svgeuropeupdate
Tokyo Olympics
in Tokyo included reduced numbers for both radio and video. The original plan was to have a production presence like that in London and Rio. “Once we saw the playbook and could see what the measures were we had to make a very quick decision about how to adapt our model,” says Bramley. For example, what was planned to be a post-production area has been transformed into an ingest and turnaround area. “We are streamlining all the incoming host feeds and unilateral feeds and sending them back to our production centre in Salford and editing is done there,” he adds. There are 32 international circuits to Salford and the BBC is also taking the host MDS commentary package. Ten commentary booths back home are also in use and one of the ongoing themes in discussions with any sports broadcaster over the past 16 months has been what is lost when commentators are not on site. “It’s never going to be as good when you’re calling off tube but it’s also about not being able to interact with the coaches, other journalists, or actually living and experiencing the city,” adds Bramley. “But fundamentally for these games safety was the priority. And we want to make sure that everybody involved in the production is going to be safe.”
The results have still been impressive, as Chakraborty explains: “If you listened to our swimming commentary, you’d think they were there in the arena. We’ve got an amazing little set up in the basement [in Salford] called the Multipurpose Audio Studio, so literally you walk in there and you can hear all sorts of guys shouting everywhere. Obviously, they can’t hear each other, but they’ve created a really nice atmosphere down there; there’s flags everywhere, there’s commentary quotes written on the wall, that sort of thing.” BBC Sport chief engineer Richard Morgan says that a total of 46 HD circuits (the 32 international plus 14 news) are outbound and five are inbound and that technically things are going well. “The idea of remote is nothing new to us whatsoever so that’s not an issue,” says Morgan. “And I’m sure we’ll be doing more remote because of sustainability as the challenge is a commitment to be carbon neutral by 2030. But COVID did push us slightly further [into remote].” Bramley adds that the idea of back of house production being back home seems to be the way to go while talent and other production personnel remain on site. “The sheer scale of the Olympics means it is always going to necessitate establishing a completely different sort of production hub in the first place,” he explains.
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