TORONTO – As the 2015 Toronto Pan Am Games moves into its final week, CBC-TV is boosting its daily coverage starting Monday, the second time it has pushed aside regular programming to show live and extended packages of the sporting event.
The broadcaster confirmed that an extra hour will be added during the weekdays, on top of the already expanded network coverage announced last week just after the games began. That boosts weekday coverage to seven hours a day, up from the scheduled five hours, plus the added weekend coverage.
The public broadcaster appeared to have been caught off-guard by the demand for on-air programming that began with the opening ceremonies on July 10 and increased as Canada's medal total soared. CBC said that after three days, more than 10.6 million Canadians – or 30% of the population – had watched at least some or part of CBC/Radio-Canada’s coverage.
When asked if that demand was unexpected, CBC Sports' head of programmingTrevor Piling said in an interview that “in any broadcast of this nature you prepare for many scenarios; this wasn’t one we had specifically planned for, but it fit within our crew hours, and where sport was available. So it lined up rather nicely.”
The CBC wears two hats at this event, which includes next month’s Parapan Am Games. It is the host broadcaster, which means it provides live or packaged coverage for all events to broadcast rights holders such as Sportsnet for pay TV, ESPN in the U.S., and Rede Record in Brazil, which paid a record $30 million for its rights. It is also the domestic broadcaster for Canada.
The two separate entities seemed to confuse viewers who complained last week to CBC, the Canadian Press and on Twitter that the network wasn't putting out enough live televised coverage. The host broadcaster churns out the content, but the domestic broadcaster chooses the hours and events to air in this country – although CBC is supplementing network coverage by putting all of the more than 600 hours of host feed on the Internet.
Don Peppin, executive producer for the host broadcaster, oversees a production and technical crew of 656 people, leveraging 169 hard and hand-held cameras plus 58 specialty systems (like robotic underwater cameras). Live feeds go over a fibre optic network from sites to the International Broadcast Centre, (in what is normally a convention centre on Toronto's Exhibition grounds), where the host broadcaster has facilities for distributing the signals to the other networks. ITC provider Cisco Systems oversaw sponsors and partners to assemble the data network and data centre used by the media and games administration, as well as the free Wi-Fi used by spectators at many venues.
Peppin noted in an interview that the Toronto Pan Am organizing committee specified that only 16 events had to be covered live. For geographic or physical reasons, another 20 events (such as kayaking, held two hours north of Toronto; the rowing held in St. Catherines; plus the marathons, triathlons, golf, and off-road cycling) are not.
For those events, Peppin's team assembles detailed packaged coverage with crews that record action on video cameras with XD cards. The digital files are edited on site with Macbook Pro laptops, pulling in results and stats from games timing supplier Atos, then uploaded to CBC's English-language headquarters in downtown Toronto for polishing (if necessary) before being released to the other rights holders.
"One of the biggest challenges for us is how do you deliver highlights in an extremely time-efficient way while maximizing using things like unmanned aerial vehicles (drones), extra camera systems on motorcycles and other things and bring all that video together”, Peppin said. "In most cases we're delivering those highlights within two hours of when the event ends."
A veteran producer of Olympics and other big sports events, Peppin said that preparation for all possible problems is the key to covering multi-event competitions like this. By way of example, he has technology from Waterloo, ON-based Dejero Labs Inc. that can transmit video over an LTE cellular network, for remote sites. It was needed during the mountain bike competition, which took place an hour and a half north of Toronto, where the plan was to transmit files over the dedicated Wi-Fi network set up for the media. However, Internet capacity became clogged requiring the backup system get pulled in to play.
"That's one of the biggest challenges on a project like this," Peppin continued. "You can’t make it up as you go along; you can't change your mind for major decisions at the last minute."
Technology is nice, but it has to be used to tell the story. "For me, it’s all about the extra 10%," he added. "What are the things we can add in that will really add value above just the basic coverage… But the most important element is the production teams on the ground, and Canada has some phenomenal producers and directors and camera operators and replay-EVS system operators who can maximize the tools I put in their hands."
Peppin said that the opening ceremonies proved to be the biggest challenge so far, although his team worked with show producer Cirque de Soleil for18 months. But because the Rogers Centre venue was only free for nine days before the start of the games, the only time available for a full dress rehearsal was a few days before the live show.
After one week, Peppin says that there have been no major problems, due in large part to the staff that he selected for this event. “We have strong people on production and the technical side who understand the industry very well and understand the pressures that come with producing live television and react in a calm and deliberate way to deal with crisis, so when somebody plugs a wrong monitor in – as happened this morning, it means that a number of people were getting the wrong feed at the swimming venue – everybody realized there was something wrong and it was all hands on deck and people went about the business and made sure it was rectified as soon as possible.”
On the domestic side, Piling has to decide how CBC will take the feeds from Peppin, assemble the daily programs, and supplement the coverage with commentators and features, as needed.
CBC's extensive Internet feed is believed to be a first for a Pan Am games, enabling the network to fatten its coverage, expand its online presence – a key goal of the ‘pubcaster, as well as engage viewers.
While some staff are dedicated to the online production, Piling said that everyone is expected to pitch in. Evening broadcast host Scott Russell, for example, is expected to use social media, as are reporters and producers. If a business manager is out at a venue and sees something interesting, Piling added, they are expected take and upload pictures. "That’s how we make our resources go further.”
“Generally speaking I’ve been very pleased with what our teams have done," Piling continued. "When you see something like this, it's live, it's on the fly (for the broadcaster), like the performance itself. How you execute, how you move live signals around, how you interact with your talent, how you make sure everyone has the right pieces of information is a skill.
"I would always push our team to think about our audience and think if there’s better ways to connect with them… And so I haven’t had any disastrous moments – knock on wood.”
The Pan Am Games continue through July 26, 2015, and the Parapan Am Games will take place August 7 – 15, 2015.
Photo by Howard Solomon.
