Some More Olympic Tv Updates

[Durban Sandshark]

Thanks for that. I must admit I'm very ignorant of Olympic TV coverage in Africa (and how it's done) excluding South Africa.

RTM, I presume it'll be either RTM1 and RTM2, will offer over-the-air coverage to Malaysians with ASTRO being the more comprehensive.

Channel 3 in Iran, a popular and widely-viewed youth-oriented channel due in large part to its large amounts of sports programming that appeals to that demographic, will air Beijing 2008.

Latvia will have LTV7 cover the Beijing Olympics.

[Durban Sandshark]

Olympian08, I'm always curious how many African nations--excluding Supersport and SABC from South Africa--cover the summer Olympics over the years and now these days and how comprehensive is it (and of each network), since info can be hard to come by?

Is Israel going to have Channel 10 and Sport 5 broadcast Beijing 2008 and how many hours? Certainly now that Israel has earned its first ever gold medal in Athens, interest and coverage will be even greater.

On our tax day, April 15, Singaporeans will have Eurosport as the newest member under the ever-popular StarHub Sports roster umbrella, and that means possibly and officially greater coverage of the Olympics. I wish we Americans and Canadians had something like that for those who are genuinely interested in international sports that don't get the regular and consistent coverage here like handball. Will ESPN have an ESPN International for us?

I wish Wikipedia, where I get the info on what networks will cover the summer Olympics would mention for Australia that SBS is covering it with Seven; Brazil with ESPN Brasil, Band TV, BandSports, SporTV (not on its diagram, though); and Japan with TBS, Fuji TV, TV Asahsi(?) along with NHK.

[olympics08]

About Africa, what I only know is that the Eritean state TV, Eri-TV, will cover for Eritea. No word about their broadcast.

No word for Israel, either.

As for the US, NBC and its networks will exclusively air the Beijing Games. No other network.

Don't worry! Their article about the Seven Network has that! Wikipedia's article about the Beijing Olympics also mention's Brazil (on the left). That article only mentions NHK, but I'm sure TBS, Fuji TV, TV Asahi (that's the right spelling), NTV and TV Tokyo would broadcast too.

[Durban Sandshark]

MTV, no, not the MTV we all know, but Magyar Televizio, who is currently suing MTV Hungary for trademark infringement, of course will broadcast the Games for Hungarians--both M1 and M2 with possibly a sports channel.

I did notice that SBS was going to air them from Wikipedia. But it's just not mentioned under the generic Beijing 2008 subject.

Hong Kong has ATV and TVB doing it once again, I think, for the last time. I wonder how Hong Kong does their Olympic coverage? Does it go in both Chinese and English--like ATV Pearl and ATV Jade? What sports does it show--surely table tennis, gymnastics, sailing, badminton, judo, soccer, athletics, basketball?

Since NBC has the US rights, USA, CNBC, MSNBC, Telemundo, and Oxygen all don't have to be mentioned but could.

[Durban Sandshark]

Guess I'll beat Olympian08 for this one.

It was announced the other day in Manila through a lavish Chinese-inspired ceremony featuring numerous Filipino Olympians like Christine Jacobs and Chinese dancers that Solar Entertainment in The Philippines will broadcast the Beijing Olympics over 5 channels: Basketball will earn the most comprehensive coverage in the Olympics through Basketball TV, which isn't a surprise when you consider the longstanding love affair Filipinos have for basketball. Female-dominated sports like beach volleyball, gymnastics, and equestrian will be carried by ETC and 2nd Ave. All events involving Fillipino Olympians will head towards RPN-9. Solar Sports is tagged as the anchor Olympic channel and will cover them every day from the opening and closing ceremonies.

Live video coverage plus free access to behind-the-scene footage, news, results, and medal tally will be offered.

The sum to pay for the Philippines' TV rights to Beijing 2008 wasn't disclosed--surely a hefty sum by Filipino standards

[Durban Sandshark]

ASTRO in Malaysia plans to, in their latest details in their coverage announced Saturday or Friday, have 10 dedicated interactive channels pertaining to the 2008 Beijing Olympics that will allow for more interactive fun like statistics, medal tally, rolling highlights, chat box, and tactical feeds all courtesy of a mosiac channel.

