver on that promise will have a major impact on both its traditional and newer streaming and digital businesses.

For its part, NBC is hoping to kick-start the celebration of its 100th anniversary this year by reversing recent Winter Olympics viewing declines. Average total audience hit a record low in 2022 of 11.4 million for the Beijing Winter Olympics, down from the average audience of 19.8 million that viewed the Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in 2018 and only a quarter of the 45.6 million who watched the opening ceremony of the Salt Lake City Games in 2002.

The Games will also be crucial for Versant, owner of NBCU’s recently spun-off cable networks. Both USA Network, which will focus on Team USA with “Enhanced 4K” Dolby Vision and Atmos feeds, and CNBC will carry Olympics programming.

Similarly, Peacock, which will stream every event of the Games—around 3,000 hours of Olympics coverage—will look to solidify its stature as a major source of sports programming while the streamer’s owner, Comcast, will use the Games to lure back pay TV subscribers and fend off increased competition from 5G wireless carriers by highlighting the cross-platform capabilities of its video platform and its fast, low-latency broadband network.

“We know that the customers who still have a pay TV service are, by and large, huge sports fans,” Vito Forlenza, vice president of sports and entertainment at Comcast, said. “So, we are really focusing on sports to showcase the technology we have. When you can blend linear TV and streaming together into a seamless experience, you’re offering something that is really hard to replicate on a streaming box or a fixed wireless connection.”

Building on Paris
With NBC offering primetime coverage hosted by high-profile on-air talent, Peacock streaming all the events from 16 sports over 17 days, USA Network focusing on Team USA with 4K visuals and enhanced audio, and massive amounts of additional content available on CNBC, NBCSN and various digital offerings, one of the key issues facing the NBC Sports is finding ways to engage and not overwhelm viewers.

A major part of that consumer experience will be new production technologies. “Our mantra has been to make the best seat in the house even better,” Molly Solomon, executive producer and president, NBC Olympics Production, said. “This is going to be the most technologically advanced Olympics we’ve ever presented.”

That will include more extensive use of data analytics, live drones and mics on many athletes. “We will have mics on the U.S. men’s and women’s hockey players for the first time, and on freestyle, freestyle skiers and snowboarders,” Solomon said. “If you are a fan of snowboarding, you will hear Maddie Mastro give herself a pep talk at the top of the pipe.”

Less obvious will be improvements to the successful comprehensive cross-platform programming and tech strategy that was used during the Paris Olympics to provide viewers with many ways to interact and personalize their viewing experiences on TV, mobile and desktop.

“Customers have told us directly, ‘I love the Olympics, but there is so much of it I get overwhelmed,’” Forlenza explained. “There are customers who want to watch just about anything and some that want to watch specific events. All of them want us to make it as easy for me to get to an event I want to watch as quickly as possible…It doesn’t matter if you are streaming 3,000 hours on Peacock, if they can’t find the minute or two that they really want to watch right now.”

On a high level, that imperative is reflected in a cross-platform programming and tech strategy that worked so well in Paris. As with the Summer Games, all events will be streamed on Peacock and USA’s 4K feeds will focus on Team USA, while the high-profile primetime and late-night programming on NBC will dive into the day’s biggest stories and events.

Alternative Angles
Tying this wide array of programming together will be several new and returning digital tools that will help viewers find content, interact with stories of interest and personalize their experience.

One notable new experience will be “Rinkside Live on Peacock,” where users of the streaming service can access new camera angles for live coverage and behind-the-scenes shots of ice hockey and figure skating via a coach’s cam, a bench cam and other features, said Solomon.

Another notable digital tool is OLI, the AI-powered Olympic Guide that debuted in Paris and has been significantly upgraded for the Milan-Cortina Games. “This AI concierge will make following the games easier and more personalized than ever,” Jenny Storms, chief marketing officer, NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, said. “It’s like having a friendly Olympics expert on call across 19 NBCUniversal websites and apps.”

The clearest expression of this cross-platform strategy of melding programming and tech to greatly improve viewer engagement will be found on the Comcast Xfinity platform.

As part of that effort, Xfinity will bring back and improve popular interactive features from the Paris Games like AI-powered highlights, as well as newer tools like Fan View, which brings together stats, personalized playlists, live scores, athlete profiles, advanced DVR capabilities and betting odds, and Multiview, which lets viewers watch up to four different feeds at the same time.

“We are able to blur the lines between traditional TV and streaming to the point where it doesn’t matter if your favorite event is on broadcast or streaming on Peacock,” Forlenza said. “We’ll have a full and seamless integration of Peacock into our Olympic experience and wrap it all together with tons of interactivity.”

“The core of our business is coupling video, broadband and mobile,” he concluded. “We will be bringing all of that together to provide an unsurpassed experience that others can’t offer and fixed wireless can’t support.”

STAMFORD, Conn.—NBCUniversal is bringing back OLI, its AI-powered Olympics discoverability tool with enhanced features designed to help fans navigate thousands of hours of its coverage of the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics (Feb. 6-22).

First introduced during the 2024 Paris Olympics, OLI is now powered by Google Cloud’s Gemini LLM. The guide is designed to combine the conversational power of generative AI with NBCU’s proprietary, real-time U.S. programming information to help fans discover when, where and how they can watch their favorite events. Coverage on NBC and Peacock, the primary platforms for the Games, begins with the opening ceremony on Feb. 6.

OLI will be available across 19 NBCU-owned digital properties, including NBCOlympics.com, NBCSports.com, NBC.com, Today.com, NBCNews.com, regional sports networks, and 11 local stations, with the upgraded experience launching on January 20.

The upgraded version will deliver a more natural and collaborative experience that gives fans deeper context and makes it easier than ever to connect with Olympic moments that matter most to them, NBCU said. The upgraded OLI tool was developed in partnership with design and technology company Huge.

A demo of how OLI will guide fans and simplify the viewer experience so viewers never miss a second of the action is available below:

“Our goal with OLI on NBCUniversal’s digital platforms is to help fans find up-to-the-minute answers to their Olympics questions, and to help them quickly get to the thousands of hours of coverage we have across NBC and Peacock,” said Jenny Storms, chief marketing officer, Entertainment and Sports, NBCUniversal. “With OLI’s new capabilities, we’re transforming it beyond a discovery tool into a true viewing guide. From real-time medal counts and athlete profiles to personalized highlights and calendar reminders, OLI ensures fans can easily connect with the Olympic moments that matter most.”

With personalized recommendations and tailored viewing options based on time of day, time zone and live schedule, OLI will have several new features including live medal count updates by country; athlete profiles with bios and event details; video highlights based on user preferences; calendar invites that can be added directly from OLI; and suggested follow-up queries to discover new sports, athletes and Olympic content. OLI also includes links to help users get right to watching on NBC or Peacock.

As NBC Sports presents “Legendary February,” a month of sports programming including the Milan-Cortina Games, the Super Bowl and the NBA All-Star Game, OLI will share programming details with fans about Super Bowl Sunday and NBA All-Star Weekend in addition to Olympics coverage.

NBCUniversal owns the U.S. media rights to the Olympic Games through 2036, which are scheduled for Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (2026); Los Angeles (2028); the French Alps (2030); Brisbane, Australia (2032); Utah (2034); and the as-yet-unawarded 2036 Summer Games.

Charlie Jablonski, a broadcast tech pioneer who helped shape the modern era of Olympics television coverage, died Oct. 25 at his home in Lake George N.Y., the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced on Monday. Jablonski, who was a 12-time recipient of the Sports Emmy Awards and an executive with NATAS, was 69. NATAS did not announce the cause of death.

Jablonski was with NBC Sports for 16 years and was managing director of Olympics Engineering starting at the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul. He eventually became Vice President of Engineering and Technology for the network and received 20 Sports Emmy nominations overall, including an Engineering Emmy for innovation for his work on the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. At the time of his death, he was an advisor and consultant on the Olympics for NBC.

Jablonski was most recently Vice Chair of the NATAS National Awards Committee and Chair Emeritus of the Technology & Engineering Awards Committee, of which he was chair from 1988-2011. He was also a past president of SMPTE from which he received the Presidential Proclamation Award in 2015.

“Anyone who worked alongside Charlie for as little as a single meeting was instantly familiar with his superior technical intellect, quick wit and skeptical humor,” NATAS President & CEO Adam Sharp said in a statement. “A legend in sports television, broadcast engineering and the leadership of our Academy, he dedicated countless hours to the integrity of the Emmy competitions, the advancement of our industry and the mentorship of those he championed.”

Daryl Jefferson, who heads up NBC’s Olympics broadcast tech team issued the following statement to Sports Video Group:

“Charlie’s uncanny technical acumen was not only relied upon by NBC but he was often called upon by the Organizing Committees and the Olympic Host Broadcaster in both the power design phase and execution,” says Jefferson. “Charlie loved the Olympics, he loved the technical complexity and challenge and he loved the unique camaraderie we feel in the Olympic trenches and he did it always with his wry sense of humor. Walking the hallways of the Milan, IBC will be a bit different without the constant presence of Charlie, but his wisdom and influence will no doubt continue to keep the engines running and the troops smiling.”

In a statement posted on Linkedin, Sally-Ann D'Amato, SMPTE's Executive Director called Jablonski "larger than life."

"I've known him the entire 24 years I've been at SMPTE as the one through line of my career has been working with the Board. He was the Past President when I started and really the only one who remained a permanent fixture. Even during some times when various leaders would insist that only current Board members could attend the meetings, somehow those invites just snuck on through to his calendar (oops!).

"Because Charlie knew SMPTE and really cared," D'Aamato continued. "He knew about the worst of times and the best of times. He knew the history and that we had survived in the past and would do so again. He saw history repeat itself and was always there, listening quietly and then interjecting the voice of reason, experience, and smart-ass wit when necessary.

"I think often of one other Past President who, during a rough time at SMPTE told me that he didn't know what to do," she added. "'I knew I had to do something. But I didn't know what. So I did the only thing I could do. I called Charlie.' Because that's what you do. He was a mentor to so many SMPTE leaders, both Staff and Board. And I'm deeply saddened that we won't get to have those ultra candid talks about what is going on and what we can do. You all don't need me to tell you what a hole his loss leaves in the industry."

Jablonski is survived by his wife Ellen. There are no current details about a memorial service.

PARIS—Citius, Altius, Fortius has traditionally been the motto for the Olympic Games, Latin words for “Swifter, Higher, Stronger.” In 2021, the motto was officially modified to be Citius, Altius, Fortius – Communiter, meaning “Swifter, Higher, Stronger – Together.”

As we roll up to the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, July 26-Aug. 11, NBC, the official U.S. broadcaster for the games, will demonstrate its interpretation of the motto with a broadcast that is swifter, higher and stronger. The network has been working for nearly two years in both Paris and at the NBC Sports hub in Stamford, Conn., to ensure that everything has been pulled together, according to Darryl Jefferson, senior vice president of engineering and technology for NBC Olympics and Sports.

Pre-Configured, Pre-Tested and Pre-Installed
This will be Jefferson’s first games as head of NBC Olympics’ tech operations, succeeding long-time veteran Dave Mazza, who retired in 2022. Jefferson has been with NBC Olympics since 2008, managing Post Production and Asset Management teams and was instrumental in the development of the networks’ innovative Highlights Factory/Asset Management System.

“We started design and peer review about 20 months ago, with build, configure and test in our integration facility,” Jefferson said. “We tested video paths, workflows, delivery mechanisms and failure modes all before items shipped out. We ship gear mostly pre-configured, pre-installed, and pre-tested, for both speed of deployment and for peace of mind.”

With a broadcast as complex as the Olympics, with numerous venues and the need to integrate feeds from the primary Olympics video system, the number of moving parts is staggering. Take something like the intercom system—viewers are never aware of it, but it plays a crucial role in coordinating between all the different venues and crews.

“It has indeed been quite a challenge,” he said. “Our dedicated comms group has especially focused on inter-communication with our large presence in Stamford. Candidly, managing those comms-trunking resources at this size and scale has required re-thinking and expanding many of our core resources, and resources that are also sent out at our venues, as well. Part of the challenge of lashing up two cities far apart is seamlessly allowing folks to communicate.”

Seamless to Viewers
Moving its system to a new Olympics venue every two years is an incredible challenge, but NBC will ensure viewers will see a seamless broadcast—so seamless that many may not realize that although the action is happening in Paris, many of the commentators and on-air talent will be in Stamford.

(Read: NBC to Air Record Amount of Live Paris Olympics Coverage)

Among many benefits of this Paris-to-Stamford approach is that the network has less equipment to rip out and relocate—or abandon—after each Olympic broadcast. It seems counter-intuitive that having two such widely separated technical areas and operations is more efficient than having it all in one place, but the reality is that separation increases speed and efficiency.

“The biggest leap is splitting large parts of our team between Paris and Stamford,” Jefferson said. “Transporting large quantities of cameras, effects gear and studios full of equipment all the way home has historically not been financially viable. In some cases, the latency was unacceptable. That split approach allows us to cover more sports with fewer total people traveling than just a few Games ago.”

However, between the time of the old four-year cycle and the new two-year cycle that took effect 30 years ago, the industry has gone through a revolution in connectivity and capability.

“With new tools, robust networks, capacity with cloud infrastructure, and the ability to approach signal transport differently, there exists a whole host of new options today,” he said.

Emerging Technologies
High-end sports broadcasts are among the first to use emerging technologies, and NBC’s preparation to broadcast more than 5,000 hours of live Olympics coverage from Paris is no exception. Add in the complexity of covering a sporting event spread over several arenas and locations, and it’s like preparing for the Super Bowl… times 10.

Jefferson and his team found there were several new things that had to be handled carefully for this Olympics broadcast, which will be broadcast in 4K/HDR and 5.1.4 immersive audio.

(Read: Peacock to Use AI-Generated Al Michaels' Voice for Recaps of Olympic Games)

“It may be a tie between getting HDR support everywhere we may need it, and the large cut over to support IP in many places,” he said. “Although we’ve had important experience with both, there exist so many devices, solutions, vendors and third parties that do not support wide color gamut today, or equipment through which color information doesn’t survive.

“Testing every graphics device or element of delivery to ensure all is consistent has required a decent amount of patience,” Jefferson added. “In a similar way, building a resilient and nimble IP system has also been a process.”

I assumed that the native Olympic video infrastructure would be 4K/UHD. However, Jefferson said that is not the case. “Our format is 1080p HDR [HLG] at 50Hz,” he said. “We are thrilled that this mezzanine format will be supported at every venue and site.”

