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PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Media Updates


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Let's get on with it again as we're heading rapidly into what's the equivalent to Christmas morning to us Olympic fans!

More nations' broadcasters are announcing and lining up for the start of the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics in the coming days. Macedonian public broadcaster MRT will have its two TV channels MTV1 and MTV2 both share a combined 200 hours of the action of Pyeongchang, South Korea with the bulk of them surely on MTV2 (or is that MRT1 and MRT2?) and much of them live. Nonetheless, that's more than what Serbia's RTS2 will show--and the negotiations got completed with Discovery just three days ago with agreements made by MRT making things favorable. From the daily time period of 2am to 3:30 pm, direct transmissions will go from the more popular winter sports in the Balkans like alpine skiing competitions, ice hockey, ice skating, ski jumping, biathlon, and Nordic skiing. Due to the time difference with eight hours of South Korea, part of the excitement in bobbing, sledging (luge/skeleton), swinging, freestyle skiing, and snowboarding will be broadcast late in the afternoon and in the evening, and along with the repeats, the public service will offer more than 200 hours of exclusivity Olympic content. But MRT won't forget all the other sports it's committed to showing like the Macedonia Football League of Champions and from the Europa League, the Handball Champions League in both men's and women's competitions, the handball SEHA League and the Basketball Cup of Macedonia tournament final:

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=mk&u=http://www.mrt.com.mk/node/46651&prev=search

Tried checking to see if there's going to be French-language Belgian Pyeongchang 2018 coverage from RTBF. Nothing. All we got so far still is just VRT's Flemish one--and Belgium is sending its biggest Winter Olympic team since the 1930s with both Flemish and French on the team. And VRT's daily Winter Olympics highlights package is going to come on at Een, not Canvas as I previously believed, under the Sporza banner. Don't know when that will appear but likely on the Belgian evening when the day's competition is over from Pyeongchang. Still time to get the French in just have to wait.

Clare MacNamara, who will host the daily afternoon RTE2 Olympic highlight show for Ireland, and Darren Frehill will co-host RTE2's production of the Pyeongchang 2018 Opening Ceremony at 5am Ireland time Friday. Frehill and Marie Crowe will also appear on the show that will come on 12:35-1:35pm. Found this out on a RTE TV guide when clicking on.

Finally getting into China with CCTV. We know that, if you seriously follow Chinese television at all, that CCTV-5 and CCTV-5+ will both take care of the Chinese Pyeongchang 2018 TV coverage, although we don't know right now about the hours combined. According to the list of broadcasters that just popped up a few days ago, the listing has CCTV1 as part of it, so I take it to interpret as that channel as transmitting both the Opening and Closing Ceremonies with CCTV5 having the simulcast. Wikipedia says on the CCTV5 sports TV channel entry, Pyeongchang 2018 will also be covered by CCTV-News. So that means four channels are involved. Surely we'll get more details as we go along, but if anyone out here who is or can speak Chinese to please make a translation of the CCTV Pyeongchang 2018 TV and radio schedules and the sportscasters--the big names will be there among the likes of Han Qiao Sheng, He Wei, Liang Yi Miao, Xing Yu, Sand Tong, Shao Sheng Yi, Tong Ke, Wu Is, Yang Jian, and Yu Jia. I can indicate to you that there are some Chinese Olympic-related TV programming beforehand including a 5-part Pyeongchang 2018 Special Winter Olympic program series each that last 30 minutes, a 3-part Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics Special Show on Snow Heroes, and a CBC-like Road To the Winter Olympics sports presentation called Leading to Pyeongchang. Moreover, there's the matter of starting things officially with the mixed doubles curling, the men's normal hill ski jumping qualification, snowboarding, and team figure skating all on CCTV5 before the Opening Ceremony. If you want to see the CCTV Pyeongchang 2018 webpage, check this:

http://2018.cctv.com/

Last-minute deals keep on coming. Finally some good news regarding Hong Kong. As expected, big-time broadcaster TVB strikes a deal with ad agency Dentsu with a week to go with the start of the Winter Olympics and will carry 1000 hours of the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics and, unlike Singapore, HK viewers will get to see its lone 2018 Winter Olympian in alpine skiier Arabella Ng live with some details still hammered out. Problem is, due to the lateness in the agreement, there wouldn't be enough time and thus extremely difficult to set aside enough time slots to programming on its prime terrestrial channel, TVB Jade, during peak hours and devise a strong promotional Olympic campaign to get viewers interested. Instead TVB Jade will offer a daily highlights show and allow the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics be otherwise shown live on its other channels with important events and its MyTV Super online and customizable package OTT service:  

http://www.scmp.com/sport/hong-kong/article/2131709/relief-all-round-tvb-confirms-hongkongers-will-get-watch-winter