Germany has been relatively quiet on their Olympia 2008 coverage for ARD and ZDF, surely among Europe's largest TV networks, so far, which we know will air them for the German public and will include their sister digital TV networks. Beijing 2008 Olympia will be the start of ZDF's ambitious expanding HDTV switch in all its programming starting this year. ARD has yet to get on board but is likely to do so through talks with ZDF. ZDF meanwhile has hooked up with TV1.de in Munich with plans to stream live simulcasts of both EURO 2008 and Beijing 2008 at ZDF Mediathek. But regrettably it will only be available in areas where ZDF has the rights to. This serves as ZDF's biggest project of its kind. Look for close to 3200 hours between ZDF and ARD.

Schweizer Fernsehen, Television Suisse Romande, and TRSI have yet to announce their Olympic TV coverage plans for Switzerland, as far as I know.

[olympics08]

Guess I'll beat Olympian08 for this one.

It was announced the other day in Manila through a lavish Chinese-inspired ceremony featuring numerous Filipino Olympians like Christine Jacobs and Chinese dancers that Solar Entertainment in The Philippines will broadcast the Beijing Olympics over 5 channels: Basketball will earn the most comprehensive coverage in the Olympics through Basketball TV, which isn't a surprise when you consider the longstanding love affair Filipinos have for basketball. Female-dominated sports like beach volleyball, gymnastics, and equestrian will be carried by ETC and 2nd Ave. All events involving Fillipino Olympians will head towards RPN-9. Solar Sports is tagged as the anchor Olympic channel and will cover them every day from the opening and closing ceremonies.

Live video coverage plus free access to behind-the-scene footage, news, results, and medal tally will be offered.

The sum to pay for the Philippines' TV rights to Beijing 2008 wasn't disclosed--surely a hefty sum by Filipino standards

Oh my!

You know, as I told you, the channels of Solar Entertainment were pulled from my cable system with effect from January 1, 2008. That's sad for me, but only Solar Sports, Basketball TV and the comedy channel Jack TV were pulled off. The other three channels were consigned to free-to-air television. I'm happy to accept that news, Durban Sandshark!

The Solar channels on terrestrial TV were still on my cable system! These are, with their owners and over-the-air frequencies in the Greater Manila Area where I am located:

RPN-9 (Channel 9): State-owned, operated by Solar under contract. It broadcasts series, factual shows and movies mostly of a criminal or suspensful nature. Airs news too, as "NewsWatch" at 17:30 and 23:00 and "One Morning" (06:00-08:00, simulcast on the two other state owned networks, National Broadcasting Network and Intercontinental Broadcasting Corperation and also on the state-owned Philippine Broadcasting Service radio network.). I can sense you live in the US. Do you watch NBC Nightly News? RPN-9 also airs that before the 17:30 NewsWatch and after the 23:00 NewsWatch. There are also NewsWatch updates during the primetime. Their sports attraction is live NBA games on weekends. This will be RPN-9's return to Olympic broadcasting after it aired three Olympics (Munich, Montreal, Los Angeles).

ETC (Channel 21): Entertainment channel. Owned by the Southern \Broadcasting Network and operated by Solar under contract.

2nd Avenue (Channel 29): The 2nd Ave. you said. Entertainment channel of an urbanist nature. Also home to the Today Show (NBC) that I'm sure you watch in the morning there. It also airs in the morning in our time zone. It also airs a locally-produced talk show and a locally-produced music show. Owned by the Rajah Broadcasting Network and operated by Solar under contract.

So.. I'm satisfied now...

[Durban Sandshark]

Glad you're satisfied, Olympian08! Here's the article describing the info to show that I'm not bluffing Did I mention that it's all live too?:

Solar Entertainment to Bring the 2008 Beijing Olympics to The Philippines

Since you mentioned about NBC shows on the Solar Entertainment like NBC's Today show, more updates about Solar Sports' plans has come up and must be mentioned and clarified: it will use both the IOC world and NBC's feeds, all the basketball games on Basketball TV will be both men and women with behind-the scene footage and warmup tourneys, and 2ND Avenue will actually deal with next-gen sports like BMX cycling. Solar Sports will send a local crew to zero in on the Filipino athletes--two track and field athletes are expected to join the Olympic team with qualification spots for various sports up for grabs. Coverage will total up to 300 hours altogether--widespread and complete as it moves to wireless platforms, internet, and high-tech media.

Digital Rapids was selected by NBC to enable its live streaming online coverage of the Beijing Olympics powered by Microsoft's Silverlight.

