
Live From Paris 2024: Sky New Zealand's Focus on ENG Ensures Signal Transport to Auckland Is Spot On The broadcaster offers 12 pay channels and a free-to-air channel By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Sunday, August 4, 2024 - 10:44 am
Print This Story
Sky New Zealand has a small team in Paris, but, much like its team of 95 athletes (from a country with only 5 million people), it is punching above its weight when it comes to creating content in Paris and producing content at home in Auckland.
For its third Summer Games as a rightsholder, the broadcaster is offering 12 channels of Olympics as a pay service and one free-to-air channel.
The free-to-air channel is the best of the best, says Andrew Hawthorn, major events producer, Sky. We put all the New Zealand stuff and the best of everything else there, along with a studio show. The other 12 channels are basically taking the MDS service from OBS English commentary; we reduce that from 16 channels to 12 with the most appropriate content we can find.
Sky New Zealand's Andrew Hawthorn says the production team in Paris is supplementing the OBS MDS service with interviews and other content captured by ENG crews.
All the cutting down and production work takes place in Auckland. The control room in New Zealand has EVS and is turning stuff around and augmenting the coverage, Hawthorn explains. We have a massive room that we call our Games control room, which looks after the 12-channel service, marrying up the feeds so they are on the appropriate channel.
The main job of the production team in Paris is to supplement the MDS with content that might not be sent down those lines. All the equipment Sky New Zealand has in Paris is its own gear, shipped over from New Zealand.
ENG is a big part of the effort. The crew relies on LiveU for most transmission, but, for mixed-zone interviews, the units plug into available internet pipes for reliable and steady transport.
We will cover things, such as qualifying events, that are not being carried, he adds. We have six unilateral lines for sending feeds, and the commentary is done in New Zealand. On top of that, we have six ENG crews, and our main operation here is to get those six ENG crews to the appropriate venues for interviews.
An editor in Paris handles mixed-zone cut-downs or feature stories that add color and atmosphere to the production. Notes Hawthorn, We're trying to capture the essence of Paris with stories that show what it is like to be here at the Games.
For the New Zealand audience, the most popular events are, first, the Rugby Sevens, followed by rowing, kayaking, and, this year, the triathlon.
We step up for the Olympics and generally out-punch our weight, says Hawthorn. We got 20 medals in Tokyo, which was a good haul for a country our size. I think we're going to do quite well this time. We have some hopes we are going to start getting some medals for the public back home.
Viewer feedback on coverage has been positive so far, and the Sky New Zealand service has seen a lot of uptake. We're seeing a lot of interest and some really good ratings, he says, even though it can be hard when you're in an opposite time zone.
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
07/10/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, today announced the latest Long-Term Supported (LTS) release of Dalet Flex. Build...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
16/07/2026
Media organisations with tested plans for new products, services or revenue models can now apply for grants of up to 30,000 through the Business Innovation Syn...
16/07/2026
This recent graduate and Georgia native has turned an early fascination with live production into a growing passion for camera work
In the live-sports-video in...
16/07/2026
TNDV is marking the first anniversary of Aspiration 35, a mobile production truck built around ARRI Alexa 35 Live camera systems. Over its first year, the truck...
16/07/2026
ATSC has completed a major revision to its A/85 Recommended Practice: Techniques...
16/07/2026
FloSports has announced an exclusive global media partnership with CrossFit for the 2026 CrossFit Games, presented by Air National Guard, beginning July 21 in S...
16/07/2026
Sennheiser has released firmware version 1.4 for its Spectera wireless system and announced the Spectera Command Button (Cat. No. 701014). The update adds comma...
16/07/2026
ESPN and the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) have announced a multi-year...
16/07/2026
Audio-Technica has announced the 20 Series Control Application, a Stream Deck plug-in for compatible Audio-Technica USB microphones. The application is compatib...
16/07/2026
The fifteenth season of The Voice - La plus belle voix on TF1 used four Solid St...
16/07/2026
Gray Media and the Atlanta Hawks have announced a broadcast partnership that wil...