As you might imagine, a very large number of vendors provide the gear to make the broadcasts work. In addition to the gear that NBC brings to the Olympics, the Olympics organization has its own broadcast service that works behind the scenes and supports all national broadcasters. The Olympics Broadcast Services (OBS) positions all the cameras at the events and provides feeds and much more to the dozens of national broadcasters, including NBC.

“We have worked with OBS on their camera positions and event orchestration,” Jefferson said. “We also worked with Sony on switchers, cameras and monitors, with EVS on replay devices and IP orchestration, with Grass Valley/Cisco on core /IP routing, Avid on editing and asset management, Chyron on graphics, Riedel on SimplyLive, and so many more.”

‘Healthy Mixture’ of IP and SDI
One of the most basic decisions assembling a system of this size is where to use the SMPTE ST 2110 IP video standard and where to use the older SMPTE SDI standard. Where and how these two are used makes a big difference in how signals are routed, and routing signals at the Olympics is one of the core tasks.

“We have a healthy mixture of both, but are about 60% ST 2110 handoff, venue and core orchestration,” Jefferson said. “In some cases, we support both formats within a Tech Center, or gateway translation to convert one to the other. Fortunately, we have spent the last few Games [since Tokyo] making the transition over time, and certainly learning all the lessons.”

(Read: NBCU to Expand Accessibility Efforts to Record Levels of Summer Olympics)

Jefferson detailed how the NBC Olympics team took IP/SDI integration step-by-step in order to maximize compatibility and minimize conflicts. “First [we used] a lifeboat router, larger core switches, and a split router in support of both HDR/SDR,” he said. Now [we have] one single format, signal redundancy and a streamlined approach. Each of these steps has been critical in uncovering the complexity and flexibility of IP.”

In addition to SDI and ST 2110, NBC is also using some of NewTek’s semi-proprietary Network Device Interface (NDI) standard. “We are using NDI in some areas, specifically NDI v6, with support of HDR and enhanced audio,” Jefferson said.

Viewer Insight
Jefferson promised a host of new features for NBC’s broadcast of the Summer Olympics. A lot of it sounds technical, but the goal is to give the viewer insight that wasn’t previously possible.

“We have a whole trove of new technology, some of which is well behind the camera [ST 2110 and Dante, HDR and ATMOS everywhere], new encoding mezzanine formats, and also a good deal of enhancements to bring viewers further behind the scenes,” he said. “Backstage cameras, audio from coaches, cameras in the stands with families, even biometrics on family and coaches. The goal of all this technology is to bring more elements of storytelling around each athlete’s journey.”

The Olympics are more than just another big sporting event. It is an international cultural experience, a massive stage on which scandals are magnified and missteps are ridiculed. Bad guys have been known to use this hyper-focus of media to perpetrate big crimes—and viewers expect that such coverage will be captured with all the depth and clarity of the sports events themselves.

However, the winning part of the broadcast is the part that tells the small stories: The struggles, burdens, perseverance and stamina of the individuals who participate. When the camera shows the sweat on a face and fierceness in the eyes, it is giving you what you can only get from an experienced and well-equipped television crew.

This summer, NBC stands poised to deliver its best Olympics yet.

Matt Adams, a video technology innovator who touched many lives in the industry, died of cancer August 18, 2023. He was 65.

“Anyone who had the good fortune to know Matt will tell you that he was a selfless genius – a truly extraordinary, unique individual,” said Larry Kaplan, President and CEO of SDVI.

Adams was a video pioneer. In 1976, he utilized Ku-band satellite for telemedicine and distance learning—before he’d even turned twenty. In 1984, he built and deployed transportable satellite services to televise the Olympics. In 1989, he designed and implemented the first all-serial digital television facility, for The Christian Science Monitor. He led a team that designed the technical architecture of the first Direct TV plant in Castle Rock, CO in 1993. He developed a file-based remote workflow for NBC Olympics in 2002, which over the next couple of decades blossomed into a full-fledged remote digital asset management system. In 2009, while working for Harmonic Inc, he developed a similar system that served as CNN’s production backbone.

“All those accomplishments aren’t what people who knew Matt are going to reminisce about,” said Chris Lee, a longtime friend who worked with Adams on the Direct TV and CNN projects. Lee remembers Adams as a great and compassionate listener. “We’d be on some project, I’d be buried in deadline details, and here Matt would be having this long conversation with someone that to me seemed unrelated. But time and time again, that deep connection he made with people would turn out to be helpful both to that person and if not to this project, the next one.”

Chris Worth, an Adams colleague at Direct TV and NBC Olympics, remembers how much Matt appreciated people. “Matt had a sincere and far-reaching appreciation for the uniqueness of each person he met, often connecting with colorful people on the fringes as well as heads of many small and large companies and also the every day people he met at the parts stores, the restaurants, the gas stations.” Worth added, “He was the least judgmental person I have ever met. In Matt's view, everyone had something to contribute to the world they lived in and something special to offer.”

Adams was awarded seven Emmys and a patent. The Emmys were all related to technical innovation for NBC Olympics, where he worked with David Mazza, the recently retired Senior VP and CTO. “Matt did not let norms or ‘never been done before’ slow him down,” Mazza said. “His influence helped us innovate and implement most of our best ideas. We truly could not have done all that we did without Matt’s amazing unbridled imagination.”

In aggregate, these innovations for NBC Olympics changed the economics of remote broadcasting and have since been adopted by many other productions. Adams’ led an effort to incorporate racks and studio equipment into shipping containers to reduce set-up and transportation costs. By the 2008 games, the remote file-based systems he helped develop enabled NBC to employ 600 people at its New York headquarters editing Beijing clips and highlights.

Prior to working for NBC and Omneon/Harmonic, Adams ran his own consultancy for 15 years, with clients that included CBS, ABC, PBS, TV Global, The Christian Science Monitor, Kodak, Netcom, HP, Sony, Tektronic and Apple. The common thread in all of these engagements was Adam’s ability to see problems from different angles. 

Colleague Brian Chavez remembers this from his work with Adams at Harmonic. “Whenever Matt would enter a room for a meeting with colleagues or customers, he would often sit to the side and simply listen to the discussion, occasionally nodding in agreement or gazing at each person or at nothing,” Chavez recalled. “Only after things came to an impasse would he clear his throat and quietly propose an idea, a solution or an angle to solve a problem that all of the smart people in the room hadn’t even considered. He had a gift looking at things from a different plane of thought and contributed to many solutions, projects and successes.”

Adams was born and raised in Redwood City, California and lived, at various times, in the Bay Area, Boston, New York and finally, San Diego. His final days were spent saying goodbye to old friends and family in a comfortable, home setting. He is succeeded by his daughter Elle, now a young lawyer, and his two sisters Kristin and Lisa. A memorial is online at https://memorialsource.com/memorial/matthew-adams. That site will have details of informal in-person gatherings planned for October in the Bay Area and New York.

If you’d like to make a gift in his name, Matt Adam’s favorite charities are https://youthcare.org/donate/ and https://www.aimatmelanoma.org/.

LOS ANGELES, BEIJING and STAMFORD, Conn.—February is shaping up to be one for the record books for NBC Sports and NBC Olympics as the network will present both the Winter Olympic Games from Beijing and Super Bowl LVI from SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif.

“It’s going to be a challenge, but it’s going to be a wonderful challenge and an amazing opportunity for all of us,” said Pete Bevacqa, chairman of NBC Sports during a presentation streamed to the media Jan. 19.

From Bevacqa’s point of view, the advantages of producing both “far outweigh” the challenges. Offering advertisers the combined power of the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics is “a great story,” he said. 

There will also be marketing advantages of producing both, giving the network’s talent the chance to cross promote the events. “And think about that Sunday [Feb. 13] when we’ll have great Olympic coverage prior to our pre-game show from 8 a.m. to noon," he said. "Then we’ll do everything as we would always do for a Super Bowl…. And then we’ll have that 100 million-plus audience from the Super Bowl, and we’ll segue right into great live Olympic coverage back in Beijing. To me that’s an unbelievably, really unparalleled never-before-seen, one-two punch.”

The NBC Sports facility in Stamford, Conn., will be the hub of coverage for both the Olympics and the Super Bowl. More than 1,000 people will work from the facility on production of the Beijing Games, he said.

Protecting those workers from the pandemic is a priority for NBC Sports, the broadcaster has gained valuable experience working in the COVID era that will serve as a guide during coverage of the Olympics and Super Bowl.

“We’ve gone through this. Rightly or wrongly, for good or for bad, we’ve been dealing with live sports during a pandemic for 18 months, including the Summer Olympics in Tokyo,” said Bevacqa. “This team is tested. This team is ready.”

A Home On Peacock
NBC will leverage a broad portfolio of platforms to present Super Bowl LVI and the Beijing Olympics. Coverage of the Super Bowl will be the 20th for NBC and the fifth as part of its Sunday Night Football package. The game also will be broadcast on Telemundo—the first time on a Spanish language network—and it will be simul-streamed on Peacock, also a first, said Bevacqa.

Peacock also will play the central role for NBC coverage of the Olympics offering viewers a home base to access live and on-demand coverage of individual sports, specific games and athletes. NBC’s experience with presenting the Tokyo Summer Olympics has helped guide the network in evolving the platform.

“I would be the first to admit that we realized that we had to make it easier for the viewer to navigate that, to digest the amount of Olympic content,” he said.

NBC has revamped Peacock’s Olympics navigation tools to make it easy for viewers to find Olympics content, regardless of whether they wish to view on NBC, USA Network or Peacock itself. “I think one of the great things about Peacock is that people will know that that is your safety net, your home for all things Olympics,” he added.

The short time separating coverage of the Summer Games in Tokyo and the Winter Games in Beijing gave NBC the opportunity to examine ways to respond to viewer use of Peacock and ways to improve the platform for coverage of the games, said Molly Solomon, president and executive producer at NBC Olympics Productions.

“We’ve really focused on making the thousands of hours we produce more intuitive—findable,” she said. “How can you make it easy for the viewer to find what they are looking for?”

NBC’s strategy involves three steps: eliminating confusion by making every event available on Peacock; enhancing the customization of the schedule on NBCOlympics.com so viewers can find what they want on the linear, digital and streaming platforms; and presenting more on-screen information with tickers during studio segments to remind viewers of what’s ahead, she said.

Besides Peacock, viewers have a range of platforms to access events. NBC will present daily afternoon coverage, live coverage in primetime and NBC Prime Plus across all time zones. USA Networks will be the primary cable home, offering 24/7 coverage; and CNBC will broadcast its post-market curling show. Live events will also stream on NBCOlympics.com and the network’s sports app.

Winter Olympics Coverage
Coverage of the games, which begins on Feb. 3—the night before the Opening Ceremony—with live coverage of team figure skating, will leverage the most production technology ever deployed at a Winter Olympics, said Solomon.

“These [figure] skaters, both on the men’s and women’s side, are continuing to elevate the sport with quadruple jumps,” she said. 

To capture the jumps and offer viewers a greater understanding, NBC Olympics is adding four Super Slow Mo cameras—one in each corner of the rink—bringing the total number of cameras covering figure skating to 22. “That’s really going to help the viewer better understand the rotations on these jumps that determine their scores,” she said. Coverage will also take advantage of StroMotion athlete tracking technology. 

(Read more: The TV Technology Behind the Beijing Winter Olympics)

For snowboarding, raw-motion data tracking will be deployed to reveal jump height in the halfpipe, and for coverage of alpine skiing NBC Olympics has added motion sensors to provide greater accuracy in the measurement of wind velocity and skier speed, she said.

The unusual thing about coverage of the Winter Games is the short time the network had between the Summer Games in Tokyo—delayed by a year due to the pandemic—and the start of the Beijing Olympics in February. 

Comparing the situation to running two marathons on successive days, Gary Zenkel, president of NBC Olympics said work on next month’s event began in Tokyo.

At the moment, about 250 NBC Olympics personnel are on the ground in Beijing—with more on their way. Many arrived in October and November 2021, which “put us in a really great position” as more arrived this month, he said, speaking from Beijing.

“We have a really sound technical infrastructure built inside the IBC [International Broadcast Center], and now that we are able to move to the venues, our preparations at the venues are underway,” he said.

Zenkel noted that although Beijing has put a closed loop in place—essentially a bubble that isolates Olympics stakeholders and participants from the outside world to guard against the pandemic—the restrictions have not prevented necessary preparations from proceeding.

Super Bowl 
NBC Sports will lead into its coverage of the Super Bowl with a Hollywood-themed pre-game show hosted by actress Halle Berry. The show will include movie clips of famous football movies, clips from previous Super Bowl games and cameo appearances by Hollywood actors and Super Bowl luminaries, said Fred Gaudelli, executive producer of Sunday Night Football and Super Bowl LVI.

For the game itself, NBC Sports will roll out a graphic look that reflects a Los Angeles flavor. The network’s new graphics package will include virtual elements and leverage unique features of SoFi Stadium.

“We’ll have a brand-new graphics package,” said Gaudelli, “a really cool virtual package.” For the first time, the network will use a Steadicam in combination with the SoFi Stadium’s Infinity Screen scoreboard suspended above the field to display some of its virtual graphics, he said.

When it comes to cameras, Gaudelli declined to say just how many will be used. “We will have added equipment obviously [compared to Sunday Night Football coverage],” he said. “I can’t even tell you the number of cameras right now, not because it is so enormous, but we feel like we shoot a Super Bowl every Sunday night.”

However, Gaudelli will deploy more cameras on the goal lines, more to shoot down the sidelines and additional cameras to shoot down the end lines. “So, the cameras we add for this are really to capture situations,” he said. 

“[The added cameras are] more to make sure that there are no unanswered questions. We have all the critical looks, and that’s how we approach the game from the camera standpoint,” said Gaudelli.

“So, we’ll have a nice bag of toys,” he continued. “There’s no question about it. But as you know and I know, it really comes down to how you cover critical moments of the game,” he said. “And while I want to make the game feel like a spectacle, and we will, I’m more concerned about how we are going to cover those critical moments of the game.”

ROUND ROCK, Texas & STAMFORD, Conn.—NBC Olympics will be using Dell Technologies to provide high performance storage systems for its production of the Tokyo games. 

NBC Olympics will use the Dell EMC PowerScale family of storage systems to digitally store video content captured at the Tokyo Olympics for sharing with viewers in the United States. announced Darryl Jefferson, vice president, Broadcast Operations & Technology, NBC Olympics and Jeff Boudreau, president and general manager, Infrastructure Solutions Group at Dell Technologies. 

