Live from Paris 2024: Managing torrential rain, extreme heat and bouncy floors at the BBC Sport Olympic studio

BBC Sport’s Olympic studio in Paris is where all the real-world and virtual-world magic happens

The Olympic magic for UK viewers is created at the BBC Sport studio under the shadow of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. While the studio-based operation for BBC Sport is just one cog in the large wheel of control and content that spans various locations across the French capital, including at the IBC, over to Salford in Manchester, England, the operational team have had a lot to contend with to get on air.

Malcolm Cowan, broadcast industry professional and tech manager for BBC Sport’s Olympic studio, and his team are tasked with monitoring and managing the equipment to ensure all feeds from the studio and its localised roving cameras and audio flow through to Salford and to the IBC.

Speaking to SVG Europe at the BBC Sport studio, Cowan says: “There’s a huge amount of complexity there [in Salford]. We are just pushing the signals out and receiving any that come back. We are not doing a huge amount of manipulation here; most of what we do here is all about monitoring so we can see what’s happening and make sure we’ve got the right things going to the right place, and everything else is handled outside of here.

“Everything is effectively managed remotely, including the audio,” he goes on. “Salford is effectively accessing the MADI streams directly from here via the IBC, because obviously the IBC operation is part of this as well. So all of it is landing back in Salford so that the complexity really is about what happens in Salford, because they’ve got so many feeds coming in, so much audio coming in; there’s all the comms, there’s all the programme audio, there’s the stuff the host provides, it’s all the talkback, plus the video of course.”

The engine room where the audio, engineering and RF team are ensconced, with Malcolm Cowan by the racks. The left-hand rack is BBC Sport’s connectivity out, supplied by BT. The middle two racks are for cameras, routing, sync pulse generator (SPG), and all the audio from the studio and associated productions in the area. The far right rack handles everything to do with RF; all the signals from the roof of the building travel down to the engine room on fibres before it goes out

Studio rig tweaks

However, before the Games came the rig. On the set-up for the studio, Cowan says: “I got here on 8 July. There was rig already happening, so we were ready for rehearsals about seven days before the Games started. We were still tweaking with bits and bobs to sort out, but the biggest issue is trying to get all the lighting done; you’ve got to get the cameras in and then obviously the cameras need to be set up to do the augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) stuff that takes a certain amount of mapping and working out.

“Once that’s done, then they’ve got to start thinking about the lighting, and best plans change. So there has to be as much adaptation as possible. All of that takes a certain amount of time to take place; it’s not like you can just walk straight in and go, “Let’s make a programme”, we’ve got to map it all out.

Aerials and microphones on top of the studio building in Paris

“Additionally, the guys in Salford need time to get their models tracked and working properly, and tweaked and then there are certain changes, like we’re suddenly putting in extra greenscreen flats. So in certain scenarios you put a bit of board up with green on it because it helps the keying in the studio; when you go to the cafe scene, the carpenters made us an extra [green screen] board, so we know that has to go in a certain place in the studio so that when they do that scene, the keying and the rendering works more efficiently. Then the guys back in Salford block all that out.”

However, an issue with the studio when the rig began was, as it is built within a temporary structure, the floor has some bounce to it which has the potential to cause havoc with the sensitive VR and AR equipment.

Says Cowan: “The floor is quite bouncy, so when people come into the room they can – depending on how heavy footed they are – actually make it bounce a bit. Obviously, with a camera that is trying to work out where it is in 3D space all the time, even if it moves a little bit, it will affect the rendered output. So StarTracker from Mo-Sys is all very good, but things like bouncy cameras don’t help.”

The heat has created further challenges for the studio as the Parisian summer has pushed temperatures in the city to over 30 degrees centigrade, with Cowan having to negotiate with the host to double the air con units in the studio prior to the Games from two to four to keep the kit cool. Yet still, while standing in the studio, the murmur of lights and equipment trying to cool itself down is audible.

Cowan adds: “Along with the studio getting very hot during the day, massive downpours and trying to get the windows cleaned when you’ve got umpteen other broadcasters working at different times has been interesting. We have to choreograph, working with the host, so that when the cherry picker goes up [to clean the windows after heavy rain], they’re not obscuring the view of another broadcaster.”

Inside a tent on top of the OBS studio building at Trocadero, BBC Sport houses all the technology that makes those transmissions happen, including transmitters and receivers

Rooftop tech

Up on the roof of the Trocadero-based OBS broadcaster studio building, Cowan points to a tent containing kit, with an assortment of mics and aerials rigged up behind it.

He says: “We’ve basically got an RF receive and transmit point on the roof, which allows us to receive pictures back from the RF camera, send out IEM, so in-ear monitoring, so the presenters etc can hear, and also radio talkback so the crew can get cueued and have talkback as well. The BBC radio have got a couple of mics up here so they can actually receive their city atmos through the microphones up here, but they can also send some of their radio microphones back through our infrastructure here.

“And then on top of that, BBC News have got a receive, which means they can send someone out separately on a news camera to do interviews around the place. And all of that basically transits back to London and Salford. So once it’s seen and in the network, we don’t touch it, it gets all the way back to the UK and that’s where it’s sorted out.”

Inside the tent is all the technology that makes those transmissions happen, including transmitters and receivers.

The studio building is built on a roundabout with its back to streets and tall, classically Parisian buildings, and its front with the studio windows is facing the Eiffel Tower. The range of the mics and receivers to the back is limited by the buildings, but can stretch to 100 to 150 metres, while to the front it reaches to near the bottom of the Eiffel Tower.

Cowan comments: “Obviously with RF it’s never quite easy because trees and buildings obviously upset the signal, but we can get a reasonable range around the roundabout and we’ve directed some extra aerials down to the front towards the Eiffel Tower, reaching down the plaza and then the bridge going across to the tower. We can get range more or less to the end of the bridge [just before the tower]. It gets a bit dodgy in a few places due to reflections of buildings, but mostly it’s ok.”

Malcolm Cowan, broadcast industry professional and tech manager for BBC Sport’s Olympic studio

Sustainable power

On the subject of sustainability, the air con in the studios is powered by cold water from underneath the city itself – the district cooling network, developed and operated by Fraîcheur de Paris – so no generators are required to create cool water. Meanwhile, the entire facility is powered by shore power with no backup generator running constantly.

Cowan comments: “What we’ve done is that we’ve built into the processes for every bit of vital kit to have a UPS. [If the shore power went down,] the generator should kick in less than a minute and then they’ll switch back over to that. So there will be an interruption [in the broadcast should the power go down] because we’re not going to put UPS in lights and things like that, but we will still keep the vital equipment running and then we can be back up and running off the generator in less than a minute.

“That’s a little bit of a sacrifice because you’re trying to keep it green and not use huge amounts of fuel to power a generator and generate huge amounts of CO2. So it’s a trade-off there, but we’ve tested it and it works. And so far, touch wood, we’ve not had any issues with power at all.”

Managing the RF from the studio building is BBC Sport’s Debs Bream

BBC Sport’s Paris 2024 coverage continues until Sunday 11 August.