NBC Covers Olympic Boxing: With a Little Technical Slight of Hand!

Several people have asked technical and production questions regarding our Olympic venue, on which NBC affiliated network our shows air (CNBC), and other behind the scenes TV tidbits about how the sports are covered, so here’s the skinny:

In terms of event coverage (not including news), basically there are two sets of broadcasters working in Beijing, the Host Broadcasters (the world feed known as BOB) and NBC. While NBC has paid a pagoda full of cash for the right to broadcast the games back to the US, the Host Broadcasters are charged with providing TV coverage for everyone else.

What the NBC folks have done is rank their Olympic venues on an A, B, C scale, divided up their assets and augmented coverage at the smaller venues with these BOB video feeds.

At our venue, we’re ranked a “C” with a small, but mighty crew of 30. (Track & Field has a crew of 100.) At the Worker's Indoor Arena NBC has three dedicated cameras, one shoots reporter Jim Gray in the interview area, another shoots the “play-by-play and analyst/former boxer” at the desk ringside, while the third (the one I’m manning) shoots Anchor Fred Rogan in a small “booth” perched in the upper deck of the arena. Those cameras are connected to a whole separate (and portable) HDTV control room that has been built outside in the parking lot of the Arena right next to the BOB broadcasters.

Simultaneously to our coverage, the BOB feed has nine cameras covering every one of the 286 boxing matches, so what our NBC production team has done is to structure their CNBC shows to seamlessly shoot our anchors and then to “cut” to the world feed of all of the actual boxing matches. But like much of what’s on TV it’s really a constructed reality. At home, it looks to you like NBC is “covering” boxing, and technically we are, but not without a little technical slight of hand.

Hope this helps!