Live from Rio 2016: Sky New Zealand Keeps Kiwis Front and Center

Sky New Zealand’s team of 26 production professionals is tapping into the same technical backbone it used for the Commonwealth Games when they were held in Glasgow last year, ensuring that a production team back home of more than 200 has everything it needs to keep Olympic fans back home happy and tied into the action. That technical backbone is provided by Outside Broadcasting, a subsidiary of Sky New Zealand that back home has six HD OB units. In Rio Outside Broadcasting is providing a flypack with three Adobe Premier editing packages and a technical hub for handling incoming mixed zone feeds and ENG content as well as helping the production team back home get content that might not be available via the Olympic Broadcasting Service’s multichannel distribution service (MDS).

“We’re able to access the DX feeds from OBS and not miss anything like qualifications of our athletes and those with kiwi connections,” says Matt Quin, Sky New Zealand, deputy head of sport production.

Matt Lamb of Sky New Zealand subsidiary Outside Broadcasting is overseeing technical operations.

Matthew Lamb, who is on hand leading the Outside Broadcasting team, says three staffers from Outside Broadcasting are on site for support of the system.

“Previous years Sky has gone to third-party system integrators but the cost was much higher,” he says.

The Sky New Zealand team also has five ENG crews with a reporter and cameraman that are able to send back content via LiveU. There are also cabled positions in the mixed zones at four venues. The hot sports of choice are rugby sevens (obviously), athletics, rowing, canoeing, and cycling.

The MDS is received via satellite in Auckland while unilateral signals from the IBC facility are sent back through Aldea.