From what I saw with what PRIME NZ is doing with its portion of the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympic coverage with the TV guide, PRIME, unlike the SKY Sport channels, won't necessarily go for a block of hours like in the Summer Olympics; it' ll usually come in for an event or two (particularly if it's a popular winter Olympic event/has a NZ Winter Olympian involved in the competition) and return after a few hours on TV--Winter Olympic news and highlights and The Crowd Goes Wild included--for up to a total of 11 hours daily of tape-delayed coverage. Plus having got the details off from the TV guide, we will only have four experienced Kiwis involved calling the action in multiple sports not on-location but instead inside the SKY NZ Auckland studios--Stephen McIvor (opening ceremony/figure skating/alpine skiing/snowboarding/short track/luge/freestyle skiing/cross-country skiing), Bernadine Oliver-Kerby (snowboarding/figure skating) and Eric Young hosting the breakfast wrapup highlight show from 6-7am airing with an immediate repeat at 7am. SKY Sports NZ will have live updated version of the PRIME BREAKFAST version at 7-8am NZT. Wairangi Koopu and Hayley Holt will act as the only PRIME on-location reporters but Rikki Swannell and Scotty Stevenson on the ground in Pyeongchang for SKY NZ. For the first time in New Zealand TV history, the Winter Olympics will get the closed-captioned treatment on PRIME thanks to ABLE but only at peak time slots and select events. PRIME's OC will come on live like SKY Sport Olympic Pop up 1 but will have commercial breaks yet coverage will get progressively delayed.  

As for SKY Sports, it will provide 5 24-hour HD Olympic channels and 2 24-hour SD Olympic channels that will cover all 15 sports in a combination of live, replayed, and highlights coverage with the medal events all live: Olympics Mosaic (Channel 50), SKY Sport 4 (Channel 54), SKY Sport Olympic Pop-up1 (Channel 55), SKY Sport Olympic Pop-up2 (Channel 56), SKY Sport Olympic Pop-up 3 (Channel 57), SKY Sport Olympic Pop-up4 (Channel 58), SKY Sport Olympic Pop-up5 (Channel 259) - LIVE + Olympic Channel News and medal table, SKY Sport Olympic Pop-up6 (Channel 260) - LIVE + medal table with typical coverage coming in from 1pm-4am NZT with the 4-hour time difference from South Korea. Everything will be accessible through the via internet connected SKY Set top boxes, SKY GO,  SKY Sport Highlights Apps, FAN PASS, and Vodafone TV. I presume it will air some pre-Olympics programming, some with docs and NZ-related Olympic stuff, before the competition starts on a couple of SKY Sport channels before the mixed doubles curling starts things. Further info can be seen here:

https://skytv.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3698/~/the-olympic-winter-games-pyeongchang-2018

https://www.sky.co.nz/-/pyeongchang-2018

I will return to LTV Latvia with a few others from the Baltics as far as the broadcasting details goes. But I would like to present the LTV promo for not just the Opening Ceremony but Olympic Games Studio for Friday, February 9 that will get shown on LTV1 and LTV7 with the LSM livestream:

https://ltv.lsm.lv/lv/raksts/09.02.2018-olimpisko-spelu-studija.-tiesraide.id116606/

With the SportsMax channels now back in the Olympic fold after ESPN Caribbean and FLOW Sports took over from the previous Olympic cycle, they have now enlisted the help of new channels that haven't been in existence for even two years with the Digicel-created entertainment channels Catch and Catch 2. For the first few days, SportsMax's channels will start on Wednesday with the mixed doubles curling round robin , something that SportsMax 2 will very much focus on along with the Olympic News and Winter Olympics press conferences for the first few days. SportsMax will transmit just about everything else including the Opening Ceremony and Olympic News interspersed with other sports going on like the NBA, cricket, soccer, even Italian Superleague Volleyball. Unlike NBC, SportsMax will televise the Sweden-Japan women's ice hockey game. The likenesses of the SportsMax sportscasters are there in ads and likely will do the Opening ceremony or offer studio hosting, but I can't ID them as of yet. The channels also produced some promos touching on the winter sports like bobsled and luge and primers to get West Indies residents educated on the sports on its website. Still looking for what the Catch channels will do with their Pyeongchang 2018 plans.