PowerScale, powered by Dell EMC OneFS software to easily unify storage clusters on a single intelligent file system, will store and manage petabytes of data—the equivalent of millions of gigabytes—across two NBC Olympics production locations in Japan and one remotely at its headquarters in the United States, the companies said. 

“Like the gifted athletes selected to compete in the Olympics for the ultimate glory, Dell Technologies is honored to have been chosen to help NBCUniversal bring the powerful stories of victory and defeat to viewers worldwide,” said Boudreau. “With Dell EMC PowerScale, NBC Olympics will reliably store and simply manage more than 7,000 hours of athletic heroics across its networks and streaming platforms while making the experience for those watching remotely better than ever.” 

“As we focus our lens on bringing athletes’ stories to our audience, the remarkable behind-the-scenes technological innovations involved in bringing those stories to life are crucial,” said Jefferson. “Dell EMC PowerScale storage takes seamless collaboration to a truly global scale with the geo-diverse teams that produce the NBC Olympics. The scalable and flexible storage enables teams to exchange video and other content for our multi-platform deliveries.” 

STAMFORD, Conn.—NBC Olympics has selected Innovid to provide ad management solutions for its presentation of the Tokyo Olympics. 

Innovid will manage third-party ads across NBC Olympics’ leading CTV apps, including NBC Sports and Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA, using the Innovid-powered Olympics Ad Manager. 

The service will be part of a new Olympics advertising suite, including NBCUniversal’s previously announced Olympics Ad Engine, which applies human curation, machine learning and computer vision to historical Olympic Games ad performance and data, and applies these learnings to new scripts, storyboards, or rough cuts of ads to make suggestions on how these ads can be modified for greater impact. 

As a part of this partnership, NBCUniversal advertisers will have access to: streamlined campaign management; short turnaround times and MRC-accreditation. 

“As an independent ad server built for television, Innovid is making a big investment in the technology to power this next wave of streaming content—live TV,” said Tal Chalozin, CTO and co-founder of Innovid. “As the entry point for the marketing community into the Olympic Games, we’re excited to solve for the complexities of live TV on streaming and the opportunity to continue raising the bar for AVOD with NBCU.” 

“We are committed to offering our viewers and partners alike the best possible ad experience and every can’t-miss moment across all screens,” said  Dan Lovinger, executive vice president of ad sales for NBC Sports. “With Innovid supporting this year’s Olympic Games, we are thrilled to be doing just that, ensuring a pristine ad experience for consumers and a seamless process for our marketing partners.” 

STAMFORD, Conn.—NBCU’s Summer Olympics operation is a herculean effort at the best of times without having COVID-19 to contend with. The Games’ postponement in 2020 at least gave the network some breathing space to revise its plans but with uncertainties around travel and health regulations changing up until the last minute, the logistics are staggering. 

Nonetheless, David Mazza, senior vice president and CTO for NBC Sports Group and NBC Olympics is doing his level best to keep the machine well oiled. 

“We have aggressive plans, as does [IOC host broadcaster] OBS, to make this the most immersive experience for fans especially since so many can’t come to the games,” he says. “My main job as we approach the Games is trying to predict when the train is going to go off the track and bump it back on before there’s an actual wreck. You’ve got to be ready to minimize the damage.” 

Other than the not inconsiderable challenge of meeting COVID protocols, the biggest logistical shift sees NBC relocating 400 staff and a number of venue control rooms back home. These are the control rooms for basketball, beach volleyball, diving, golf and tennis. 

With Stamford already utilizing all eight control rooms, four mobile units have been docked on site. Then, to make sure everyone is socially distanced, NBC also moved three dayparts out: one to Telemundo Center in Miami from where Telemundo Deportes is presented; another to 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan and another daypart to CNBC in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. A further 150 people working on digital editorial are set up in a hotel near the Stamford HQ. 

Nonetheless, in Japan the number of NBC crew including freelancers is still around 1,600. 

From SDI to IP for UHD 

As if the shifting sands of Covid weren’t enough, NBC is undertaking a key technical upgrade too. It is finally retiring the SDI router after 15 years and five Games of service and implementing an IP core at its broadcasting center in Tokyo and Stamford. This is based on ST 2110 Grass Valley gear, Cisco routers and the same VSM control system used for the past couple of Games. 

“We pretty much gutted all our RIBs [racks-in-a-box] down to bare metal,” Mazza said. “Our original plan was to get that IP to settle in for Tokyo as our big step before tackling 4K HDR at the Beijing Winter Games February 2022.” 

Then the pandemic happened. “We realized there is such a short turnaround [six months] between successive Games closing and opening ceremonies and that we were not going to be able to make the shift in time,” Mazza added. “So, we accelerated the HDR 4K shift into Tokyo.” 

HDR is being prioritized by broadcasters around the world as a step-change in enhancing viewer experience. It can boost the look of shows regardless of whether they are in SD, HD or 4K. In NBC’s judgment, it wanted to bring improved content to the home far sooner than wait for another Games cycle. 

NBC could lean on three years’ worth of Notre Dame football in preparation for HDR at scale. It has spent a great deal of effort on single stream productions [shooting 1080p and down converting to the 99% of the audience still viewing SD] and also on the round trip process [for graphics, for example] of elements produced in SDR, upLUTed to HDR, and downLUTed to SDR. 

“HDR is tricky stuff,” Mazza says. “There’s a lot of ways to screw it up if you don’t convert it properly. But after all the work that’s gone into the LUT conversion for round tripping, we think we’re in a good place.” 

The Notre Dame coverage enabled NBCU to experiment with different LUTs for up and down conversion. This was based on OBS’ HLG LUTs (aka “look-up tables,” which help color grade footage), which the Olympic broadcaster shared with NBC. After some adjustments the broadcaster arrived at “NBC LUTs,” which it recently offered to the industry. 

“We’re using both OBS’ and our LUTs for our HDR coverage depending on how it best fits our workflow,” Mazza explains. “The main OBS idea that we preserved was leaving more room for highlights in SDR. It means we have some latitude in the down-conversion for those HDR highlights, which we think enhances the SDR signal.” 

At the venues 

The key events for the domestic primetime audience are the ceremonies, track and field, gymnastics, swimming, diving and beach volleyball. While switching for the latter two moved home, the rest remain in Tokyo.  

At those primetime venues NBC is fielding crews of 80-100 while NBC’s setup at the International Broadcast Centre is home to the program tech leaders and decision makers. All unilateral NBC feeds plus host material is aggregated at the IBC for transfer as 1080P HDR over 8x10Gig pipes to Stamford, which then becomes the U.S. aggregation point for onward distribution to Telemundo, CNBC and 30Rock.  

Mazza explains, “At the venue we book a video split of an OBS camera feed [such as super slo-mo] into our switcher. In Stamford they record all the OBS host feeds and some multi-clips [such as super slo-mos that didn’t go to air] running in parallel to the live feed. Our digital and social teams can dive into that extra content.”  

This includes bespoke content for Amazon Twitch such as primetime sidecasting, where Twitch creators will commentate on the live events, encouraging viewers to tune in for NBC's live coverage at the same time. 

The scheduling and time zones (Tokyo is 16 hours ahead of L.A.) works for showing swimming and athletics live in primetime but for some sports—like gymnastics, which attracts a huge audience—quick turnaround edits (2–3 hours) will be made at the venue. Additional edit suites in Tokyo and Stamford will craft feature programming. 

Its presentation of the Games’ opening ceremonies will offer a hint of that: On Friday, July 23, NBC will offer a first—a live morning broadcast of the opening spectacle, starting at 6:55 a.m., followed by a special broadcast of “Today” and a daytime Olympic program. There will also be a traditional primetime broadcast. 

“OBS coverage is fabulous but as always we’ll supplement their cameras at those five big prime time venues with 8–12 of our own in order to tell the U.S. story,” Mazza said. “For the other 25 sports we’ll augment the host feed with a ‘mix zone camera,’ typically transmitting via a LiveU unit. The only announcers on site will be those for the bigger sports. Back in Stamford there are 30 announce booths for calling the other sports.” 

NBC will further augment coverage by accessing Content+, a web-based platform primarily dedicated to short-form and digital content. This EVS-based server system and MAM houses ISOs, non-aired shots and specific angles plus archive of previous Olympics. 

“Over the years we’ve worked with OBS so that when they publish a clip to Content+ it alerts our MAM and our system then requests that clip and pulls it over,” Mazza says. “They are not the same system but they are pretty well tied together. For example, in our MAM we might have a logger doing subjective logging [e.g pointing out that Michael Phelps’ mom is in the crowd] but we have also integrated OBS’ EVS logs so we don’t need to duplicate that effort.” 

Home run to Connecticut 

All of the broadcast circuits are lightly compressed back to Stamford in J2k while NBC will use OBS MPEG-4 feeds where latency is not critical. 

“If we can afford the 2 1/2 second latency to trade for higher picture quality it’s Long GOP MPEG-4,” Mazza said, referring to the format that uses a mixture of inter- and intra-coding. For monitoring where we care more about latency—such as for our announcers—it’s a lower bitrate MPEG-4. I think we’ll all be shifting to HEVC for UHD deliverables but most of the HD is MPEG-4 today.” 

In event of failure, NBC has a “belt and braces” safety net with four fibre paths carrying 215 HD feeds back to the U.S., managed by AT&T. If a massive series of undersea earthquakes knocked them all out (unlikely), then line cuts of the main cable and primetime shows are available via satellite. 

“Because the risk of failing is too great for our primetime shows, we also have the ‘lifeboat’ of a small coax router,” Mazza says. “The IP network is fully redundant but in the event of any problem we have a coax back-up.”  

All told, NBCU is expected to broadcast and stream around 7,000 hours of Olympics coverage. 

Mazza says his biggest fear is not having the right expert in the right place at the right time. “There are a handful of people who understand how IP works. We have to get them to the right place where the problem is. That is daunting with all the COVID regulations in place.” 

Nonetheless, he says he enjoys the challenge. “We’re taking a whole bunch of finicky kit halfway round the world, setting it up in a hurry and getting 1,200 freelancers who arrive just a week before the Games up to speed on how to operate it. Then having it run at peak performance on the night of the opening ceremony and for the 16-day marathon after that. It’s incredibly gratifying when all those pieces come together at exactly the right time to make the program.” 

Mazza describes the process akin to going into battle.

“I tell our staff, lots of stuff is going to go wrong. Don’t spend time lamenting the problem. We need to react and figure it out so it doesn’t burn us again. Work the problem, don’t look back. Fix it and get back on the air.” 

STAMFORD, Conn.—NBC Olympics is deploying Signiant intelligent file transfer software for its production of the Games of the XXXII Olympiad, reported Darryl Jefferson, vice president of post production and digital workflow, at NBC Sports and Olympics, and Margaret Craig, CEO of Signiant.

Signiant’s software will allow NBC Olympics to leverage their talent and equipment back home in Stamford with remote production techniques, enabling them to provide enhanced viewing experiences to their audience much more efficiently, the companies reported. 

NBC will use Signiant’s software to move petabytes of footage from Tokyo back to its International Broadcast Center in Stamford immediately after it is captured. 

Signiant’s network optimization technology also allows for seamless transfer of the footage over standard IP networks, eliminating latency and packet loss, so that editors in Stamford can begin creating highlights almost immediately while the action is happening thousands of miles away. 

In addition, the software will be used to transfer content, including advanced graphics work and pre-recorded footage, quickly and securely back to the broadcast center in Tokyo.

“Signiant is excited to partner with NBC Olympics for the production of the Tokyo Games this summer,” said Craig. “Fan expectations for more immersive viewing experiences are growing and with NBC Olympics’ remote production operations, they will be sure to delight their audiences with amazing coverage. We’re proud that Signiant’s software will play such a central role in enabling NBC Olympics to seamlessly leverage their talent and technology located halfway around the world.”

Jefferson added that NBC Olympics will be using Signiant’s Managers and Agents solution. 

“File movement is central to all of our remote workflows both in Tokyo as well as in our broadcast center in Stamford,” Jefferson explained. “We are excited to see how it optimizes our transfers and provides greater resiliency across our domestic and international transfers. Signiant is enabling us to scale up to handle our Tokyo Olympics workload and our increased file sizes due to our HDR and 4K production efforts.”

STAMFORD, Conn.—NBC Olympics has chosen RTS to supply broadcast intercom systems and support for the production of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, July 23-Aug. 8, John Pastore, director of broadcast communications at NBC Sports Group and Denis Castanet director of global product management at RTS said in a joint announcement today.

“RTS has been NBC Olympics’ broadcast intercom partner of choice for over 25 years,” said Castanet. “We’re proud to continue playing a key role in their coverage of the Tokyo Olympics. We are equally honored to have supported the NBC Olympics production team on their transition from analog to IP, which has enabled all their local and global locations to act as a single virtual location, thanks to our unique RTS trunking solutions.

“The installation for NBC Olympics’ coverage of the Tokyo Olympics will be full IP, comprising over 600 ports and leveraging two singular and superior RTS technologies: Omneo high-quality audio for local communication and RVON for international comms.”

Pastore praised RTS for continuing “to innovate and adapt to meet the high technical demands of large-scale production,” such as the Olympics.

More information is available on the RTS website.  

STAMFORD, Conn.—NBC Olympics has deployed Grass Valley solutions to provide its IP Media audio and video routing solutions alongside control and monitoring systems for its production of the Tokyo Olympic Games. 

Grass Valley, which has been supplying infrastructure solutions to NBC Olympics since the 2006 Torino Olympics, delivered a variety of open standards-based IP systems for the Tokyo Olympics for the NBC Olympics’ studios inside the International Broadcast Center (IBC) in Tokyo. 

“Given our long-term relationship and trust in Grass Valley and as we wanted to upgrade to a 2110 IP processing and routing core at the International Broadcast Center in Tokyo, it quickly became apparent that Grass Valley was the right partner for this important upgrade in our critical infrastructure due to their experience and product breadth and maturity,” said Todd Donovan, vice president of Engineering Technology, NBC Olympics. “Grass Valley partnered with us on designing solutions enabling our sophisticated venue and IBC facility workflows as we work to present the largest Olympic Games presentation ever. They have been deeply invested at all levels of their organization to the continued success of NBC Olympics in Tokyo and beyond.”

NBC Olympics is deploying Grass Valley’s IP Media infrastructure, leveraging control of a Cisco Spine and Leaf switching topology through the GV Orbit NMOS compliant router control and configuration system.

