BBC 2012 - The Olympic Broadcaster

Yes. Other editions have "On Sale Tuesday 24 July" on pages 3, 5, 7 and 146. Look closely and you'll see the date of sale is in black - it's an overprint of the colour part.

I find it hard to believe they've found a time when it's not been occupied by engineers!

It appears that even BBC Parliament is getting in on the act with some Olympic programming:

(next Wednesday at 9pm, so just in time to still be available on Freeview)

Also, it seem the Opening Ceremony gets a 6am repeat on Saturday on BBC Three

BBC Three will air 60 Seconds as per normal every hour from 7pm between events with Sam Naz presenting all of the shifts during the games.

I don't see that as necessary really - perhaps at 7pm (when Jake takes over) and then 9pm and 11pm would suffice so they only break the flow of the programme once for news. They don't break films for the news and I doubt they air them during their couple of Euro 2012 games either, so don't see why they should interupt their Olympic coverage.


Good to see Eurovision Sports will be up and running for the games - it's one of the best kept secrets for Olympic coverage and a real alternative to the BBC, especially if demand causes them a few problems.

Apparently the hourly bulletins will be slotted in between events so that viewers don't miss anything. I think it's part of BBC Three's service licence to air those 60 Seconds bulletins regardless of the games, otherwise you'd be hiring a journalist to provide two bulletins at 11pm and midnight.

I wonder what BBC HD will do during the bulletins, given the same gallery at the IBC will be feeding both channels?

Because there's natural breaks in between events shown? There's no problem at all, and it's completely different to the examples you say.

Perhaps it'll be scheduled like they do festival coverage - with each event getting it's own EPG entry, allowing the junctions for 60 Seconds, and BBC HD going to one of those long "isn't HD amazing" promos whilst BBC3 does the news?

It would make more sense for BBC HD to stick with live coverage, even if the commentators don't say anything for 60 seconds. 60 Seconds is just an inconvenience that BBC Three has to deal with, although there is possibly an argument that a typical Snog Marry or Avoid viewer may also be interested in celebrity news, there is little merit in interrupting live sport coverage for it. BBC HD does not have to break away for 60 Seconds and I don't think they should degrade their Olympic coverage just because another channel has to.

Digiguide now has the 24 Olympic channels, plus Freeview 302 / 301 HD, with listings for the full first week. We knew this would be the case but Olympics 23 & 24 get very little use - indeed I wonder if the downtime will just be holding captions (like the test we've seen) or if there will be an Olympics news loop to use as filler. It does seem that things appear where they fit (with higher profile events on Olympics 1/2) rather than trying to dedicate certain channels to certain sports. Also sports can occupy multiple feeds - Wimbledon has three for example - Centre, Court 1 and "Outside Court Doubles".

With no highlights show as such that is one thing I think they need - a simple sport by sport round up of the days news. The news channel have Sportsday but they're likely to concentrate mainly on the big stories.

I also hope for Freeview folk they make use of 301 and 302 after 11pm with some delayed coverage of events not shown on Freeview certainly on 301, and then a mixture of news round ups and other events on 302.

Not really if it's going to happen at the end and before the start of BBC Three footage coverage of different events.

It might seem like an awful inconvenience, but they may have just used the time to put a couple trails on for BBC programmes otherwise.

Those updates may very well be very Olympic orientated anyway, and take the place of random Jake might do himself in the studio.