For ESPN 5, its coverage starts on 11:15pm Friday night with the delayed Opening Ceremony as The Philippines is 3 hours ahead of South Korea and same day delayed action starting at midnight immediately afterward that goes up to 5am early Saturday with nothing for Sunday. Yet on the pay-TV side based on the IOC broadcasters list, HYPER and the Cignal channels Cignal-Ch.199 HD and Cignal-Ch.99 will take care of them but there's no scheduling plans I can find immediately.

TOYOTA SIGNS NBC 2018 OLYMPIC/PARALYMPIC PRESENTATION SPONSOR DEAL

British residents will have those Eurosport 3, 4, and 5 temp channels for the duration of Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics along with the two primary Eurosport channels like the Germans and the Dutch will get thanks to British Telecom TV with Eurosport 3–420, Eurosport 4–421, Eurosport 5–422, Eurosport 3 HD–440, Eurosport 4 HD–441, Eurosport 5 HD-442 and through BT Player. Like to get the TV guide for the Olympic coverage and the personnel going. Radio Times, in a related story, just released its Winter Olympics issue today, so we could get some info there:

http://tv.bt.com/tv/tv-from-bt/winter-olympics-eurosport-how-to-watch-bt-tv-pop-up-channels-team-gb-11364248449159

The Pyeongchang 2018 assignments TVR Romania channels will do in the coming days: TVR1 will handle just the ceremonies with reairings at 21:30 and daily nighttime summaries at 24:00 (12am Romania time); TVR 2 will handle figure skating, alpine skiing, and ski jumping both in directly live from South Korea and recorded broadcasts. For figure skating lovers, TVR 2 will redistribute on the same day selections of competitions held at less accessible hours. Sunday, February 18, at 21:40, TVR 2 viewers are invited to watch a retrospective of the most exciting moments of the first week of the Winter Olympics in 2018; Romanians watching TVR3 will get opportunity access to daily coverage to luge, biathlon, cross-country skiing, alpine skiing, hockey, skeleton, jumping, bobsleigh, freestyle skiing, short track, and curling; TVR HD will deal with the best of the best of both TVR2 and TVR3; And, already mentioned, TVR Moldova will make its way to show 110 hours across the border similar coverage with  Dragos Bocanaciu will bring to Romanians across the Prut a daily synthesis of this very important sporting event in the world with the "Studio JO 2018" program can be watched at TVR Moldova every day, Monday to Saturday, at 21:00. We also got the TVR2 and TVR3 schedules now but shows little in the way of women's ice hockey in the early going though:

http://www.tvr.ro/jocurile-olimpice-de-iarna-2018--in-direct-la-televiziunea-romana_21281.html#view

http://www.tvr.ro/tvr-2-programul-transmisiunilor-de-la-jocurile-olimpice-de-iarna-2018_21280.html#view

http://www.tvr.ro/programul-transmisiunilor-de-la-jo-de-iarna-de-la-pyeongchang_21277.html#view

Just checked Star Sports India. It's not showing the Winter Olympics this time. Who is in the Indian subcontinent? Also did the same for DD India. No mention there: 

http://www.tvr.ro/programul-transmisiunilor-de-la-jo-de-iarna-de-la-pyeongchang_21279.html#view

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17 hours ago, Durban Sandshark said:

British residents will have those Eurosport 3, 4, and 5 temp channels for the duration of Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics along with the two primary Eurosport channels like the Germans and the Dutch will get thanks to British Telecom TV with Eurosport 3–420, Eurosport 4–421, Eurosport 5–422, Eurosport 3 HD–440, Eurosport 4 HD–441, Eurosport 5 HD-442 and through BT Player. Like to get the TV guide for the Olympic coverage and the personnel going. Radio Times, in a related story, just released its Winter Olympics issue today, so we could get some info there:

Or maybe not so much. Radio Times does list "the BBC's experts" (Graham Bell, Jenny Jones, Amy Williams, John Jackson, Jackie Lockhart, Wilf O'Reilly, Chemmy Alcott, Robin Cousins, Steve Cram, Seth Bennett, Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean) but it doesn't confirm whether they will all be in Korea, rather than Salford.

One thing that becomes very clear on examination of the Radio Times Olympic supplement is how much both the BBC and Eurosport are relying on streaming, each dedicating no more than two broadcast channels to live sport at any given time. In the case of the BBC, determination not to let sport disrupt the schedules too much has led to a lot of bouncing back and forth between BBC1 and BBC2 (with BBC4 used for a daily 8pm "round-up", immediately following Clare Balding's 7pm "highlights" on BBC2).

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Well the BBC is now restricted to just one TV channel and one red button stream as part of the (poor) deal with Eurosport.