The IP Media solution is SMPTE-2110, AMWA NMOS IS-04/05, SMPTE-2059, UHD, and HDR compliant, leveraging the full interoperability of industry standards.

The system comprises over 70 IQUCP modular gateways using both the 25GbE and 50GbE product versions, 170 Densitè+ XIP-3901 IP audio/video, SDR/HDR, IS-04/IS-05 processing modules and 16 MV-820-IP multiviewers. System management is enabled via the GV Orbit dynamic orchestration system, allowing production teams to leverage the power of IP using familiar SDI workflows. 

“Today’s sports fans want more in-depth coverage of live sporting events; they want to feel that they are getting an experience that is as good as being there,” said Tim Shoulders, CEO and president of Grass Valley. “The move to IP-based infrastructures deliver the scalability and flexibility needed to deliver new and exciting services and handle the sheer volume of signals coming in from multiple locations during the Games, smoothly and efficiently.”

As part of the wider IP infrastructure, Grass Valley has also provided MADI audio gateway products, and the Audio Live multi-stream audio processing solution. 

 STAMFORD, Conn.—NBC Olympics will be using a variety of cameras and equipment from Sony Electronics for the production of the Games of the XXXII Olympiad, which take place in Tokyo, Japan, from July 23 to August 8. 

The technology will help NBC use newer, more flexible IP infrastructures and capture high resolution imagery with workflows for 1080p, 4K and HDR during the games. 

“For the Tokyo Games, NBC Olympics has been planning for several key advancements as we progress towards UHD and a new generation of infrastructure,” said David Mazza, CTO and senior vice president of NBC Sports Group & Olympics. “This includes the conversion of the IBC [International Broadcast Center] to a fully IP system and the combination of 1080P, 4K and HDR workflows, all while protecting the 1080I SDR streams for our main broadcasts. Sony has been key in assisting us with an updated menu of equipment, and consulting with us on how to ensure these processes run as efficiently as possible while maintaining the highest of quality pictures and reliability.”

As part of that effort, NBC Olympics’ crews will use nearly 100 Sony cameras to capture footage at event venues and to record athlete interviews, press conferences, and other assignments that require studio and portable recording and capture. 

A number of Sony cameras, including the HDC-3500, will be used for IP-enabled transmission, while the rest will operate in SDI. The camera roster also features  Sony’s HDC-5500 and HDC-3500 4K/HDR, high-frame rate studio cameras for slow-motion replay footage, along with XDCAM® camcorders including the PXW-Z750, PXW-Z450, PXW-X400 and PXW-Z280.

NBC Olympics will also use several of Sony’s production switcher models – including the flagship XVS-9000 4K/3G/HD IP-ready switcher and the XVS-8000 and XVS-6000 4K/3G/HD video switchers designed for IP- and SDI-based production. Many of the switchers will be used in an IP-based environment and several will be designated for 1080P HDR production.

The switchers will handle feeds from each sports venue to NBC Olympics’ production facility inside NBC Olympics’ International Broadcast Center in Tokyo, as well as to originate HD cable coverage across NBCUniversal’s various networks and platforms. 

NBC Olympics will also use hundreds of Sony’s professional monitors, including 4K Master Monitors for critical picture evaluation and Series of TRIMASTER EL OLED/4K monitors for on set and location monitoring.

“High-quality and remotely-managed technology has become increasingly important and will be integral to NBC Olympics’ unprecedented coverage of the Tokyo Olympics,” said John Studdert, vice president of Media Solutions at Sony Electronics. “NBC Olympics’ production team will leverage our newest IP-compatible, HDR and 4K-ready technologies to capture and produce the Games ensuring this summer’s coverage will be stunning, dynamic and immersive, while enhancing the connection to viewers across multiple platforms.” 

Sony’s Professional Services Group is deploying an extensive network of resources to provide support for all broadcasting equipment and operations for NBC Olympics’ coverage and was selected to integrate NBC Sports’ International Broadcast Center and its studios in Stamford.

STAMFORD, Conn.—NBC Olympics is ramping up its planned programming for the Tokyo games, announcing a new partnership with livestreaming service Twitch to produce and deliver live content that will be available through a unique NBC Olympics Twitch channel leading up to and during the Olympics.

The planned programing will include highlight studio shows, pre-Olympics activations, athlete interviews and Olympic-themed gaming competitions, all geared toward the Twitch community.

Olympic coverage on Twitch will start a week before the games begin with an interactive program to keep the Olympic torch “alive” by collecting items and participating in chats so as to ultimately light the cauldron on the day of the Opening Ceremony.

Also pre-Opening Ceremony, the NBC Olympics Twitch channel will feature Olympic-themed segments from top creators, all taking place in a virtual setting.

During the games, the NBC Olympics Channel will feature a daily interactive clip show showing the best highlights of the day with polls, live AMAs and games included. There will also be a daily competition where teams of Twitch creators try to accrue medals throughout the Olympics’ two weeks. Also, Twitch will offer live commentary as a companion to NBC’s primetime broadcast and a Live from Tokyo segment will provide athlete interviews and Q&As.

“The way that people consume traditional sporting events is changing. They no longer want to simply spectate; they want to be as close to the action and athletes as possible,” said Michael Aragon, chief content officer at Twitch. “The Olympics present an opportunity for a global fan base to embrace this new world of live and interactive sports. We are thrilled to partner with NBC to give fans in the United States an intimate, front row seat to this iconic sporting event and connect American athletes and fans in a way that can only happen on Twitch.”

The 2021 Toyko Olympics will take place from July 23-Aug. 8.

When Mazza thinks about the “Olympics at Home,” his thoughts go not to a living room but to the “virtual International Broadcast Center” (IBC) that his NBC team developed for the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. As director of engineering, Mazza led the team that developed an infrastructure, which let part of NBC’s massive control center operate at New York headquarters, fully integrated with the on-site control center in Atlanta. Three dozen video feeds went up to New York, where replay servers, graphics creation terminals and other production tools were based. Live productions came from the control room in Atlanta, but taped or time-shifted material ran from 30 Rock in New York. 

This corporate decision to put a permanent sports operations center at headquarters was designed to minimize the expense and effort of building a full control facility at every Olympics venue. The current IBC in Stamford, Conn. opened in 2013, built by Mazza’s team to supplement the re-usable infrastructure that NBC moves to new locations for Olympic coverage.

“In ’96, we had to pioneer a lot of stuff that nobody thought would work,” Mazza recalled. “All the remote control and Ethernet-based controls did not exist. File-based workflows did not exist; the concept of remote-controlled anything was brand new.” 

Mazza is planning for the rescheduled Tokyo Olympics in 2021. He envisions six control rooms in Japan working with three trucks on site — all controlled from truck docks in Stamford.  

Mazza said he and his team have been working like this for 14 years, adding that it’s the only way they could have produced such a large amount of video content. NBC has been using some of the same virtual tactics for college football productions during the pandemic. 

He’s also enthusiastic about the value of tools such as media asset management, which has become vital throughout production. 

“You need persistence, passion and insatiable curiosity about how things work,” Mazza said. “Also, an unrelenting attention to detail and testing.” Given everything that can go wrong during a live sportscast, Mazza said metaphorically, “You have to design your systems for resilience on a bad day, not a perfectly clear sunny day.”

STAMFORD, Conn.—NBC Olympics and Twitter are still set to have their Olympic moment together, as the two sides have announced an extension of their content partnership that was originally announced for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

The original deal was announced in July 2019 solely for the Tokyo Summer Olympics. This new deal, which mirrors the previous one, now covers the postponed Tokyo games slated for 2021 and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

As part of the partnership, NBC Olympics and Twitter will create daily, original programming on Twitter live from the host cities; a daily poll that will have fans vote on what sport they want NBC to provide a live look-in on NBC Primetime or Primetime Plus broadcasts each night; and real-time video highlights. There will also be content starting in June 2021 that will lead up to the start of the Tokyo games on July 23, 2021, including highlights from the U.S. Olympic Team Trials; a similar countdown will take place for the 2022 Beijing games.

“Extending our now multi-Games relationship with Twitter to Tokyo for the Summer Games in 2021 and Winter Games in 2022 from Beijing will again put NBC Olympics’ coverage in front of the vast and very active Twitter audience with great Olympic moments, great Olympic programming and a nightly peek into our primetime broadcast for those not yet in front of their televisions,” said Gary Zenkel, president, NBC Olympics. “This agreement allows us to extend the reach of our Olympic advertisers to those audiences that view the content we have custom produced for Twitter.”

The 2021 Tokyo Olympics are scheduled to take place from July 23-Aug. 8, 2021.

STAMFORD, Conn.—The 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo are just about a year away, and Twitter and NBC are going for content gold via a newly announced partnership for the games. As a result of the pairing, NBC and Twitter will boost Olympic coverage via exclusive daily programming, daily viewer polls and video highlights.

Every morning during the 2020 Games, NBC Olympics will produce a 20-minute live studio program from Tokyo that will air exclusively on Twitter. The program will showcase highlights, athlete interviews, stories from the host city and feature Twitter reactions from the games.

Twitter will also show a daily live look-in of NBC Olympics Primetime or Primetime Plus coverage, with the specific coverage of an athlete, sport or event determined each day via a fan poll.

Additional content will come through clips of the most memorable moments from the games, produced by NBC Olympics and published on Twitter. There will also be coverage of pre-games content, starting in February 2020, including real-time highlights of Olympic sports and the U.S. Olympic Team Trials.

“A seminal event like the Olympics offered us the opportunity to think bigger and more robustly about how fans can engage in and around the world-class content that the NBC Olympics team will be bringing to bear,” said Kay Madati, global vice president and head of content partnerships at Twitter. “This partnership gives us the opportunity to bring our highly-engaged audience even closer to NBC Olympics’ coverage of the action happening in Tokyo, providing more content to fuel the already electric Olympic conversation on Twitter.”

The 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo will take place from July 24-Aug 9, 2020.

STAMFORD, CONN.—Medals of gold, silver and bronze were handed out to the athletes of the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, but now that the games have concluded, NBC Olympics is dubbing its coverage of the games as gold-medal worthy as well.

NBC released a series of results indicating how many people—and how—people watched this year’s Winter Olympics. One such result was the total streamed minutes during the games, which NBC Sports Digital reported to be 2.17 billion, more than triple what they received for the 2014 Winter Olympics. Of that 2.17 billion, a reported 1.85 billion minutes were live streamed, as NBC Sports Digital said it offered live streams of all of the events at the games via NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app; they also live streamed the Opening Ceremony.

Some individual streaming highlights during the games was the single-day Winter Games record for live streaming minutes of 176.3 million on Saturday, Feb. 11. In addition, the U.S.-Canada women’s gold medal hockey game garnered 525,000 unique views for the live stream, more than all NHL, IIHF and college hockey games that have been broadcast on NBC Sports Digital and only trailing four hockey games from the 2014 Olympics.

Overall, NBC Olympics says that its Total Audience Delivery—a calculation of average minute viewing across broadcast, cable and digital—came in at an average of 19.8 million during primetime throughout the games; NBC-only primetime average viewership was 17.8 million, per NBC’s report. NBC’s statistics show these numbers beat the combined average of ABC, CBS and Fox during the Olympics.

However, the 2018 Winter Olympics had the smallest average viewership since the 1998 Winter Olympics, even with the addition of cable and digital numbers. Despite those results, Mark Lazarus, chairman of NBC Broadcasting and Sports, said that the Winter Olympics proved to be profitable.

[NBCU to Deliver 2,400 Hours of Winter Olympics Coverage]

Additional statistics from NBC’s report include the fact that the Olympics were the top-rated program for all 18 nights it was in primetime; NBCSN had its most-watched month ever with a daily average of 768,000 viewers; the Olympics provided a boost to other NBC programming, including news, “The Tonight Show” and original programming; and the games helped make NBC number one in total viewers at any point during the TV season for the first time since 2001-2002, according to Nielsen.  

LOS ANGELES—The 2018 Winter Olympics is entering its final days, as is NBC Olympics’ broadcast of the games. The two-week-plus production in PyeongChang, South Korea, had many moving parts, which according to NBC was assisted with the use of Xytech Systems’ MediaPulse system. 

The MediaPulse system has been responsible for managing all logistical aspects of moving production staff and support to and from various sporting events during the games. This includes managing workflow, scheduling for crewing assignments, travel, accreditation and timekeeping for the 3,652 members of the production staff. The software platform is capable of real-time updates.

NBC Olympics’ broadcast of the 2018 Winter Olympics will conclude on Feb. 25.

CLEVELAND—Linear Acoustic is on the Olympic stage right now as part of the production infrastructure for NBC Olympics’ 2018 Winter Games coverage in PyeongChang, South Korea. Linear Acoustic is doing its part by providing audio upmixing and technical support.

More than 40 Linear Acoustic UPMAX v4 units, as well as the UPMAX algorithm, were delivered to NBC Olympics for its broadcasts. Linear Acoustic has also supplied another upmix algorithm that creates immersive audio for next generation audio formats, such as Dolby Atmos. The MT2000 Multichannel Bitstream analyzers and on-site technical support have also been provided.

The 2018 Winter Olympics are currently underway in PyeongChang.

For all our Olympics coverage, visit here.

BURNSVILLE, MINN.—RTS is getting in on the Olympic action, as the company has announced that it has been tapped by NBC Olympics to provide broadcast intercom systems for the production of the 2018 Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea.

RTS, according to its press release, has supplied NBC Olympics with its OMENO, RVON, IP Trunking, ADAM intercom matrices and intercom panels, with the task of providing communications efficiency and flexibility in studio and on site.

The 2018 Winter Olympics began Feb. 8 and will continue through Feb. 25.

For all our Olympics coverage, visit here.

STAMFORD, CONN.—NBC Olympics is relying on Vitac Corp. for live closed captioning services for its Winter Olympics production from PyeongChang, South Korea, the company announced today. All Winter Olympics programming across NBCU’s networks, including NBC, NBCSN, CNBC and the USA Network will use Vitac’s live closed captioning coverage.

Trained stenographers transcribing audio at up to 240 words per minute provide the Vitac real-time captioning. For several months, they have been creating custom dictionaries to guide in the correct spelling of the names of the more than 2,000 athletes from 147 countries who will compete in the games.

More information is available on the Vitac website.

For all our Olympics coverage, visit here. 

MELVILLE, N.Y.—NBCOlympics will use a wide variety of Canon field, portable and studio HD lenses to cover the Winter Olympics from PyeongChang, South Korea, the company announced today.

