Live from Paris 2024: International efforts give WBD a spinning workflow with a little bit of AR thrown in

Studio 1 at WBD house has stunning views of the Eiffel Tower

Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) is well known for its virtual studio, the Cube, which has played a huge role in its coverage of recent Olympics. However this year, the location of the Summer Games has played into the broadcaster’s hands, allowing it go for a series of real-world studios on top of the Hotel Raphaël near the Arc de Triomphe.

Yet while the Cube has nothing to do with this Games – “the opportunity of proximity replaced the necessity for technology,” says Scott Young, SVP of content and production at WBD – a spin-off of The Cube technology is at play in the Swedish studio.

The Swedish set is single-use for that country’s team, as WBD has the exclusive rights for that market. It is running free-to-air channels as well as Canal 5, and its new streaming channel Max, plus social channels.

To give the Swedish studio the significance it deserves as an exclusive provider of Olympic content to the country, WBD is using its proprietary augmented reality (AR) technology commonly seen powering the Cube, running on Unreal Engine to give the studio a virtual edge.

Says Young: “They have a virtual platform here. So all the dots on the floor help locate the AR graphics head that’s in the jib. They superimpose over the glass tabletop different athletes and results, different promos. So they’ve driven this very specifically to one market that would be hard to replicate easily market to market within a half-hour setup change; every other studio can be adapted from one market to the other in 30 minutes.”

A spin off of Cube technology is at play in the Swedish studio

Multi-country effort

While the teams running the graphic templates and driving it along are in Paris and Sweden, Young adds: “For the main jib on the roof here, we actually have an operator in Atlanta, and that operator is creating real graphics as results come in and sending them back into the camera head. So we had three graphics on air last night that were created in minutes in Atlanta, created a podium graphic and then fed it back into here for use in the UK show. We’re properly adapting the entire network both across Europe and now in the US.

“Also, our team in Atlanta are editing highlights and special clips for us every night, so we’re using the time zone advantage because they’re tapped into our same editing network and content platform so they can access every feed. So each of our markets in the morning has a list of new content they can draw from their breakfast shows.”

Adds Young: “The Cube has done wonders for us for in Tokyo and Beijing, but we’re a short train ride away from Paris from a UK perspective, and we’re in the backyard of Eurosport’s home in France, and every other one of our major markets is just next door. So it felt like being here was more important for these Games.”

Spinning workflow

WBD has a technical interchange at the IBC connecting output from host broadcaster OBS to the WBD network. Those feeds then go to Issy-les-Moulineaux [WBD’s office in Paris], to London, and they also go to WBD House. “Those are the three key stations where we can see everything at those three destinations,” says Young. “We have 76 feeds that go out from here [WBD House], which is all the individual cameras plus the mix of the studios. But the downstream production is done back in markets, so in Chiswick in London where they produce the UK programmes, in Oslo where they do the Norwegian programme, Stockholm for Sweden and so on.”

AR is all the rage

For WBD, Paris is acting as a hub for the many spokes of its regional programming locations. “This is a centralised plan for not only content creation with the studio floor, but then as each of the spokes goes out to their relative markets, then at the end of that spoke is the director and producer in the gallery, which is where they’re creating the final outputs,” adds Young.

Additionally, there are individual reporters covering each of the 32 sports at the Summer Games, who create reports for any of the regional markets. Continues Young: “Plus we have some markets that will go out there and do their own programming as well. At the athletics, we’ve got probably the highest volume of market participation at one venue, while at other venues like kayaking or skateboarding today, we’ll have a hub reporter who wants to make sure they capture the action for everybody.”

This method of running the show – or shows – is economical for WBD as well. Concludes Young: “That’s leaning into what Eurosport’s really all about. I mean, if we were to try and create 11 individual productions, it would be inappropriate in today’s world of broadcasting, it would be a spend we didn’t need to invest in, and it certainly wouldn’t be very sustainable as a broadcaster, and it wouldn’t lean into the opportunity.

“The technology we have, our technical backbone has allowed us to do what we’re doing here today.”

The first show starts at WBD House in Paris at 7.00am, and the last finishes at 11.30pm

Presenters at one of the stand-up positions at WBD House prepare to go live