One of the key and long-running debates around Olympic coverage has what gets shown live versus on a tape-delayed basis. And there’s an interesting angle to that set to play out around the Paris 2024 Games this summer with the BBC’s U.K. broadcasts.
There, the tape-delay conversation isn’t about the kinds of “The people who watch the Olympics are not particularly sports fans” or the “Our belief is to make the programming available when most people are available” NBC executives had used to defend their tape-delay strategies for U.S. broadcasts. (They’ve largely broken from those now, with all events set to be available live on Peacock for these Olympics, but there may still be some tape-delays of certain events on the primetime coverage feed, as there were in 2021.) Instead, the issue here is about the split of rights between the public BBC and private broadcaster Discovery (part of Warner Bros. Discovery).
That split has the BBC limited to one linear and one streaming feed for the second straight Summer Games, and that drew them some complaints in 2021. And the feed limitations mean that several key moments of Team GB athletes winning medals may not air live on BBC platforms if their timing overlaps.
However, the broadcaster doesn’t plan to restrict their journalists from providing website or social media updates on those moments before the BBC airs them. And that includes on the @BBCSport Twitter/X account, which caused some drama in 2021 around this. Ron Chakraborty, the head of major events and general sport at the BBC, spoke to Alexandra Topping of The Guardian on this for a piece published Friday , and said their focus will be on portraying medal moments, but that will sometimes come with these delays.
Schedulers have been in touch with Team GB to manage expectations of coverage, which for longer form events such as road cycling, tennis and team sports like group stage hockey are unlikely to be played in full. “We’ve done a lot with Team GB and I’ve spoken to the individual comms leads for the sports to say will be there for their medal moments, but we won’t be able to show every minute of every one of their athletes,” he said.
Asked if the BBC hadn’t taken steps to avoid a repetition of a moment when the BBC Sport Twitter account announced that a Brit was into the taekwondo final before the delayed television coverage had finished, Chakraborty said it might not be avoidable.
“We had one incident in 16 days last time where that happened and it was a semi-final, it wasn’t a gold medal,” he said. “If we do have ‘three into one moments’ where we’re going to be a little bit late on [the coverage], the one thing we’re not going to do is tell our social media team to delay. If someone’s gone through then it’s going to be on the radio, it’s going to be everywhere else. I think all we can do is [tell the viewer] it’s happening and that we will be showing it as soon as possible.”
Chakraborty added that for viewers “pinch points” were rare, adding that organisers “don’t want to put a load of big moments happening at the same time”. He added that if Team GB matched their medal haul of 64 achieved in 2021, UK viewers could expect around four or five medals a day.
Interestingly, this is somewhat the same strategy NBC has been using for their primetime coverage, focusing on medal moments even when they happen earlier. In their case, though, that’s not about not having all the rights, but rather about producing the certain kind of storyline-focused primetime coverage they’ve long loved. They at least have evolved to allow everything to be seen live through alternate options (a shift from the massive delays in 2012, 2014, and earlier, and 2016 still saw Opening Ceremonies and West Coast primetime coverage delays), but the last Summer Games in 2021 still saw notable challenges for their tape-delayed coverage of certain primetime events, especially around Simone Biles’ withdrawal . We’ll see if those pop up again for them.
Back to the BBC, this will be the second Summer Games for them under this deal where Discovery has most of the full sports and they’re limited to these two feeds. But Chakraborty told Topping most of their viewership was on these kinds of main sport-hopping feeds rather than the things they’ve lost even back in 2012 and 2016:
“The vast majority of people just watch the first two channels because as much as we make all the plans around it, I think most of the public won’t have a massive spreadsheet,” he said. “They say to us ‘I’m going to hand my remote control over to you. You tell me what I should be watching. I’ll trust that if I watch BBC One, keep up with the live text or listen to Five Live – I will get every big story going’.”
That general trend’s often seen in the U.S. as well, with many people opting for NBC’s all-sports primetime coverage even when it’s not particularly live. But it’s interesting to read about the BBC’s approach and how it’s caused for them by those feed limitations in a split with a private broadcaster, which bring to mind some of the discussions in Canada around the CBC and Sportsnet on the NHL playoffs this year.
It’s also notable to see a sports media organization determined to tell viewers “it’s happening and we will be showing it as soon as possible.” That’s a change from the approach of trying to save surprises for TV, as we often see with U.S. coverage of drafts . We’ll see how this all goes for the BBC, and if viewers again wind up annoyed by tweets preceding on-air coverage, or if that approach of informing viewers of results as soon as possible is appreciated.
[ The Guardian ]
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