Digital Rapids To Enable NBC's Live Streaming

[Durban Sandshark]

Some tech stuff here: NBC's Olympic plans for Beijing, particularly with Omega with Bluefin audio recording consoles at just about every venue equipped with 5.1 HD stereo audio.

NBC Olympic Plans For 5.1 HD Stereo Audio

QuStream was selected by NBC to provide its router system for its coverage.

[Durban Sandshark]

We're now getting more details regarding NBC's HDTV Olympic plans, its most important hi-def sports plan ever. BOB, overseeing the broadcasting production, will not even have a single standard-definition camera position; instead there will 1000 HD cameras and 300 HD mobile units with fiber-optic capabilities linked to all of the venues. It was 399 hours of HDTV from Athens and 303 from Torino, now it will deliver 756 hours spread from NBC HD, USA HD, and Universal HD for Beijing with many of the events broadcast live in primetime and can certainly make an innovative impact on its broadband online video, where the bulk of the 3600 hours of NBC's coverage will include niche-sports (to us Americans) that typically can't garner the Neilsen for broadcast and cable delivery and interest, yet still be easily accessible and offered for folks.

NHK in Japan will broadcast their portion of the Beijing Olympics TV schedule as a member of the NHK/NAB consortium by showing both the Opening and Closing Ceremonies (to which it has major priority), judo, gymnastics, swimming, women's wrestling (since Soari Yoshida is a gold-medal contender), and men's marathon all on its digital terrestial channel. Schedule, to which it will be closely coordinated with NAB as the qualifying results and team sports' draw are finalized, will be announced in June at the earliest. All of the events from Beijing 2008 in Japan will be on HDTV on NHK. It has also selcted the band Mr. Children for NHK's Olympic theme music.

France Televisions recently made public their Olympic broadcasting plans with 400 hours of TV coverage all assembled among France 2, France 3, and France 4 with a staff of 400 people working on it. Gerard Holtz, Isabelle Severino, Virginie Coupery-Clerc, Jean-Francois Lamour, Fabien Galthie, Marie-Claire Restoux, and Guy Caltier will present the show for the French.

[olympics08]

Now, ladies and gentlemen, ABS-CBN has lost the bid for the Philippine Olympic rights. As our consolation to them, we have this:

These are snapshot of the ident (station identification) of ABS-CBN's main network in the mid-1990s. I am now asking those who commented (all were Filipinos) for theie ident for the Barcelona Olympics which they covered.

When I was little, I was frieghtened by the visuel effects that came with this world class ident, winner of the Philippines' first medal at the New York Broadcasting Festival.

And now, I'll show to you the full ident! Oops, I forgot to tell you that the sophisticated visual effects of this ident is all thanks to the first edition of the Flash Player which was used by ABS-CBN to make it

Enjoy!

[olympics08]

What do you think, huh? Impressive, isn't it?

[Durban Sandshark]

Doordarshan, India's national TV network, is going to cover the games for India, but unlike a lot of nations, the HDTV Olympic race is not going to be an option, despite being a rising economic power. Doordarshan's HDTV plans will start two years later starting when India hosts the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi. It is not known how many hours it will cover on DDR's Sport Channel and possibly DDR's All-India channels itself as of now.

Look for TVNZ Sport Extra to get themselves involved for NZ's coverage, where right now there have been no plans for coverage until then for the temporary sports channel.

Now we know how many HDTV Olympic hours NBC will cover for Beijing, I redid the tabulations for it and saw how it compared to Athens. 756 HDTV hours is of course far more than the 399 hours used in Athens out of the 1210 hours in total. But for the first time, the number of HDTV hours is more than what will be shown on standard analog TV when 756 hours is subtracted from 1400, leaving with 644. But considering the US will make the switch to digital TV come February 17, 2009, it's understandable why there should be more HD hours. But 644 standard hours are still far more than the number of past US Olympic telecasts leading up to Sydney totalling at 442 (NBC/MSNBC/CNBC's Sydney coverage was actually 441.5 but I round them up to the nearest hour) but still less than Athens at 811 hours--a 188 hour difference (I thought it was around 778). We know that Oxygen will get 20 hours during Olympic weekdays, and I presume a premuim will be placed on US athletes and teams with the reduced standard TV hours in NBC's Olympic family coverage. Surely every Olympic sport will earn a looky, just not as much on TV with some niche-sports (to us). What will be shown on NBC's HDTV networks that won't be on standard? Any guesses? When I exclude the HDTV simulcasts from 1400 hours and added the 644 onto the 2200 hours that will be live broadband and will all be a part of the on-demand stuff, it's all 2844 from the approximately 3000 hours to be had? What's going to be the missing stuff that'll make up the rest? Daily Olympic news, extended interviews, analysis?