More than 70 Canon broadcast lenses will be used, including:

· DIGISUPER 95 TELE long-zoom field lens with a focal length of 1178mm (2356mm with 2x Extender);

· DIGISUPER 27 studio lens providing HD imagery in a studio environment;

· HJ14ex4.3B wide-angle HD lens capturing a panoramic 96.3 degrees angle-of-view;

· HJ24ex7.5B HDTV field telephoto zoom lens, providing a 7.5-180mm zoom range in a compact, portable body

“A Winter Olympics production can be tough on equipment and especially lenses,” said Adams. “Canon lenses have always proven themselves in difficult conditions. The images, equipment and the support we get from Canon are always exceptional.”

[For all our Olympics coverage, visit here.] 

“We are honored to once again be chosen as the broadcast lens provider for NBC” said Yuichi Ishizuka, president and COO, Canon U.S.A.

More information is available on the Canon website.

SAN JOSE, CALIF.—NBC Olympics will use Cisco to provide IP video contribution and distribution solutions as well as networking and security solutions for its production of Winter Olympics from PyeongChang, South Korea, the company announced.

Cisco technology will enable an IP and compute environment that meets the demands of live and file-based content production, the company said in a press release. It will also provide data center network security solutions and collaboration solutions to connect remote and onsite production teams.

Some of the Cisco products include: 

• Network routing and switching via the Cisco carrier-class ASR9000 and Cisco Nexus portfolio;
• Wireless and POE-enabled (power over Ethernet) switching infrastructure;
• Virtual Private Network (VPN) services via Cisco ASA firewalls;
• Cisco Digital Content Manager (DCM) for broadcast transport of IP video using Hitless Merge Technology;
• Next-generation Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) and robust network security with the Cisco Firepower platform and Stealthwatch solution;
• Cisco collaboration solutions including Cisco Telepresence, Cisco Spark and Spark Board technology

 More information can be found on the Cisco website.

OTTAWA—NBC Olympics has chosen FileCatalyst to transfer event footage at accelerated speeds and facilitate remote production workflows for its production of Winter Olympics from PyeongChang, South Korea. NBC Olympics’ use of FileCatalyst technology for the games builds on its use for coverage of the 2016 Rio Games, said a FileCatalyst press release.

FileCatalyst technology will move data over a 5 Gbps link between NBC Olympics’ headquarters in Stamford, Conn., and the NBC Olympics compound at the International Broadcast Center in PyeongChang. It also will help accelerate transfers between a number of interconnected Winter Games sites and event venues.

During peak periods, concurrent file transfers are expected to number in the hundreds, reaching a data volume of about 10 TB per day. The files will consist of both high- and low- resolution videos. Many will be transferred while events are still in progress and videos are still being encoded.

Timely content delivery is critical to the production workflow because it will enable remote logging and editing in near real time. Archived footage will also be moved from Stamford to PyeongChang as needed. The setup also includes FileCatalyst Central to monitor and administer the deployment, and FileCatalyst Direct server and client applications.

More information is available on the FileCatalyst website.

BEAVERTON, ORE.—NBCOlympics has selected Tektronix audio and video test monitoring and network monitoring for its production of the Winter Olympics from PyeongChang, South Korea. NBC Olympics will use Tektronix WFM7200, WVR7200, WFM5200 and WVR5200 waveform monitors, SPG8000A master sync and master clock reference generators.

The equipment will be used to monitor and test video and audio quality in NBC Olympics’ production, post production, transmission and distribution workflows in NBC facilities. NBC will use WFM8300 waveform monitors for 4K HDRK applications. Tektronix Sentry products will be used for monitoring of the transport streams involved in its production.

A division of the NBC Sports Group, NBC Olympics is responsible for producing, programming and promoting NBCUniversal's Olympic coverage.

More information is available on the Tektronix website.

PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA—The 2018 Winter Olympics are finally here and NBC Olympics has officially unveiled the team that it is bringing to South Korea to provide a gold medal-worthy broadcast to viewers.

Harmonic is one of the companies tapped by NBC Olympics and will provide its MediaGrid shared storage system and Spectrum MediaDeck integrated media servers to the production. The Spectrum MediaDeck servers will enable on-the-fly capture and proxy generation for all incoming materials. The MediaGrid systems will be located inside NBC’s studios at the International Broadcast Center, as well as NBC’s Stamford, Conn., headquarters, to provide centralized shared storage and will simultaneously record as many as 60 incoming venue feeds.

Calrec Audio's digital audio consoles in the NBC Olympics studio.

On the audio side, NBC Olympics is going with Calrec Audio’s Summa, Artemis Ray and Brio digital audio consoles. The Summa console will be used for the prime-time audio control room in NBC’s studio at the IBC. A 56-fader Artemis Ray module will serve as the primary console at the sliding venues in the mountain resort of Alpensia for covering bobsled and luge events, while a 72-fader Artemis Ray will be the primary console at the speed-skating venue in Gangneung. A Calrec RP1 remote production system and Brio console will be tasked with supporting operations at the coastal studio, enabling for control from NBC’s Stamford headquarters.

[DISH to Deliver NBCU 4K HDR Winter Olympics Coverage] 

Grass Valley will be in PyeongChang, providing NBC Olympics with its SME-1901 streaming encoder to provide multiformat video/audio over IP, featuring 3G/HD/SD SDI inputs; this enables the production team to view video feeds from any camera directly, as well as edit low- and high-resolution content from a desktop or laptop. Additional Grass Valley products part of NBC Olympics’ production is the iControl customized end-to-end facility monitoring and control system; a Densité remote control panel for Densité cards; three NVision 8500 hybrid routers; NVision compact CQX router; a Lumo series high density fiber converter; and 34 Kaleido-IP multiviewers.

Avid is providing its assistance with the Avid MediaCentral platform. The MediaCentral | Production Management system will help manage content creation, automate workflows and facilitate collaboration between the Olympic venues and the IBC. MediaCentral | Asset Management will help locate media assets, streamline production operations and boost content creation capabilities. NBC Olympics will also deploy Avid Nexis, a software-defined storage platform that will be connected to editing suites with the non-linear video editing system Media Composer.

Ericsson is being tasked with providing video contribution solutions to NBC Olympics, including its AVP 2000 contribution encoders and RX8200 advanced modular receivers. The Ericsson equipment will support NBC Olympics’ video distribution of HD content over a combination of fiber and satellite. Ericsson will have specialist engineers on hand to assist with the equipment set up and to offer 24/7 support.

IP Commentary system

NBC Olympics is also bringing Lawo’s Virtual Studio Manager broadcast control and monitoring systems, as well as IP Commentary systems, for the production. The VSM system will be located at the IBC, serving as the overall control system for NBC Olympics’ core routing and tally management, connecting to multiple third party devices and to provide remote Tally information between the IBC and the Stamford headquarters. Also being managed from Stamford will be Lawo’s audio-over-IP Commentary System and several Lawo V_pro8 video processors to manage coverage. Lawo V_remote4 units will also be used to connect Olympic venues to NBC’s setup at the IBC.

Offering mobile broadcasting, engineering consultation and technical support will be NEP. NEP outside broadcast units NCP8 A and B, Iridium and Zinc, as well as associated gear and technical support, will help with live coverage of the Opening Ceremony, figure skating and short track speed skating at Gangneung Ice Arena, and hockey games at Gangneung Hockey Centre. A team of more than 30 specialists, including 15 broadcast engineers, are heading to PyeongChang to support NBC’s production.

The 2018 Winter Olympics will take place from Feb. 8-25. 

ENGLEWOOD, COLO.—While TV broadcasters might not yet be ready to deliver 4K HDR over the air, DISH is champing at the bit to take advantage of NBCU’s 4K HDR coverage of the Winter Olympics from PyeongChang, South Korea, and will offer up to three such events per day on a delayed basis.

[NBC Olympics Pushing 4K HDR for Winter Olympics] 

"For the first time, the Winter Olympics will be available in 4K HDR, marking an exciting milestone for both the TV industry and Olympic viewers," said DISH EVP and CTO Vivek Khemka, in a press release. "We're pleased to work with NBCUniversal to give customers access to this year's inspiring Olympic performances in the clearest resolution and richest color palette available, maximizing the potential of their 4K HDR TVs."

Besides the 4K HDR coverage, DISH subscribers can access 2,400 hours of NBCU live, on-demand and streaming coverage of the Olympics, the company said.

The 4K HDR coverage will be available on a one-day delay. It includes coverage of the Opening Ceremony, figure skating, hockey, short track speed skating, ski jumping and snowboard big air. Coverages of the scenery around PyeongChang also will be made available in 4K HDR.

[NBC to Broadcast 2018 Winter Olympics Live Across U.S.] 

DISH will make its 4K HDR coverage available to subscribers on channel 540 beginning Feb. 10 and running through Feb. 26.

STAMFORD, CONN.—The Olympics may be taking place in South Korea, but customized content of the Winter Games will make its way to New York, Chicago and Philadelphia courtesy of NBC Olympics and Intersection, a smart cities technology and media company. The duo will be share Olympics content across digital screens in all three cities throughout the two weeks of the Games.

 [NBCU to Deliver 2,400 Hours of Winter Olympics Coverage]

The content is being created specifically for Intersection’s urban network of digital screens. Morning highlights, primetime previews, and Opening Ceremony teaser, medal counts, real-time alerts, athlete profiles and more will be made available across Intersection’s LinkNYC network in New York; digital urban panels and platform displays in the Chicago Transit Authority; and digital bus shelters, urban panels and platform displays throughout SEPTA, PATCO and the streets of Philadelphia.

[Live From PyeongChang] 

The 2018 Winter Olympics will take place from Feb. 8-25 in PyeongChang, South Korea.

PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA—Beyond athletic achievements, the XXIII Winter Games will hopefully be remembered for having North and South Korea delegations marching into the Olympic Stadium under a unified flag, and the fielding of a mixed North and South Korean Women’s ice hockey team.

The XXIII Winter Olympic Games will take place in PyeongChang, South Korea, Feb. 9-25

For NBC’s veteran production team, the run-up to the Games has been a busy, but manageable period where everything that had to get done was getting done, on and sometimes even ahead of schedule.

And that’s important given the task at hand.

NBC Broadcast Network was poised to begin its 176 hours of coverage on the night before the Opening Ceremony. That, of course, is only part of the story in today’s media environment. NBCUniversal will present more than 2,400 hours of coverage by the end of the Games across NBC, NBCSN, CNBC, USA Network, NBCOlympics.com, and the NBC Sports app. That’s the most hours ever for a Winter Olympics.

Notably, NBC will present Olympic primetime coverage live across all time zones—also a Winter Olympics first.

David Mazza, CTO & senior vice president Sports and Olympics, has worked 15 Olympic Games starting with Los Angeles in 1984 and was quick to praise the South Koreans in their preparation for the Games. “The country itself just works, and it works well,” he said. “The construction, the power, the technology, the people’s understanding of technology… all of this has made our setup easier than it has been for many years.” 

WELL PREPARED

One particular challenge to this Games has been the weather. It’s not storms or tides that wash out a studio as in Rio, or deep snow—it’s just a bitter cold that does not stop. “I’ve worked in some cold climates, but none as consistently cold as here,” Mazza said. “It can be –30 degrees with wind chill in the mornings!”

Another factor that has made a difference is the use by host broadcaster Olympic Broadcasting Services of a pre-fabricated system for the International Broadcast Centre, home to broadcasters covering the Games. This was well-received in Rio and here as well.

This meant that as soon as the team arrived they could immediately start all of the work and all of the cabling, which is not typical, noted Terry Adams, vice president, IBC Engineering, NBC Olympics, working his 11th Games. “[In previous Games], we typically had to spend a month or more dealing with cable trays and powering and construction,” he said. “But this time when we arrived in Korea on Oct. 20, they could just get right to work.”

Mazza said the crew was actually 2-2½ weeks ahead of schedule by the time they went home for Christmas.

Beyond the assists from the host and the host broadcaster, NBC has also been refining its between-Games processes, and this is bearing fruit.

In the “short” 16-17 month break between the closing ceremonies in Rio and the PyeongChang Opening Ceremony, the IBC infrastructure RIBs (racks-in-a-box) were returned to Stamford, Conn., home of the NBC Sports Group complex. Here, the team had space and time to lay out the entire system, connect it and test it.

“Our configuration time has now exceeded our wiring time,” said Mazza. “We used to get on site and spend a lot of time wiring before it could be configured… now between the fiber deployment and the increased complexity of the configuration, it’s the other way around.”

This means that everything has to get preconfigured in the pre-fab before shipping. When the team arrived all they had to do was run all the fiber—which is pretty quick—and about 90 percent of the configuration was done.

Setting and configuring the system in Stamford had benefits beyond a fast setup once on-site. While in Stamford, the IBC racks could be connected to Stamford with short fiber runs for configuration mock-ups.

“Not to oversimply it, but that short piece of fiber just extended to 5,000 miles when we got here,” said Terry Adams, vice president IBC Engineering, NBC Olympics, working his 11th Games.

Getting so much done in Stamford also allowed for extensive size and scope modelling, particularly for the asset management systems and edit systems so crucial for all the remote production that has become standard. 

“We didn’t have to wait to plug in the actual circuits to mock up hundreds of users and workflows, so we have greater confidence than ever before in the stability of the system,” said Darryl Jefferson, vice president Post and Digital Workflow, NBC Sports & Olympics, a relative “newcomer” with six Olympic Games under his belt. “We’ve had challenges in the past with size and scope, so we put a lot of energy into stability and fine tuning some features such as being able to put in more logs from more places, and more integration with data sources,” he said.

A birds-eye view of NBC Olympics’ primetime studio

The benefits of the pre-integration (and the broader remote production design) also rippled in to the venue systems deployed in South Korea more than in past Olympics.

“All of the pre-integration that we did in Stamford allowed us to do proofs-of-concept for the remote production we’re doing between venues and the IBC and for venue-to-venue efforts,” said Chip Adams, vice president, Venue Engineering, NBC Olympics, who is on his 13th Games.

In PyeongChang the pre-work has been particularly helpful, as the “field shop” where the venue equipment is typically configured and loaded onto trucks that can access the venues is about two hours away from the Olympic city, where the IBC is located.

“This was the other rationale for putting the systems all together in Stamford—containerizing them for easy shipping and deployment, and laying out every IP address for the configuration before they go in to the box,” said Chip Adams.

