BBC Olympics 2012 Coverage

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/rogermosey/2011/08/i_was_surprised_to_read.html

Interesting to see their decision to extend BBC THREE rather than broadcast an additional red button stream. What will this mean for Freeview viewers though? I presume it would be possible for the CBBC Channel to extend its hours from then?

There should be no problem as freeview as carries bbc parliament. As I see it, bbc p will just have caption card up.

Why would CBBC Channel extend their hours? There is no extra bandwidth available to the BBC, the extension to BBC Three's hours are at the expense of BBC Parliament on Freeview and a red button stream on satellite and is for a specific purpose and for a short duration.

Shame that the BBC have promised to keep 60 Seconds on for the duration. Hopefully this will only be on after 19:00 as it is now, it would be even better if it wasn't on at all though.

I don't know - provided they don't break away from live action (i.e. halfway through a 100m race just because it's the TOTH), and the anchors at the games throw to it (rather than a load of trails, news, trails, ident, back to sport) it could actually be a really good service. There will be lots of non-sporting Olympics releated activities, as well as non-Olympic things going on, and a minute every hour isn't too much to spare to bring attention to those happenings.

Because it's a known fact that the BBC Trust has stated in their remit that at some point once the children's department has completed the move to Salford the CBBC Channel will start broadcasting until 9pm.
I'm wondering whether this will be their first opportunity to do such a thing as with BBC Parliament out of the picture for now, BBC Three will have the ability to broadcast all day with no need of switching as will the CBBC Channel. And let's face it, not every kid will want to watch round the clock coverage of the Olympics which is taking over the terrestrial broadcasting (what little is left of it) of their programmes.

The way I read it is BBC Parliament stream will become BBC Three, CBBC/BBC Three stream will become CBBC in day and BBC Red Button in the evening.

No- the BBC Parliament stream will become BBC Three. The CBBC/BBC Three stream will become CBBC.

Theres no mention of an extra interactive screen during the evening. So there will be three channels of Olympics - BBC One, BBC Three and BBCi (301).

I suspect satellite will get five, plus BBC One and BBC Three- although there may be duplication if the network channels are dipping in and out of events.

It does seem us Freeview folk are going to be even worse off than first thought with far less coverage than we had in Beijing.

Back in 2008 we had BBC1, the occassional but very rare simulcast on BBC2, 301/302 interactive and a third interactive stream on BBC Parliament.

Now for 2012 we knew 302 had gone, but I was expecting BBC2 to pretty much cover additional daytime action with BBC3 picking it up at night. However with them rebranding the BBC Parliament stream as BBC3 I doubt we'll have any BBC2 coverage during the day - and there is no mention of additional coverage in the evenings either, so effectively now we're not only losing 302 but losing BBC Parliament too.

The BBC Trust have had nearly two years to look at a permanent solution to restoring at least one interactive stream, and when you look at the other muxes where there are 8-10 channels, plus in some cases as many radio stations,, there is no reason at all why another stream couldn't be added to the BBC mux. And use the BBC Alba solution of temporarily closing radio stations for the period too and along with BBC Parliament you could have four interactive streams for the Olympics, which along with BBC1 and say daytime coverage on BBC2 and evening coverage on BBC3 that would pretty much be the equivalent of what Sky and Cable have had for years.


It will be very annoying if BBC2 just shows the usual Cash in the Attic and Flog It crap during the day for the period.

Although I'm not one of them, what about all the people who don't like the Olympics and want some alternative daytime viewing from the BBC? Similar for radio on Freeview- the BBC Alba 'solution' didn't seem to go down too well.

Three channels all the time is a high level of coverage. Also notice this bit of the blog



'BBC Two peak' would appear to indicate some coverage during the daytime on BBC Two. It may just be to cover times when national and regional news is on BBC One, but may be some extra. If you want more everything will be shown online, or (if possible) get a satellite dish and basic Freesat box.

The loss of 302 wasn't the BBCs fault- it was a result of OFCOM deciding to squeeze HD into the six existing multiplexes rather than allocate more space (bar the bit they've allowed to get it on air in some pre DSO areas).

Hang on- so for 2008 you had
BBC 1
BBC 2 (occasional daytime)
BBC Parliament
301
302

And for 2012 (it would appear) you'll have
BBC 1
BBC 2 (occasional daytime)
BBC 3
301

So one channel of coverage lost. Not as bad as you're making out. I suspect BBC 1 will be even more dedicated to the Olympics than it was in 2008.

It will be interesting to see how this is done in practise. I imagine for Freeview viewers it will require another rescan of channels to get the BBC Three EPG position to point to the BBC Parly video stream... people will struggle to find it if not

There will probably be a lot of online coverage too, something they hadn't quite perfected in 2008. I suspect there will also be more on BBC2 daytime as they haven't a clue what to do with that channel at the minute.