Olympics broadcast will look very different this time
PRODUCING BROADCAST COVERAGE of an event as big as the Olympic Games is difficult in the best of times. When it is the worst of times, like during a global pandemic, anything goes, which makes being patient and adaptable more important than ever.
“We have to have patience at every turn,” said Chris Wilson (right), executive director of CBC Sports, in an interview with Cartt.ca. “We have to expect things to be unexpected and expect things will need to be dealt with… The pandemic will make us pivot and already has made us pivot to some degree.”
Over the past 18 months, Wilson’s team has had to “rethink and replan and revise the revised plan,” he added.
One of the major changes CBC Sports has already made to its Olympic coverage this year in light of Covid-19, has been to set up its studios and hosts in Canada. “We made the decision very early on after the postponement [of the Games in 2020] to bring our studios back to Toronto and to Montreal for Radio-Canada,” Wilson said. (The Toronto set is pictured above).
Safety has been central to the CBC’s planning. With this in mind, the national public broadcaster is sending a smaller team of employees to cover the Games on the ground in Tokyo than in previous years. As such, while the CBC will have robust coverage, the “assigned teams of reporters on the ground are going to be very busy,” he said.
Getting reporters to stories “will be probably our biggest challenge that we’ll have to face this time around simply because there’s less of them and there’s more restrictions on moving around the city.”
This was always going to be the case, even before Tokyo officially announced it would be in a state of emergency for the duration of the Games. “The level of public health measures in place for our crew and all broadcast crew and all media is really intense,” Wilson added. “The state of emergency just sort of heightens the awareness that we have to really stick to the protocols in place.”
Despite all of the planning that has already taken place, there are still several aspects of covering the games that are up in the air. One thing yet to be determined is how the broadcast will look and feel with empty stands this year.
The decision to restrict crowds from attending Olympic events was only made very recently, “so our team and our colleagues at Olympic Broadcast Services are sort of working through those details now to try and make sure that we bring… the most exciting version of the sports back to Canadians and for OBS to broadcast that around the world,” Wilson said.
Even with the challenges presented by the pandemic, the Wilson is excited for the Games to start. The CBC has “a lot of people who have worked numerous Olympic Games on behalf of CBC and Radio-Canada and so they’re starting to figure out the differences between Olympics they have done in the past and this one, but generally speaking I think people are feeling excited for it to get going,” he added.
Photos supplied by CBC