16/07/2026
Season 3 of Netflix's docuseries, which dropped this week, follows Jayden Da...
16/07/2026
The Texas Rangers and Rangers Sports Network presented by Progressive (RSN) have announced BZZR as the new direct-to-consumer distributor for Rangers game broad...
16/07/2026
With England's FIFA World Cup 2026 team getting ready to fly home after losi...
16/07/2026
In a return to Royal Birkdale, the team enjoys partnering with ETP and Gravity M...
16/07/2026
Along with a new studio at Ball Arena, the Colorado-based RSN is working with XR...
16/07/2026
Austria was back at the World Cup for the first time in 28 years, and the team d...
16/07/2026
With 42 RF cameras and high-power radio mics deployed, the spectrum environment ...
16/07/2026
A new benchmark in bass enhancement
Described as a new benchmark in bass enhancement , Baby Audio's latest release has been designed to augment the lo...
16/07/2026
Popular library rebuilt in new Orbita Engine
Other Worlds Evolved is the latest of Zero G's sample libraries to be treated to a ground-up rebuild using ...
16/07/2026
Created in collaboration with A. G. Cook
The newest addition to Native Instruments' software collection introduces a new synth created by A. G. Cook, a ...
16/07/2026
NITV and SBS bring Australians to the heart of Garma
16 July, 2026
Media releases
The Garma Festival returns from 31 July-3 August, with NITV and SBS deliv...
16/07/2026
Rohde & Schwarz supplies conformance test systems to Marquistech for India's...
16/07/2026
June brought stabilization to the television market. Poles spent an average of 3 hours and 36 minutes a day in front of their TV screens exactly the same as i...
16/07/2026
Glensound returns to IBC with a major new addition to its intelligent loudspeaker range, the Greater Divine Supernal studio monitor, alongside recent developmen...
16/07/2026
33 leading exhibitors are taking part in the GREAT Britain and Northern Ireland Pavilions and linked locations across IBC2026 (Amsterdam RAI, 11 14 September)...
16/07/2026
Hitomi Broadcast will introduce Spectra, a new HDR colour verification solution measured in picture, not using VPID, at IBC2026 (Hall 10, Stand A40). Expanding ...
16/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
16/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
16/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
16/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
16/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
16/07/2026
Zixi, a leader in live video delivery and workflow orchestration, and Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS) today announced a strategic new integration to deliver ...
16/07/2026
Blackmagic Design Cameras Capture Immersive Flight for New Cirrus App
Brie Clayton July 15, 2026
0 Comments
Leader in Personal Aviation taps URSA Cin...
16/07/2026
XenData Announces LTO Archive Appliances with both File and S3 Object Storage In...
16/07/2026
Modern broadcast facilities are no longer confined to a single control room. Production teams are spread across multiple workstations, machine rooms, studios, c...
16/07/2026
Fox Corporation Executives to Discuss Fourth Quarter and Full Fiscal Year 2026 F...
16/07/2026
More interfaces now compatible with Focusrite Control 2 Your Focusrite interface might now be compatible with a public beta support of Focusrite Control 2. If...
16/07/2026
Onimusha: Way of the Sword is coming to GeForce NOW at launch, with the playable...
16/07/2026
Together the semi-finals had a combined reach of 1.98 million unique individuals...
15/07/2026
The 2026 FIFA World Cup is a big deal for DAZN, which has distribution rights in three markets: Italy, Spain, and Japan. Each requires a different editorial app...
15/07/2026
As sports-media organizations manage rapidly growing content libraries and incre...
15/07/2026
HBS director of digital Johannes Franken talks SVG Europe through the operation built to serve FIFA World Cup 2026 rights holders remotely from Stratford, east ...
15/07/2026
IBC has unveiled the conference program for IBC2026, with this year's event ...
15/07/2026
Software-defined wideband RF platform supports 96-kHz monitoring, streamlined fr...
15/07/2026
New AI-powered module enables broadcasters and content owners to extract dialogu...
15/07/2026
Weeklong gathering at EBU headquarters will test new IPMX capabilities and expand certified product ecosystem...