Jefferson said that one of the other curve balls that has become increasingly important is cyber security. “We’ve had to patch and repatch and triple patch every piece of gear based on whatever is happening out there in the big, bad world,” he said. “It’s a lot of Microsoft updates and security updates.” 

@HOME KEEPS GROWING

Although it has roots going all the way back to the Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta, where rooms at 30 Rock in New York connected to the Atlanta IBC via T1 lines, the @home remote production effort really started to come into its own in Torino in 2004 and more fully in Beijing by 2008.

The PyeongChang NBC production will have seven control rooms located in Stamford, up from just two in Sochi. Errol Foremaster, vice president, engineering operations and planning, NBC Olympics, who is working his 13th Games, said these control rooms were largely feeding the tonnage of cable hours across several NBC properties, with the network shows coming out of South Korea.

Foremaster said that because of the time difference (14 hours between Korea and EST) almost everything would be shown live in the U.S. Other than the overnight period in Korea when nothing new is happening, there will generally be live content on an NBC platform, often the broadcast.

“Part of the preparation and production challenge is related to the time differences, and keeping straight where we are with live content,” said Foremaster. “With today’s technology and society, live is just expected.”

NBC will have more live streaming from more sources than ever before at a Winter Games, and this will be the first Olympics where Opening Ceremonies will be streamed live to the states on all platforms.

NBC is also offering more course animations, more slo-mos and more ISO cameras as ancillary stream sources available to the general public.

“Enhanced streaming,” is new and available from a few PyeongChang venues. This service is for connected TV customers, and might typically consist of a double box screen, where one screen is the host feed and a second is an ISO camera, with stats or other content displayed outside those sources.

CONNECTIVITY

NBC Olympics is relying on 108 HD feeds from Korea, with 32 returns. Most feeds will go home twice, once in a streaming copy and once in a broadcast/cable copy.

The infrastructure for this is four 10 GB highly redundant paths provided by AT&T. Two of these are dedicated mostly to video and two are dedicated to IP streaming and command and control. About 2 percent of the video is also on satellite as extra back-up.

Connectivity and remote production does not have to be intercontinental. One trend on the upswing in South Korea is increased venue-to-venue connectivity and venue-to-IBC connectivity, all to aid cost-effective production.

An example is Slalom and Giant Slalom. These venues have 36 feeds (and four returns) connected to the Downhill venue which is located about an hour away, so one truck can manage the production. “For the first time we have a 10GB connection between venues, in order to consolidate the number of trucks,” said Chip Adams.

A similar situation is happening at ski jumping, but that venue has 12 feeds connected directly to “Control X” in the IBC. That same control room will receive 36 feeds from the Closing Ceremonies, which will be cut in the IBC.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Production for social media outlets is growing, and integrated into the effort. Of particular note this year is a partnership with BuzzFeed, which produces the NBC presence on Snapchat. BuzzFeed has studio space in South Korea, and field crews as well. NBCUniversal has an interest in BuzzFeed and Snapchat’s parent company, Snap Inc. NBC Olympics is also working with Vox Media on a new Games-themed podcast called “The Podium.”

SPECIALTY CAMERAS, HDR & VR

Chip Adams said the biggest change coming in high-speed and specialty cameras is the sheer number of units. “We are going to have six 6x cameras, and the host broadcaster has something like 44 super slo-mo cameras of various types,” he said. “They’ve also deployed 133 mini cams, 14 cable cams and 11 rail cams across the venues.”

It’s less about new technologies in specialty cameras and more about the expectation that more and more will be deployed, said Chip Adams.

Virtual reality coverage is intriguing and growing, if still finding its niche. OBS has several venues with 180 degree camera rigs and they are offering a line cut and the individual cameras to rightsholders. Unlike Rio, the content will not be on a one-day delay. 

NBC’s VR coverage is greatly expanded from Rio, with more than 50 hours of live virtual reality coverage powered by Intel True VR, available to authenticated users with Windows Mixed Reality headsets, Samsung Gear VR, and both Google Cardboard and Google Daydream, with compatible iOS or Android devices via the NBC Sports VR app. This is the first time VR is available from a Winter Olympics and the first time Olympic VR programming will be live in the U.S. on a wide range of devices and platforms.

Comcast is sponsoring a technology demonstration of 4K HDR and ATMOS sound from Korea that is a substantial increase from the small trial done from Rio. The next-day delay channel will offer 6-12 hours daily. This increase is due to an expanded effort from the host and particularly Japan’s NHK, which is producing a good amount of 8K with HDR content from Korea.

NHK is providing NBC with a downconverted feed of their 8K HDR coverage, and OBS’s 4K SDR coverage from hockey will be “stretched” up to HDR. There are two 4K feeds from PyeongChang to SPOC (Sports Production Operations Center in Stamford) and one return. In SPOC, a small production team in a 4K mobile unit, two Off-Tube commentary booths and multiple sets of announcers are creating the voiceover for this coverage. This will be fed as linear and VOD content to Comcast and any other MVPDs who have signed up. 

Those 4K HDR signals in Stamford are relying on an Evertz IP routing system, which is also supporting much of the @home live broadcast, as well as digital production products like enhanced streaming.

“New for these Games, we have increased our IP routing capability to accommodate 4K HDR signals between South Korea and Stamford, as well as providing 4K HDR signals to our Off-Tube announce booths, the 4K truck, and our distribution point in Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,” said Tim Canary, vice president, engineering Stamford & @home, who is on his 10th Games. 

THE HARDWARE

So much of the hardware and software that supports the crew’s effort changes only slightly from year to year. Sony continues to be NBC’s biggest Olympic supplier, with studio cameras, high-speed cameras, OLED monitors, production switchers and more throughout the IBC and venues. “Also the service and integration teams who have been doing this for years are really key,” said Mazza.

Canon’s lenses, and its service team, are at the tip of the production chain. Harmonic spinning disks are central for a lot of the ingest, the MAM and the Highlights Factory clip production, and EVS servers and software also remain firmly entrenched in the workflow. Avid craft editing and Grass Valley glue and infrastructure are contributing heavily as well.

Mobile units—some of which were delayed due to heavy weather—are from Game Creek and NEP. The latter has a history with NBC that goes all the way back to the last time South Korea hosted an Olympic Games, in Seoul in 1988.

PEOPLE POWER

Past experience is something that cannot be understated when it comes to evolving the production over decades and just getting the current job done, according to Mazza. The six staffers quoted in this article have worked an amazing 68 Olympic Games.

And those six point to Senior Core Engineer Chris Jorgensen as the smartest engineer and foremost problem solver on staff. He’s done eleven Games.

“We could not have done all these Olympics without his expertise,” said Mazza. “Whenever we can’t solve a problem on anything from plumbing to physics to power or air conditioning, he comes up with a solution.”

Mazza added that about 85 percent of the freelancers on staff for the big broadcast are Olympic veterans as well, and this travelling road show shows up every two years and gets the job done.

“We could never hit the level of content complexity and output without coming in to it with all this experience,” said Mazza. “It’s been a long, evolutionary journey and we couldn’t be at the level we’re at without the series of successes and some failures along the way.”

NEW YORK & STAMFORD, CONN.—The Olympics are jumping in on the podcast craze with the announcement that NBC Olympics and Vox Media have launched “The Podium,” a new podcast that will have daily reports from PyeongChang, South Korea.

The daily podcast will begin on Feb. 8 and go for the entire 18 days of the Winter Olympics. Some behind-the-scene content is already available for interested listeners. “The Podium” will feature exclusive and in-depth interviews with Olympians, NBC commentators and stories from the all throughout the Olympic Village.

“The Podium” will be recorded onsite in PyeongChang, produced by Vox Media. It will be released every day at 8 a.m. ET, providing a recap of the previous day’s competitions, overnight developments and a look at the day ahead.

“The Podium” is available on Apple Podcasts across iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, CarPlay and iTunes on Mac and PC, and other podcast platforms via iOS and Android devices.

The 2018 Winter Olympics will take place from Feb. 8-25.

PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA—Athletes spend years of training for their moment at the Olympics, making sure to give the opportunity everything they’ve got. It seems that NBC is taking that methodology to heart this year in terms of its coverage of the 2018 Winter Games.

Over the last few months, NBC Olympics has shared its plans for the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea; these Winter Games could be one of the biggest Olympics yet in terms of production and coverage plan for the network.

LIVE COVERAGE

The 14-hour time difference between South Korea and the Eastern U.S. will not only allow NBC to air events live and in prime time, but will, for the first time, allow the network to offer live coverage for the entire country, including daytime, primetime and late night programming. This will help prevent the network from being pre-empted by social media sharing results before NBC’s broadcasts.

Read Also: NBC to Broadcast 2018 Winter Olympics Live Across U.S.

NBC’s coverage will officially kick off on Feb. 8, but the Opening Ceremony will not take place until Feb. 9. However, in another first, NBC will offer a live stream for the Opening Ceremony. An edited version will be shown later in prime time.

Hosting the Opening Ceremony for these Winter Games will be the new duo of Mike Tirico and Katie Couric. Tirico is taking over Bob Costas’ long time role as lead Olympic broadcaster. Couric returns to cover the Opening Ceremony after having previously hosted for Sydney, Salt Lake City and Athens.

NBC Olympics is rounding out its broadcasting team with a number of anchors from its NBC Sports Regional Networks. NBC Sports Boston’s Abby Chin and Trenni Kusnierek, NBC Sport Chicago’s Leila Rahami, NBC Sport Washington’s Julie Donaldson and Ahmed Fareed, and NBC Sports Bay Area’s Jim Kozimor will head to PyeongChang to cover specific sports and handle hosting duties for the some of the broadcaster’s additional programming.

‘BEST FEB EVER’

All of this is part of NBC’s planned 2,400 hours of coverage, more than the combined total coverage of the Games in Vancouver and Sochi, and the most for a single Winter Games. The Games will also see record streaming coverage, as NBC plans 1,800 hours of live streaming across NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app.

Read Also: NBCU to Deliver 2,400 Hours of Winter Olympics Coverage

Read Also: NBC Olympics to Live Stream 1,800 Hours of 2018 Winter Games

The coverage of the Olympics is just one part of what NBC has dubbed “The Best Feb Ever.” The network is also broadcasting Super Bowl LII on Feb. 4 between the New England Patriots and Philadelphia Eagles and has announced it plans to give a big push for the games during the Big Game.

Read Also: NBC Sports Preps for Super Bowl LII 

That isn’t the only bit of cross promotion for NBC. NBC Olympics has produced a two-part original series that will be streamed by Netflix to help with the lead-up to the games. “Go for the Gold” and “Meet Team USA” profile a number of Olympians, including Shaun White, Mikaela Shiffrin and Lindsey Vonn. The series are now available on the streaming platform and will remain there until Feb. 25.

GOING VIRTUAL

It’s not just the programming that NBC is making new strides with; there will be a number of new ways on how the viewers can watch the Games. NBC Olympics is working with Intel VR to provide 50 hours of live VR coverage to authenticated viewers with Windows Mixed Reality headsets, Samsung Gear VR and Google Daydream with compatible iOS and Android devices via the NBC Sports VR app. VR coverage will include the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, alpine skiing, curling, snowboarding, skeleton, figure skating, short track speed skating, ski jumping, ice hockey and snowboard big air. There will also be additional VR highlights daily of sports not covered live.

Read Also: NBC Olympics to Deliver 50 Hours of Winter Olympics VR Coverage

Read Also: NBC Olympics Pushing 4K HDR for Winter Olympics

The Games will also bump up its resolution as NBC Olympics plans to distribute the games in 4K HDR to cable, satellite and telco providers. The 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro were offered in 4K, but that coverage was not distributed in HDR. Events planned to be covered in 4K HDR include the Opening Ceremony, hockey, figure skating, short track speed skating, ski jumping and big air. Olympics Broadcasting Services and Japan’s NHK will provide the 4K HDR coverage. NBC Olympics will then distribute the content to U.S. distribution partners, who will make their own decisions on how to make the content available to their customers.

NBC Universal’s parent company Comcast is also getting in on the Winter Olympic frenzy. Comcast has developed a Winter Olympics content hub for its X1 platform. The content hub will be available across all of its X1 set-top boxes and the Stream app for smartphones, tablets and web browsers. Comcast will tie in NBC’s 2,400 hours of coverage to the hub along with customized “virtual” Olympic channels, integration with the X1 Sports app and X1 voice remote, real-time medal counts and provide a select batch of content offered in 4K HDR with Dolby Atmos.

NBC’s coverage of the 2018 Winter Olympics kicks off Feb. 8 and will continue until the Closing Ceremonies Feb. 25.

STAMFORD, CONN.—Broadcasting the Super Bowl on Feb. 4 and the Olympics starting Feb. 8, NBCUniversal is calling next month The Best Feb Ever, according to NBC Sports Group chair Mark Lazarus.

At a press briefing in New York Wednesday, NBCU said that for the first time it will stream the Opening Ceremonies live. An edited version will be shown later in prime time.

The NBCU platforms will feature more live coverage than any previous Winter Games and more than 2,400 hours in all, Lazarus said.

There will be figure skating on 12 of 18 nights and live skiing on 11 of 18 nights.

NBCU’s primetime coverage will be aired live in all timezones for the first time.

Lazarus noted Wednesday morning 's news that North and South Korean had agreed to have their athletes march together during the opening parade of nations. “The Olympics are proving again to be better than politics at bringing the world together,” he said.

NBCU has also created five one-minute spots promoting the Olympics that will air on Super Bowl Sunday. One will air during the pre-game show, another just before kickoff, the third during half time, the fourth just after the final gun and the last during an episode of the hit This Is Us, which will air after the post game show. “This Is Us” will be followed by an episode of the “Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” originating from Minneapolis, where the game is being played.

One of the spots will be previewed each day on the “Today” show in the week leading up to the Super Bowl.

No network has ever had the two huge TV event in the same season. The tight timing will “allow us to market, package and sell the, giving marketers a very unique opportunity.

Lazarus said he expected the Olympics to turn a profit, but he declined to say how much money it would generate.

NBCUniversal will been using all of its assets, employing its Symphony approach, to promote the Olympics for an unprecedented five weeks. In return, “we will use this great event and large audience to promote other properties like ‘This Is Us,’ the ‘Today’ show,the ‘Nightly News,’ the theme parks and Universal pictures,” Lazarus said.

NBC Olympics president Gary Zenkel noted that PyongChang is ready for the games: “The paint is dry. The road is striped. They could host these games today.” 

NBC is ready too, with more than 90 miles of cable strung and studios set up inside and on the roof of the International Broadcast Center.