[Durban Sandshark]

644 hours, BTW, is still lots more than a lot of other nations' Olympic TV plans.

How will RAI Sport get involved in Italy with RAI Dua?

[Durban Sandshark]

TRT, I presume, will deal with the Turkish rights to the Olympics with a lot of sports footage over at TRT 3. I can perhaps assume another channel will hook up with TRT for supplemental stuff. I'll get more into this later.

Rav3n, how does Venezuela's networks like Meridiano, Venevision, and TVes (before them, maybe RCTV?) deal with the Olympic coverage over the years? And what do you expect from them in this outing? Any insights?

I would like to get some insights into Russia's Olympic TV coverage if someone is interested in putting their thoughts.

[Durban Sandshark]

TRT will officially take care of the Turkish Olympic TV broadcast as expected.

Wikipedia now has mentioned on its Beijing 2008 general entry with their international broadcaster listing SBS for Australia next to the Seven Network and USA, MSNBC, CNBC, and Universal HD for the United States with NBC (although all are part of the NBC Universal family).

Since Athens, Denmark's TV2 bought the Danish version of Viasat Sport 1 with Modern Times Group and renaming it TV2 Viasport while creating TV 2 Sport Xtra, its HD sister channel that will undoubtably show the Games on the HD format. This means there would be not as much coverage of the Olympics on TV 2 Zulu like it was in Athens (and less sport in general on it).

Back down under in Australia, Kerry Stokes' Seven Network recently racked up strong advertisers (four corporate partners and sold 9 out of 10 sponsorships) for its final coverage of the Olympics in its prime slots. You can expect the usual suspects to be on board. The final sponsor may be added by the time you read the following.

Brisbane Times: Seven's Olympic 2008 Advertising Package Almost Full

Video-server and supplier Omneon was chosen to provide NBC Olympics' video transport of its live streaming and on-demand coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, announced at the 2008 NAB Show.

Omneon Snags NBC Olympic Video-Server Deal

Because of the following, I had to make a readjustment of the NBC allocation of the 3600 Olympic hours this year. Take away the 2200 Internet hours and you have of course 1400. 756 HD hours are eliminated so now there's 644 for NBC, USA, MSNBC, CNBC, Oxygen, and Telemundo. I forgot to omit the 64 hours of NBC's encore presentation of its 4-hour primetime coverage for 16 days. So that's actually 584 hours--564 without Oxygen's 20. I'll delve more into it tomorrow, but I would like to notify you of some new info I found last week online (I forgot where at this writing) regarding the internet coverage revealed at the NAB Show following the announcement of Omneon:

--300-400+ hours of highlights, encore presentations, features, interviews, and rewinds from essentially NBC's TV broadcast (not counting Telemundo) will be added with the 2200 hours already online

--40 online standard streams and 1 HD stream in China

--2 standard and 5 HD channels in the US

When an Olympic event isn't scheduled live for US, it will get shown in progress, as the announcer would indicate. Hopefully that will change with on-demand footage, when you'll see the events in their entireties instead of bouncing around as it supposed to be up to around 3000 hours. If it goes up to 2800 hours, still far and away a lot more than what is already announced worldwide, what will make up the 200 hours? No commercial breaks or lengthy intermissions for sure. Unless there's a language audio option, I doubt seriously Spanish, French, Chinese, and Korean options will be made available. Like to see that though. How about a daily highlight Olympic news and anaylsis show online too?

Speaking of which, will ZDF air the 2008 installment of its late night TV show for Beijing featuring Johannes B. Kerner?

[NY20??]

Is there any word on when NBC will release its complete schedule?

[mattperiolat]

Is there any word on when NBC will release its complete schedule?

I'm also wondering when broadcasts of the Olympic Trials will begin. I remember for Sydney they started as early as February.

[Durban Sandshark]

Is there any word on when NBC will release its complete schedule?

Expect the NBC complete Olympic schedule sometime by June or July. It's still early days in that.

