Winter Olympics 2018

NEP have also built the Discovery/Eurosport presentation and routing operations (studios, control rooms, MCR etc.) in Korea. (Largely through NEP Visions in the UK I think). Lots of ex-BBC people out there working as part of that operation (including some of the brains behind the BBC's London 2012 set-up)

It's worth pointing out for a lot of the people who are annoyed about not getting Eurosports 3-5, much of the time two of the channels are showing the same thing as ES 1&2, just with world feed commentary rather than Eurosport's own, so you're not missing much, unless you really want the world feed.

In fact ES 1&2 are often showing the same events as BBC1/2 and the red button channel- so again, it's just the same events with different commentary.

I'm not sure I've seen any Panasonic equipment in the IBC. I remember in London they had their logo under the stadium big screens, as if to suggest it was one of their products, but I doubt it was.

I know I posted a screengrab of a graphic from the Opening Ceremony in Korean yesterday, but I'm watching a bit more MBC this evening and it appears they're just keying them on top of the host graphics: on this evening's hockey, an OBS graphic (in English) appears, then it changes to Korean - though the background doesn't animate, so I suspect MBC are generating these themselves.

OBS commentary is only in English.


Since I'm sure someone's going to ask, OBS have subcontracted production for the following sports:

• Alpine Skiing: SRG (Switzerland)
  
• Cross-country: YLE (Finland)
  
• Ski jumping, Nordic Combined, Big Air: Sapporo TV (Japan)
  
• Curling, and one of the hockey rinks: CBC (Canada)
  
• Speed skating: NHK (Japan)
  
• Short track, figure skating: SBS (Korea)

The rest is handled in-house, though will no doubt be relying on a lot of freelance talent who usually work for other broadcasters around the world.
I've seen an NEP truck on one of the Gangneung cable cams - I think it's outside one of the hockey venues. As noggin says, Discovery's rig is provided by NEP UK, and could easily be mistaken for a permanent install. The SVG article hints at some of the complexity of serving few dozen variants of the channel, each with their own priorities, and with up to 9 different commentaries passing through the IBC. (I'm not sure about the other 30-odd ones are coming from!) I don't think anyone's ever tried anything on this scale before, but as you say, a lot of the engineering team have a lot of Olympic experience under their belts, a lot of it for the BBC.

Speaking of Eurosport, here's a bit of their pres from around Europe (some of which has been airing on Discovery's other networks)

Eurosport Sweden's LED wall simulating a window works quite well - be interesting to see it full resolution to see what the pitch is like.

I guess one issue that has hit the OBS team is that national broadcasters who had expertise in covering winter sport events. in some cases no longer have domestic rights, and as such are less interested in sub-contracting to provide coverage that only viewers on their competition will see.

I have a dim recollection that SVT may have had some production presence in Rio (even though they were no longer rights holders) though. (SVT had historically done the athletics horizontal and vertical jumping, with YLE doing the rest)

YLE appear to have done a pretty good deal with Eurosport/Discovery for 2018 - they can show 5 simultaneous streams, with 2 of them on broadcast outlets, though Discovery have Ice Hockey (a big event) exclusively I think.

Is it CBC on their own doing the hockey or does it involve Rogers staff?

Has anyone mixed up PyeongChang and Pyongyang yet? Or worse, ended up in the wrong one.

Think I just heard an SVT Nyheter presenter say PyongyangChang...

BBC TWO NI used the 2000 Christmas Ident with its original soundtrack at 7.30pm.

Interesting that BBC Two NI broadcast it half an hour late, so it overlapped with the BBC Four prorgamme on now. Could they not have shown Getaways at 20:00 instead?

I can't believe someone at BBC Sport actually thought the additions to this video - http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/winter-olympics/43016775 - improved it. Surprised it wasn't edited down to 15 seconds so it can be snapchated or whatever the kids these days think constitutes news.