NBCU will be distributing clips and highlights to a number of digital partners including Snapchat, which will run a show dedicated to four female snowboarders, Vox, Twitter, YouTube, Amazon Echo, Google Home, Musical.ly and Refinery

More than 20 Olympic advertisers have extended their buys to include the Snapchat platform, he said.

Lazarus said NBC’s coverage of Super Bowl LII will include the first ever use of the dual Skycam system, which provides a players’ eye view from the middle of the field, 3D imaging of key players, an all-new graphics package and a new opening song from Carrie Underwood.

The Super Bowl should also generate advertising sales records for a single day, with NBC being the first network to average more than $5 million per 30-second spot for the NFL’s championship game, annually TV’s most watched program.

This story originally appeared on TVT's sister publication B&C. 

STAMFORD, CONN.—Making its Olympic debut at February’s XXIII Olympic Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea, is the distribution of 4K HDR to cable, satellite and telco providers, NBC Olympics announced in a press release. Xfinity will serve as the presenting sponsor of NBC’s 4K HDR coverage.

NBC Olympics said that this is the first offering of Olympic coverage in 4K HDR in the U.S. NBC Olympics provided 4K coverage for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janerio, but that coverage was distributed in 4K UHD.

The 4K HDR coverage will be provided by Olympic Broadcasting Services and Japan’s NHK. NBC Olympics will then distribute the content to U.S. distribution partners, who will make their own decisions on how they will make the content available to their customers.

Events at the 2018 Winter Olympics that will include 4K coverage are the Opening Ceremony, hockey, figure skating, short track speed skating, ski jumping and snowboard big air competitions. The 4K HDR coverage will be made available on a delay. Up to four events from the previous day’s competition will be provided daily from Feb. 9 through Feb. 26.

NBC’s coverage of the 2018 Winter Olympics will take place from Feb. 8-25.

STAMFORD, CONN.—Break out the VR headsets and fire up the virtual reality app. The Winter Olympics are right around the corner and NBC Olympics plans more than 50 hours of live virtual reality coverage.

Powered by Intel True VR, the live coverage of the XXIII Olympic Winter Games from PyeongChang, South Korea, will be available to authenticated viewers with Windows Mixed Reality headsets, Samsung Gear VR and Google Daydream with compatible iOS and Android devices, NBC Olympics announced Tuesday.

Intel True VR technology relies on pods at each event to create interactive 360-degree VR environments. Authenticated VR viewers can access that content via the NBC Sports VR app. Once in the VR environment, they can change their vantage points, listen to natural sound captured at each camera location, look at real-time stats and leaderboards, and view post-event results. They also can fly through the VR Olympic world, tour Winter Games venues and visit different parts of the Korean peninsula, NBC Olympics said.

According to the network, this year’s games mark the first time VR has ever been available for Winter Olympic coverage. Olympic Broadcasting Services will supply NBC Olympics with the live VR programming.

Live VR coverage will include the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, alpine skiing, curling, snowboarding, skeleton, figure skating, short track, ski jumping, ice hockey and big air.

Besides the live VR coverage, NBC Olympics will provide VR replays of all previously live-streamed events, a daily 360-degree video of a sport not available in VR the previous day and packaged daily highlights from the day before. VR viewers will also have access to content prior to the beginning of the Winter Olympics.

Programming will be available every day of the Winter Olympics (Feb. 9-25), except for Feb. 18.

NBC Sports first used VR for coverage of the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2016. 

STAMFORD, CONN.—NBCU will offer viewers more than 2,400 hours of coverage of the XXIII Olympic Winter Games from Pyeongchang, South Korea –the most ever of a Winter Olympics, the network announced today.

The Games also will be the first time the network has presented primetime live coverage of a Winter Olympics live across all time zones, it said. Coverage will be available on NBC, NBCSN, CNBC, USA Network, NBCOlympics.com and via the NBC Sports app.

The 2,400 hours of coverage from Pyeongchang will exceed the hours of coverage of the Winter Games from Sochi and Vancouver combined, the network said. Across the NBCU platforms, coverage will include: NBC with 176 hours; NBCSN with 369; CNBC with 46; USA Network with 40.5 and NBCOlympics/NBC Sports app with more than 1,800.

The combined 631.5 hours of linear coverage across four networks is the most ever for the Winter Games, NBC said.

Coverage begins Feb. 7, 2018, at 11 p.m. ET on NBCSN with mixed doubles curling. Streaming on NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app will begin at 7 .m. ET on Feb. 7 for authenticated viewers, the network said. Primetime coverage begins the next day with live figure skating, qualifying for the men’s and women’s moguls competition and qualifying for the men’s ski jumping competition.

Over the 19 days of coverage (Feb. 7-25) NBCU will average more than 126 hours of coverage per day, about three times as many hours as coverage of the 1976 Innsbruck Winter Olympics on ABC, the network said.

NBCU also has partnered with the International Olympic Committee and the U.S. Olympic Committee to present 24/7 news coverage Feb. 10-24 on Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA, the network said. OBS will provide 20 hours of news and highlights, medal ceremony coverage and a daily studio show for the news channel.

STAMFORD, CONN.—NBC Olympics will set an Winter Olympics record of its own at the PyeongChang Games, as the broadcaster has plans to live stream 1,800 hours of content. In addition, this will be the first Winter Olympics to offer live streaming of the NBC broadcast network, including primetime and primetime-plus programming, per NBC Olympics official press release.

Coverage will include live streams of all competition on NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app on desktops, mobile devices, tablets and connected TVs for authenticated users; TV simul-stream coverage of five television networks; streaming on connected TVs; and an enhanced viewing experience for selected sports like Alpine skiing and figure skating. There will also be three digital-only programs, live streams of practices and an active news desk providing Olympic updates throughout the day.

Additional streaming elements being offered by NBC Olympics include a temporary pass that allows for users to stream 30 minutes of coverage prior to authentication on the first visit, and five minutes each subsequent day; NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app will feature video-on-demand coverage and programming; all live streams will be closed-caption in English; and, as previously announced, U.S. service members located on U.S. military bases worldwide can watch live streaming coverage.

Live streaming competition coverage begins Feb. 7 at 7 p.m. ET.

The 2018 Winter Olympics take place in PyeongChang, South Korea, from Feb. 9-25.

STAMFORD, CONN.—NBC Olympics’ roster of products for the 2018 Winter Olympics now includes Leyard LED video walls. The Leyard TWS series will be present on broadcast sets in Pyeongchang, South Korea throughout the XXIII Olympic Winter Gamers, NBC Olympics’ Coordinating Director Michael Sheehan announced.

The Leyard TWS series is a line of LED video wall displays with a 27-inch diagonal, all-in-one design that can fit into convex curved or traditional video wall environments, either large or small.

The 2018 Winter Olympic Games will run through Feb. 9-25.

STAMFORD, CONN.—NBC is starting to put its plan together for its broadcast of the 2018 Olympic Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea. After an announcement earlier this week that coverage will be available live in all time zones, NBC Olympics has also announced that it is once again partnering with Snap Inc. for special coverage of the Olympic Games.

Using Snap Inc.’s signature service, Snapchat, NBC Olympic will provide daily coverage through the app’s “Our Stories” and “Publisher Stories” features that are available in Snapchat Discover. The “Publisher Stories” will be co-produced with BuzzFeed. This partnership will also include sales packages in the Snap Ad slots in “Our Stories” and “Publishers Stories,” as well as opportunities to purchase national Geofilters and Lenses in the U.S.

The “Our Story” coverage, which will be available to all Snapchat users in the U.S., will include behind-the-scenes and fan moments submitted from users in PyeongChang and curated by Snapchat. NBC Olympics coverage on the app will also include clips, brand marks, logos and other broadcast elements.

“Publisher Stories” from the Games are expected to feature content produced from the BuzzFeed team in PyeongChang. BuzzFee will have access to athletes, as well as provide clips from inside and outside PyeongChang Olympic venues.

Snapchat will make this content available during the entire Olympic Games, as well as during select dates leading up to the Opening Ceremony.

NBC Olympics and Snap had a similar partnership with the 2016 Rio Olympics, which saw a reported 35 million Snapchat users view the content.

The 2018 Olympic Winter Games will take place in PyeongChang, South Korea begins on Feb. 8, 2018.

STAMFORD, CONN.—Whether in New York or Los Angeles, all U.S. viewers will be able to watch Team USA compete at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, live for the first time. NBC’s full slate of Olympic programming—including daytime, primetime or late night—will be offered live across all time zones.

For the 2018 Games, NBC’s primetime broadcast will begin at 8 p.m. ET, 7 p.m. CT, 6 p.m. MT, and 5 p.m. PT. The primetime broadcast will be followed by local news in all time zones, and then NBC’s “Primetime Plus” program will air, providing continuing live coverage from PyeongChang. NBC broadcaster will replay primetime programming after “Primetime Plus.”

Jim Bell, president of NBC Olympics production and programming, said that this new schedule will be available both through television and online streaming. “That means social media won’t be ahead of the action in any time zone, and as a result, none of our viewers will have to wait for anything,” Bell explained; this has been a potential issue at the last few Olympics.

NBC’s broadcast of the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang will begin on Feb. 8, 2018, with Mike Tirico taking over for Bob Costas as the primetime host. The Opening Ceremony for the XXIII Olympic Winter Games will take place on Feb. 9.

STAMFORD, CONN.—NBC Olympics’ coverage of the Rio 2016 Summer Games was the most ambitious we’ve ever been in bringing content to U.S. viewers. Over the course of 17 days, we recorded and stored 9,267 hours of content, and that’s a lot of content—401 days of it!

Through every iteration of the games, I’m amazed at the level at which we are producing content and at the massive amount of content consumed. With as many as 30 events going on at any given time, and with simultaneous multicamera shows taking place across different sports and venues, the 2016 Summer Games demanded an otherwise unheard-of level of concurrent production.

The infrastructure NBC Olympics uses to enable large-scale long-distance production has evolved over the years, and in Rio, I feel we realized the full potential of this approach and the technology supporting it. Our remote production model enabled fast, cost-effective creation of a wealth of broadcast and multiplatform content—including live streaming of every competition—by staff working at our Stamford, Conn., facilities, as well as at other NBCUniversal facilities across the U.S.

How did we do it? Through an array of parallel workflows, all with access to an Avid MediaCentral asset management portal that looked into the growing files on Harmonic storage infrastructure, we supported network production including daytime, prime time and late night shows; cable production by 10 different NBCUniversal channels and various specialty sport channels; digital-only productions; the Gold Zone, a collection of the best live action of the moment; a hyperfocused gymnastics program; and all web, mobile, live streaming, STB, TV everywhere, and XFINITY MVPD delivery. Our profiles and features group and our news division also peered into this portal, as did teams from the Golf Channel and Telemundo for both linear and nonlinear content creation.

Even on-site production teams at remote venues—swimming, athletics, gymnastics, beach volleyball, golf—could log in, look into our massive store of content, and pull content to complement the action being recorded live. At any given time, 100 simultaneous users would be working through the browser-based interface, which enabled them to find content and send it to any edit platform or to our EVS systems for playout.

At the front end of all these parallel workflows, we used the ScheduALL ERM system to turn events on the competition schedule into individual work orders dictating the router feed, the target channel and the record devices to be used, whether Avid AirSpeed server, an EVS system, or even a tape deck. Cyradis Technology software used ScheduALL work orders to automatically trigger recordings to our Harmonic Spectrum MediaDeck integrated media server systems, which facilitated on-the-fly capture and proxy generation for all incoming materials, and to give each record event a unique ID. Details such as the sport, event, round, heat, and competitor names also were included in that original work order, and that metadata traveled along with video in an XML file, ultimately populating the MediaCentral asset management system.

Harmonic MediaDeck media servers deployed in Rio simultaneously recorded as many as 60 incoming venue feeds as both XDCAM-HD at 50 Mbps and H.264 low-resolution proxy. NBC Olympics staff in Stamford also had independent control over 60 additional channels of local ingest. Each recording’s proxy was written in near real time to a local 960-TB Harmonic MediaGrid storage system at the IBC and, about 40 to 50 seconds later, to a second 920TB MediaGrid in Stamford, connected via two 10-Gigabit circuits. Working with this near-live recording, teams of loggers in Stamford continually added metadata about specific events—an awesome three-point shot by Diana Taurasi during a women’s basketball game, or a fantastic block by Kerri Walsh Jennings at beach volleyball—and inserted time-based markers for time-based events.

The extensive live logs and stats, scoring and timing information embedded as metadata enabled MediaCentral users across NBC Olympics and NBCUniversal to create shot lists, which in turn were automatically conformed in one of two ways: in proxy resolution for streaming along with live multiscreen services, or in high resolution for craft editing in Stamford and at other NBCUniversal facilities. Through the same MediaCentral portal, users had access to nearly 300,000 hours of archive content, as well as the ability to mark clips for delivery to themselves, wherever they were working. Because directors and editors made edits with proxy clips, with the system itself conforming the full-resolution footage accordingly, we only needed to transfer the full-resolution media necessary for a given package.

Production teams used the MediaCentral portal to access this content and turn around segments for live programming or to grab highlights for a wrap-up show or for professional analysis. For example, a news group user at 30 Rock looking for shots for "Today"or "NBC Nightly News" could find and access near-live content from Rio using the wealth of detail associated with every recording and maintained in the asset management system. If you heard a rumor that something big was happening over on the third table of table tennis, you knew that someone had already found that clip.

All live production over router and IP feeds was turned around in Avid edit or EVS playback rooms and cut together from two control rooms in Rio, as well as another nine in Stamford used to assemble all cable programming. As this happened, NBC Olympics staff called all those control room outputs, generated closed captions and, for the NBC prime time show open and close, added video description for the blind. The team did a Spanish call for NBCUniversal and Telemundo and added SAP for every men’s soccer match and all U.S. women’s soccer matches.

To add play-by-play and commentary to the massive number of events we covered, we augmented our staff of 3,000 across the Rio broadcast center and all venues with another 1,000 personnel in Stamford, where many were involved in digital production. We brought researchers, producers and experts on specific sports into our Off Tube Factory to provide knowledgeable insight and color for live programming—broadcast and on our web and mobile platforms—so that for a broad array of sports, we could offer the same high level of coverage typical of our on-site productions, but from our Stamford home.