 

Really think (and hope) Eurosport make a huge loss on all this - obvious they were more interested in profitting from the rights than establishing themselves as THE Olympic broadcaster, and it's all been very last minute and low key for them.  Today they've announced you can subscribe to the Eurosport Player for just 99p for the games - just not understanding their business model at all.   I'm convinced the IOC would have made much more by selling directly to the PSBs (full rights, though non-exclusive) and then as they used to letting Eurosport pay for the pay-TV rights on top.

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When I go to the NBC site, there is this counter at the corner saying "Your access to LIVE streams and full replays will expire in 28 minutes:23Secs"?

Are people like myself going to have this same limit the day of the Opening Ceremony? Or is it just for other events?

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10 minutes ago, BTHarner said:

You are allowed 30 minutes without authentication on your first visit and five minutes on all subsequent visits.

I'm pleased to say that I had a flawless streaming experience tonight in contrast to Rio which was pure torture.

Ditto.  I had 4 streams up for most of the curling.  No issues to speak of.  Downhill training has been flawless (save for NBC inserting ads, but aside from that, video quality is excellent)..

26869880_1951552465172867_71762594423950

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9 hours ago, Brekkie Boy said:

the BBC is now restricted to just one TV channel and one red button stream as part of the (poor) deal with Eurosport.

I don't think it's such a bad idea. Without massively disrupting schedules, the BBC can't offer more Olympic broadcast channels to viewers without satellite or cable, except by streaming (iPlayer is very adaptable for different broadband qualities).

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18 hours ago, Quaker2001 said:

Ditto.  I had 4 streams up for most of the curling.  No issues to speak of.  Downhill training has been flawless (save for NBC inserting ads, but aside from that, video quality is excellent)..

26869880_1951552465172867_71762594423950

I don't know which is more impressive, your viewing setup or your view out that window. 

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19 hours ago, Quaker2001 said:

Ditto.  I had 4 streams up for most of the curling.  No issues to speak of.  Downhill training has been flawless (save for NBC inserting ads, but aside from that, video quality is excellent)..

26869880_1951552465172867_71762594423950

Man I envy you, Quaker, right now. Wish I had THAT kind of set-up. Alas, I won't again this time. So, who's recording things right now around the world since yesterday?

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Eurosport really dropping the ball on this one - not only has the Eurosport Player disappeared off many devices since these rights were won their parents battle with Sky last year means none of their extra channels are being broadcast on any Sky platform across Europe and in Italy even Eurosport 1 & 2 have been pulled by Sky at the last minute and replaced by a version (from Russia I think) not screening the Olympics.

http://www.a516digital.com/2018/02/eurosport-confirms-winter-olympic-pop.html

 

And a good general overview of the rights situation:

http://deadline.com/2018/02/eurosport-international-broadcasters-kick-off-transformative-2018-winter-olympics-1202280408/

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55 minutes ago, Barcelona_'92 said:

First night of primetime on NBC & NBCSN combined was down only 6% from 2014.  That’s a pretty big win overall for NBC compared to how much everything else on TV has been down as of late.  7 of the top 10 markets were in the Mountain and Pacific time zones.

Where are you seeing that?  Not doubting you, but figured you got that from NBC's press site and it's not there

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2 minutes ago, Quaker2001 said:

Yeah, the NBC-only and 18-49 demo numbers aren’t great, but the viewership on NBCSN really helped.  Of course, the media will spin this as ratings being down significantly, but overall, almost as many people watched the Olympics last night as on the first night of Sochi.  And when you factor in that the coverage in the Pacific time zone started at 5pm instead of 8pm, I think that’s pretty impressive overall.

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On ‎2‎/‎9‎/‎2018 at 10:40 AM, Quaker2001 said:

All of TV has seen a drop in viewership over the last 4 years, including now the NFL.  So if NBC is on par with that relative to 4 years ago, I think they can claim this as a win.

Last night's NBC + NBCSN viewership tied the first night of the Sochi Games.  The 18-49 viewership is down quite a bit, but this is still a big win for NBC.  The viewership for the opening ceremony was higher than all but one of the primetime regular-season NFL games this year, plus the NBA Finals and most of the World Series.  I'm a bit annoyed with the media outlets focusing only on the linear NBC numbers and reporting "significant drops" for this year's Games, when the reality is that almost as many people are watching Olympic coverage in primetime this year as there were in 2014.

Overall, I think the coverage has been quite good so far.  My only major complaint is that the extra 30 minutes of primetime in the Mountain and Pacific time zones was not available to me last night in the Central time zone.  I don't understand why this coverage can't be shown on NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app for those who want to watch.  It's stupid when they're streaming and archiving all other coverage.

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