
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
09/11/2025
Dalet today announced a transformative leap forward for media operations: Agentic Artificial Intelligence (AI) that unifies the Dalet ecosystem under one natura...
07/11/2025
PARIS Ateme said it has been working with Spain-based multinational telco Telef nica to deploy a cloud-native media processing platform for next-generation vide...
07/11/2025
The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers has announced it will hold its annual meeting on Wednesday, Dec. 10, via a Zoom webinar at 11 a.m. ET....
07/11/2025
NEW YORK The Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) and TVB have released a study examining how local viewing is measured across television, mobile d...
07/11/2025
LONG ISLAND CITY, N.Y. Altice USA announced it will change its corporate name to Optimum Communications Inc., effective Nov. 7. The company will cease trading u...
07/11/2025
07 11 2025 - Media release Screen Australia announces Gillian Moody-Ardler as Head of First Nations Content
Gillian Moody-Ardler. Photo credit: Sally Flegg. ...
06/11/2025
Media organisations from across the globe are uniting to promote media and information literacy (MIL) to help ensure their future survival and win back the trus...
06/11/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Athlos NYC CEO Kayla Green on Building the Brand of the Young Trac...
06/11/2025
ESPN Exits ESPN BET Deal With PENN, Goes Into Business With DraftKingsDraftKings will integrate innovative fan experiences' across ESPN platforms and DTC s...
06/11/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Voyage Audio's Colin Ritchie on How the Spatial M...
06/11/2025
Ben Whishaw at the premiere of Peter Hujar's Day (photo by Robin Marshall / Shutterstock for Sundance Film Festival)
By Bailey Pennick
The premise is si...
06/11/2025
At Spotify, we're always finding new ways to bring you closer to the music that moves you, turning sound into something personal. From the playlists that ma...
06/11/2025
O mundo est ouvindo a Am rica Latina. Os artistas da regi o est o constantement...
06/11/2025
The world is listening to Latin America. The region's artists are consistent...
06/11/2025
El mundo est escuchando a Latinoam rica. Los artistas de la regi n marcan const...
06/11/2025
After nine months of fiscal year 2025, SGL Carbon generated sales of 652.9 million, down 16.5% on the previous year (9M 2024: 781.9 million). This is attribut...
06/11/2025
Contact information:
Miriam Johnson, Website Lead, Fotoware Group
miriam.johnson@fotoware.com
Oslo, October 2025: As part of our brand unification, the Pic...
06/11/2025
Calrec's 36-fader Argo M in Steiger Media's newly equipped OB truck parked outside the venue will showcase a live remote workflow connected to the Calre...
06/11/2025
With nearly 50% of streamers willing to cancel a service based on difficulty fin...
06/11/2025
BRISTOL, Conn., and BOSTON ESPN and DraftKings today announced an agreement naming DraftKings the sports programmer's exclusive official sportsbook and odds...
06/11/2025
MELVILLE, N.Y. Canon USA has launched the CR-N400 and CR-N350, two new Pan-Tilt-Zoom (PTZ) cameras designed to deliver high image quality, versatile connectivit...
06/11/2025
NEW YORK Fox Sports said its coverage of the Los Angeles Dodgers' win over the Toronto Blue Jays in the decisive Game 7 of the 2025 World Series delivered 2...
06/11/2025
NEW YORK DoubleVerify and Roku, Inc. are reporting that they have seen a marked reduction in fraudulent ad requests imitating Roku device traffic across the s...
06/11/2025
CAMBRIDGE, England Faced with rising inflation and worries that the economy is weakening, consumers are prioritizing their spending on popular streaming service...
06/11/2025
STAMFORD, Conn. NBC Sports is mounting mics in unconventional places to bring the sounds of NASCAR into the living rooms of sports fans....
06/11/2025
BRANSON, Mo. Link Electronics has partnered with Aberdeen Broadcast Services to provide a real-time, dual-stream translation and captioning service....
06/11/2025
Venture will deploy and commercialize Level-4 autonomous driving technologies
P...
06/11/2025
Strategic execution and operational optimization lay foundation for sustainable growth
Space Services returns to growth following Thuraya-4 start of operations...
06/11/2025
06 Nov 2025
VEON Appoints Sebastian Rice as General Counsel Vitaly Shmakov promoted to the newly created Chief Investment Officer role
Dubai, November 6, 2025...
06/11/2025
Telos Alliance Partners to Showcase Professional Audio Processing and Next-Gen ...
06/11/2025
The prequel to the Sky Original mob crime saga is a six-part drama tracking the ...
06/11/2025
The six-part drama, set in a close-knit Welsh town fractured by an unspeakable c...
06/11/2025
Rohde & Schwarz at productronica 2025: Innovation and production - hand in hand As a trusted partner for electronics manufacturing, Rohde & Schwarz will prese...
06/11/2025
Back to All News
Mystery Thriller The Price of Confession' Starring Jeon D...
06/11/2025
The company will highlight its recent ecosystem expansions and strategic innovat...
06/11/2025
Red Seat Ventures Announces Partnership with Renowned Entrepreneur, Author and M...
06/11/2025
We're delighted to announce the appointment of Max Mehta and Mark Fannon as Junior Systems Engineers, further strengthening our growing Technology team.
Ma...
06/11/2025
RT Announces Alex Walden as General Manager of the
RTE Concert Orchestra
Alex Walden, renowned orchestra manager, most recently for the BBC Concert Orche...
06/11/2025
Actors Steve Coogan and anna Hardwicke will be on the Late Late Show this week ...
06/11/2025
In the third episode of The 2 Johnnies Late Night Lock In actor Danny O'Carr...
06/11/2025
NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang and chief scientist Bill Dally were honored ...
06/11/2025
Editor's note: This blog has been updated to reflect the correct launch date for Call of Duty: Black Ops 7', November 14.
A crisp chill's in the...
06/11/2025
Scripps Research team identifies sugar molecules that trigger placental formation Study reveals how sugar-protein interactions are critical for the placenta dur...
05/11/2025
College Hoops Preview 2025: ESPN Remote-Ops Team Preps for Massive Slate of Men&...
05/11/2025
University of Iowa Centralizes Video Production With Dual Control Rooms at Carve...
05/11/2025
On Monday night, Ed Sheeran and Spotify lit up The Royal Dublin Society in Dublin for a one-night-only performance. The occasion? The third installment of Billi...
05/11/2025
Cumbia has long been woven into daily life in Argentina, and its popularity on S...
05/11/2025
La cumbia forma parte del d a a d a de los argentinos desde siempre, y su popula...
05/11/2025
Earlier this year, our in-house publishing imprint, Spotify Audiobooks, put out ...
05/11/2025
SBS showcases next generation of pro cyclists in extended broadcast deal with Pr...