[Durban Sandshark]

A dat late perhaps, but here's my projected revised breakdown of how the NBC networks will cover the Beijing 2008 Olympics. We now know that Bravo won't be a part of it this time:

NBC: both opening and closing ceremonies, swimming, track and field, rowing, diving, gymnastics (artistic, rhythmic, and trampoline), baseball, basketball, softball, soccer, cycling, beach volleyball, volleyball, boxing, equestrian, synchronized swimming, water polo, triathlon, wrestling, judo, tennis, weightlifting, canoeing/kayaking

USA: basketball, water polo, baseball, field hockey (if US women qualifies), softball, tennis, cycling, equestrian, canoeing/kayaking, volleyball

MSNBC; soccer, archery, baseball, cycling, canoeing/kayaking, basketball, volleyball, softball, water polo, weightlifting, wrestling, table tennis, taekwondo, team handball, track & field, rowing, modern pentathalon, badminton, fencing, field hockey

CNBC: boxing, basketball, beach volleyball, shooting, wrestling, water polo, sailing, handball, weightlifting, fencing, badminton,

Oxygen: gymnastics, equestrian, beach volleyball, synchronized swimming, women's tennis (mainly analysis and interviews)

Telemundo: soccer, boxing, baseball, basketball, volleyball, swimming, track and field, beach volleyball

Again, I do think that every sport will make an appearance in NBC's telecast, some more so than others. Because Bravo is no longer a part of the coverage, much of the stuff that it aired in Athens will now move towards the online coverage. And because of the fact that there will be less coverage on standard TV than HD starting with this Olympiad with all of the coveragein all platforms assembled, I presume again there will be less international coverage (that is, non-US involvement in the event except for medal rounds) with NBC.

Ireland's RTE provided approximately 250 hours of coverage in Athens four years ago. Expect more hours for Beijing either online or digital TV coverage.

STV in Slovakia will have STV Sport, its third channel, make its debut on August 8 ahead of the Beijing Olympics. It already holds Slovakia's Formula 1 TV rights. Czech Republic will have CT2 (Ceske Televize) air the Olympics with strong help from for the first time since its inception in 2006, CT4 Sport and possibly CT24.

To clarify Serbia's RTS, both RTS1 and RTS2 that will cover the Beijing Olympics...and it will be on HDTV, implemented this month, becoming the first television network in Serbia to do so.

I finally did see TV ONE's Olympic logo

[mattygs]

The new TV One New Zealand logo watermark featuring on all promotions and at the top corner of the screen now.

The actual TV One logo has not really changed too much over the lats 10 or so years.

[Durban Sandshark]

Vietnamese athletes may not be serious Olympic medal contenders, but VTV in Vietnam will cover them all when it airs Beijing 2008. I wonder how many hours will it carry this time and what it had in the past. Surely there's bound to be an increase. Expect it to be on VTV1 and VTV3, the latter being the sports and entertainment channel.

[AmaniS]

TRT will officially take care of the Turkish Olympic TV broadcast as expected.

Awww man, they took off TRT a few years ago. Damn Bayerns

[james]

This is the area I usually disagree with the west as the Olympic media is monopolized by them. It's surprising to know that there's none of these media that buy into the games is from Africa. This goes tto explain how these rich countries make things suitable for themselves.

How can the poor partake in the viewing of the events on tv without their tv media participating? The huge money involed will keep on separating the poor countries from the rich ones in this regard. Sport entertainment is meant for all humans.

The IOC has to find an avenue to regulate the media involved in the Olympic to meet poorer countries demand cos we are part of this earth we all live in! We in the third world have been neglected for too long!

If for example the Nigeria Television Network(NTA) through the Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria(BON) can pay part of the amount it's met it should be allowed to participate in the games but, the amount involved in Olympic media is too huge that it's been monopolized by the rich only. We have to put an end to this. On the other hand, if the rich countries media could offer poor countries free views or substantial amount to hook up then we are given a chance. I am not seeing that happen yet not untill IOC come in.

I have been thinking about how we in the third world has been marginalized in so many areas that would be of good interest to us.

To conclude it all we are tired of accepting everything with equanimity. It's time we start to complain to these rich countries cos they are in power to make the change as it's impossible when we tried. This type of changes has to come from the rich countries not the poor ones which are facing the plights.

Thank you!

[micheal_warren]

The new TV One New Zealand logo watermark featuring on all promotions and at the top corner of the screen now.

The actual TV One logo has not really changed too much over the lats 10 or so years.

Its plain and simple! But I like it