We streamed all of the competition from Rio, running live IP feeds—45 host feeds from the OBS and another 12 feeds (English and Spanish) from its multilateral distribution service—that were transported back to Stamford, the release points for all our cable networks, in-pattern streaming and digital originals, and then also to iStream Planet in Las Vegas for streaming and out to our Akamai CDN. Working in parallel, a unit in Stamford cut packages for STB delivery for MVPDs and for our XFINITY Comcast and TV everywhere services. Short-form content was cut in Stamford, long-form content was cut in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., and all of it was delivered to a “meet point” in Denver (Dry Creek) where Comcast/other MVPDs could readily grab it.

Through a new relationship with Buzzfeed, which had people embedded in both Rio and Stamford to do social media on Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram, we did our first live content via social media. This was a new reach for us, and it got NBC Olympics content to a lot of new eyeballs. While the Buzzfeed team did have access to MediaCentral and all content on our MediaGrid systems, its staff created a lot of interesting original content from around Rio.

Again in parallel, we ran our Highlights Factory to create VoD clips for web and mobile. Our HR department brought in more than 70 people, largely interns who were first-timers to television, to cut clips for sports with which they had some experience. The cool thing for this group was that they got to know the heroes of the sport, and what excitement and success look like for that sport. Clips that drew a lot of views often were sent to other platforms, such as MPVDs, for further distribution.

NBC hosted much of its Olympics coverage from this outside venue at Copacabana Beach.

And finally, our bread and butter: broadcast production at the prime time, daytime, and late night sets with Bob Costas, Mary Carillo, Ryan Seacrest and Mike Tirico, as well as our presence across the larger competition venues. We had a 75,000-square-foot footprint within the IBC, and this space included two large control rooms, a small control room, two studios, a small insert studio, and a news-production area. Connections between our large control rooms and the studio at Copacabana Beach supported the late-night show and our daytime network production.

For the first time, we augmented our HD broadcast programming with distribution of UHD coverage to cable, satellite, telco providers, and other partners, with Dolby Atmos providing enhanced audio for the opening ceremony.

Our greatest achievement at Rio 2016 was pulling all of this off in parallel. In London 2012 we did a lot of broadcast and multiplatform coverage, but still we were surprised by the level of interest and volume of consumption. We saw clearly that the appetite is there to consume Olympics content in a variety of formats and flavors. To do all of this at once and have it go off successfully was our biggest challenge, and the most fun and rewarding part of these Summer Games. For Rio 2016 we had a complex coordinated coverage strategy with many legs that we needed to keep moving smoothly in parallel. From opening to closing ceremony, our coverage of the Games of the XXXI Olympiad was a symphony of moving parts, and we got to do it all over again for the Rio 2016 Paralympics, from Sept. 7-18.

I really enjoy covering the Paralympics and holding the interest in the games. Though there were fewer events and fewer people on the ground, the level of competition was just as high and the quality of play just as dynamic. In Stamford we worked with a huge team of former Paralympians to create an exciting, informed play-by-play call that enhanced the viewer experience and offered insight into what achievement looks like in each sport. We had the opportunity to apply the lessons we’d learned about working at this port of call, and to think more about how to bring these lessons to South Korea and Japan.

There is no way of telling what media consumption will look like in 2020. Vancouver 2010 doesn’t seem that long ago in a lot of ways, but that’s the year that the first iPad came out. Now a lot of people are using consoles and connected TVs to stream content. What will be the next leap in how people interact with and consume content? We know that for Tokyo the host broadcaster will do a lot of 8K, but it remains to be seen how much 4K will grow between now and the Winter Games. And how will IP-based devices, enhanced audio, and other new aspects of media production and consumption play a role?

Looking ahead to this future, we’re thrilled. With each Games, we are in the front row, learning something more about our country—who watches what type of content and how. Are the kids watching on a particular device and parents on the TV? Do they watch together? Do people watch at work? We gather the microdata that will help us determine how to get content out to viewers the next time around. Because NBC invests in it and trusts us to make this reach, we’re able to push ourselves technologically and push what’s possible in TV.

It’s a heavy and humbling responsibility to cover this kind of event. The athletes of the Olympic and Paralympic games have lived and breathed for this moment, and the fact that we can bring it to a kid riding his bike halfway across the world is simply amazing. It never gets old.

Darryl Jefferson is the vice president for Post Operations & Digital Workflow, NBC Sports & Olympics.

This story originally appeared on TVT's sister publication TVB Europe. 

NEW YORK—After expecting a digital share of the Rio Olympics broadcast to be somewhere around 25 percent, NBC Olympics executive producer Jim Bell told attendees at the inaugural LiveFronts conference he was “shocked” the number only came out to be 3 percent. “It simultaneously confused and pleased me,” explained Bell. “Like, ‘We’re still here. Linear!’”

For the full story, visit TVT’s sister publication B&C.

CAMBRIDGE, MASS.—A different kind of Olympic record was broken during NBC’s coverage of the 2016 Rio Olympics in August, as a total of 3.3 billion streaming minutes were provided, including 2.71 billion live, per Akamai. NBC’s online video streaming, website and video delivery was supported by Akamai Technologies.

Akamai provided NBC with its Media Delivery and Acceleration Services to stream live and on-demand video of its coverage through NBCOlympics.com, the NBC Sports mobile app, and connected TV platforms. Akamai’s ingest capabilities enabled content to be downlinked to and delivered across the Akamai platform. NBC also utilized Akamai’s Ion for web and mobile experiences across devices and networks, and the Kona Site Defender to protect NBC Olympic sites against DDoS and web attacks.

“We not only set new benchmarks for the amount of content delivered; we also for the first time live streamed to connected TVs and introduced virtual reality experiences, all of which provided viewers with more choice than ever for how, when and where they were able to enjoy NBC Olympics’ coverage from Rio,” said Rick Cordella, executive vice president and general manager, digital media, NBC Sports Group.

STAMFORD, CONN.—The build up to the 2016 Summer Olympics has been filled with controversy. Political unrest, the Zika virus, pollution, infrastructure delays and crime have all raised concerns among both participants and fans. However, with the games set to begin on Friday, Aug. 5, NBC Olympics executive producer Jim Bell made his case for the Games, saying that from a coverage standpoint, “the venues are done.”

To read the full story, visit TV Technology’s sister site B&C.

STAMFORD, CONN.—Facebook and Instagram won’t be competing for medals, but they are getting in on the Olympics action as NBC Olympics has announced a partnership with the social media sites to provide unique content to fans. This will be the third straight Olympics that NBC has utilized Facebook, but the first to include the Facebook-owned Instagram.

NBC Olympics and Facebook will create a “Social Command Center” in Rio. The Command Center will capture Facebook Live content, including interviews with athletes and NBC Olympic commentators. Short-form videos will also be published on both Facebook and Instagram, including highlights and interviews. Tune-in information will also be provided to make viewers aware of events on NBC’s TV coverage.

Another feature of the partnership includes a daily recap video for U.S. Facebook users. A slow-motion video will also be published on Instagram daily, as well as share highlights and video through Instagram’s Search & Explore video channels.

NBC Olympics plans to incorporate Facebook and Instagram posts from many athletes, celebrities and news makers in its coverage. This will include Ryan Seacrest highlighting buzzed about content from the two platforms on his late night show each night.

The 2016 Summer Olympics will take place in Rio de Janeiro and go from Aug. 5-21. 

Read more about how broadcasters are covering the Rio Games at our Live@TheRioOlympics social media hub.

STAMFORD, CONN.—Many athletes are likely to set new records during competition at this year’s Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, but NBC Olympics plans to set its own high mark in terms of streaming. The broadcaster has announced that it will stream 4,500 hours of content, including live streaming of all competition; TV simul-stream coverage of nine TV networks; streaming to connected TVs; two apps, two digital-only programs, and an active news desk.

“Our goal is to provide ready access to every second of every event through our digital platforms,” said Rick Cordella, senior vice president and general manager, digital media, of NBC Sports Group.

NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app will offer live-event and TV simul-stream coverage of all 34 sports for authenticated pay TV subscribers via TV Everywhere. Streaming will be available through desktops, mobile devices, tablets and connected TVs.

Streaming of coverage from all nine NBCUniversal Olympic networks will also be available. These include NBC, Telemundo, Bravo, CNBC, Golf Channel, MSNBC, NBC Sports Network, NBC Universo and USA Network. If an event is not television on one of these networks, it will be available online, per NBC Olympics.

Additional features include concurrent streams of events that have multiple fields of action, like gymnastics and track and field; temporary pass to allow 30 minutes of streaming prior to authentication on the first visit, and five minutes subsequently; video-on-demand coverage; Spanish-language option for most English-language streams; and closed-captioning in English.

NBC Olympics will also have the “NBC Olympics: Rio News & Results” app. In addition to its namesake, the app will feature video highlights, TV listings, medal standings, dedicated sections for each sport, Team USA and international athlete bios, and the “Primetime Companion” feature, which serves as a second-screen tool for NBC’s primetime coverage.

There will also be a pair of digital only offerings. “Gold Zone” curates coverage of live events depending on importance (i.e. gold medal, overtimes). “Daily Dismount” offers daily post-event coverage of gymnastics. “Ever Wonder” is a social-focused, short-form video series NBC Sports Digital will offer on the curiosities of the Olympics. A digital news desk will also be available with hosts Julie Donaldson and Jenna Corrado.

As previously announced, NBC Olympics will also offer virtual reality coverage of the Games through Samsung VR gear.

NBC Olympics streaming is powered by its Playmaker Media service.

The 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio will take place from Aug. 5-21.

Read more about how broadcasters are covering the Rio Games at our Live@TheRioOlympics social media hub.

PARK RIDGE, N.J.—Sony has been tapped by NBC Olympics, a NBC Sports Group division, to provide HD production technology for coverage of the 2016 Olympic Games that will take place in Rio de Janeiro.

Sony reports that it will provide more than 100 cameras to capture footage, including its HDC-4300 4K high frame rate camera system for HD replays. NBC will also use the PWS-4500 HAVC server to capture and store high-speed content from the HDC-4300. MVS production switcher models, like the MVS-7000X, and Sony LCD and Trimaster El OLED monitors are set to be used during production.

The Sony System Solutions teams and Project Management Office will help integrate the NBC Olympics production compound and studio in the International Broadcast Center in Rio. Sony’s Professional Services Group will also provide resources for 24/7 support.

The 2016 Olympic Games will take place from Aug. 5-21.

CLEVELAND—Linear Acoustic has been tapped by NBC Olympics, a division of NBC Sports Group, to provide audio upmixing and technical support to its coverage of the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro from Aug. 5-21. The audio company has been brought on to help NBC Olympics deliver 5.1 channel surround sound for the broadcast.

More than 40 of Linear Acoustic’s Upmax v4 units, with remote controls, have been acquired by NBC Olympics, according to a press release. Linear is also supposed to provide MT2000 Multichannel Bitstream analyzers and on-site technical support.

Linear Acoustic is part of the Telos Alliance of companies and is based in Cleveland.

LAS VEGAS—Avid is rolling out new software-defined storage, advanced graphics capability, and an end-to-end production workflow for the Panasonic Ultra LongG format at this year’s NAB Show.

STORAGE
Avid is introducing the new Avid Nexis, a software-defined storage platform designed for storing and managing media. Avid said Nexis enables fully virtualized storage so media organizations can adjust storage capacity mid-project, without disrupting workflows.

Powered by the Avid MediaCentral Platform, Avid Nexis delivers media storage for Avid-based and third-party workflows. Nexis enables customers to dynamically tune the system to ensure that high-priority workflows always have the capacity, performance and data protection levels they require. This ability lets teams react quickly to changes, adjusting performance and protection levels to match the needs of a project at any stage in the workflow.

The modularity Nexis enables teams to mix and match storage engines and elastically scale capacity from as little as 20 TB to over 1.4 PB in a single system, without interruption, Avid said. The Nexis family includes the E4 high-density integrated storage engine, the E2 small-footprint integrated storage engine, the System Director Appliance, the Media Pack of 10 drives with 20 TB or 60 TB of storage, the Redundant Controller and the PRO professional-class integrated storage engine (successor to ISIS 1000 and providing an upgrade path for ISIS1000 customers).

PANASONIC WORKFLOW
Avid also announced an end-to-end production workflow for the Panasonic AVC Ultra-LongG video format, which is used by NBC and Cox. AVC LongG support will be available in Avid Artist, Media Composer, Nexis storage, Interplay Production and Media Asset Management, Airspeed, Media Director and across MediaCentral. It includes baseband and file-based ingest, editorial and logging, send-to-playback and archive.

Avid’s LongG splicing capability allows for changes to be made to existing sequences without requiring a full re-encode upon playout or consolidation. Through integration with the Avid MediaCentral, users can replace old camera inventory and invest in this new camera platform without risking interruption of operational practices.

GRAPHICS
Avid updated its graphics platform with support for 3D motion graphics and sports with the new 4Designer, an update of Maestro, and a sports telestration tool, Spark.

The 4Designer graphics authoring tool is a complete toolset for creating 2D and 3D motion graphics in a wide range of resolutions. The latest version of Maestro provides a way to manage and play out on-air 3D graphics, and supports video ingest and playout. Maestro is tightly integrated with the MediaCentral Platform. The Avid Spark telestration tool enables on-air commentators to draw and add graphics to a video in real time, giving audiences better visual insight into key plays, game flow, and analysis.

IP SUPPORT
Avid is updating its MediaCentral platform to support “real-time IP signals,” the company said. On the floor, it will demo interoperable IP workflows with Grass Valley and Sony, as well as IP interfaces for SDI-based Avid products, including Media Composer. A new “open, agnostic, standards-based architecture for IP signals” was announced for the MediaCentral platform, as well as membership in the AIMS Alliance.

Future updates will enable Avid users to orchestrate automated content flows that span all facets of media content creation and distribution, incorporating Avid tools and infrastructure as well as partner solutions from its growing ecosystem.

AVAILABILITY
The Nexis storage, updated graphics software, IP and LongG support technologies are all expected to become available in the second quarter of this year.

RIO
Avid also said NBC Olympics tapped MediaCentral for the games in Rio de Janeiro Aug. 5-21. MediaCentral is the foundation of the Avid Everywhere cloud-based production platform. This will make Avid’s ninth consecutive Olympics with NBC, with Rio being the “largest and most comprehensive to date,” the vendor said.

The NBC Olympics production compound within the International Broadcast Center in Rio will be outfitted with Avid Media Composer editing systems connected to an Avid ISIS 7500 shared storage system with 512TB of total raw capacity. The Olympic Venues are each equipped with a 128TB ISIS 7500, AirSpeed 5500, and Interplay Production systems with connectivity back to the IBC.