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
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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.
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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 
