Live From Paris 2024: CBC Calls Canada House Home, Enhances Connection With Athletes Moving out of the IBC puts the Canadian broadcaster right in the mix for French, English viewers back home By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Monday, August 5, 2024 - 3:39 am
Print This Story
The CBC has taken a different approach to its Olympic operations. It has a technical center at the IBC, but its studio and production operations are located at Canada House, in the Cit des Sciences et de l'industrie. And it's paying dividends.
We are gaining the presence of athletes and families during the evening, says Francois Messier, executive director, production and sports, CBC. We get access to the athletes more quickly, and they stay with us longer because they're not going through a car wash of interviews. Instead of having them for two minutes, we get them for seven or eight minutes.
The CBC presence at Canada House includes a main studio complete with LED walls and comfortable guest and talent seating that doesn't involve a studio desk. A second studio for morning updates back home has seating for a small audience, and various standup positions are located around Canada House and various activation and fan zones. The CBC also has two standup positions at the TV tower at Trocad ro, one each for its French- and English-language networks.
Francois Legrand (left) and Francois Messier in the CBC's main studio in Paris
The IBC is more of a technical hub, where we take the feeds from OBS and ship them back to Canada, Messier says. All the signals go to both Montreal and Toronto to meet the specific needs of both the French- and English-language audiences.
About 150 production staffers are in Paris, he adds, with another 200 working in Montreal and about 50 in Toronto. French-language primetime programming is produced from Canada House; CBC programming is produced in Toronto. The French-language network has an onsite presence at three venues - swimming, athletics, gymnastics - but all other commentary is called from facilities in Canada.
With the Olympics being here in Paris, Messier says, we felt that [the French-language] network needed to be here, and the gymnastics commentary position will be used by the English-language team when basketball is played in the same arena this week. Back home, we have 12 voiceover booths.
The CBC studio set uses LED walls to create a warm look that seems to feature wood slates.
On the technical side, according to Francois Legrand, lead engineer, Olympics, CBC, a router at the IBC allows the CBC team to sub-switch signals that go to Canada. The signals from Canada House pass through the IBC before heading to Canada.
Because we have older equipment here, we still use SDI, he adds, but that's going to change. One challenge for the Milan 2026 Winter Games is that OBS will no longer deliver signals in 1080i, which is the CBC delivery format. Legrand says the broadcaster is determining how that will impact operations, including the potential to send more signals back home as 1080p and converting them there.
We are also using the OBS cloud service as a backup feed, he continues. If our own equipment fails, we can use that service.
A second studio in Canada House is particularly suited to providing morning updates to viewers back home.
Ten ENG teams service both networks, follow Canadian athletes, and get mixed-zone positions for events in which Canadian athletes compete. CBC relies on OBS connectivity from the mixed zones but also has TVU bonded-cellular transmission systems. And 5G was used for the Opening Ceremony, during which CBC had a journalist on the Team Canada boat.
One interesting wrinkle is the need to ensure that both networks are in sync and delivering the same live coverage of the same events at the same time, especially when it comes to the off-tube commentary over the prepackaged OBS feeds. The CBC is using a tried-and-true workflow: the video is sent to Canada for the off-tube teams to call the action, and the audio returns to Paris to be embedded in the video signal, which is sent to Toronto and Montreal as a complete package synchronized for both networks.
The video doesn't travel both ways, just the audio, notes Legrand. Moving forward with ST 2110 and with newer equipment, we can replicate that workflow just by working with the timestamps of the signal and virtually realigning everything at each side.
Canadian fans have been enthusiastically tuning in to Paris 2024: one in three Canadians (more than 13.3 million viewers) tuned in for the Opening Ceremony, and the time that viewers spend on digital platforms is double what it was during Tokyo 2020.
In the first week, the swimming gave Canadian viewers a reason to tune in, Messier says. That was a jumpstart for us. We're above our expectations in the daytime and afternoon in Canada on both linear and digital. We can stream up to 12 feeds, allowing people to look at gymnastics or volleyball or something else they want to watch. We also are requiring authentication this year, so we're getting a lot of data from those who are more engaged with our platforms.
Also helping? Committing to enabling viewers to better understand the athletes and the storylines. We've been creating stories and making sure the audience know the athletes before we show them during the Olympics, he says. We added a series of pregame shows and give people some idea of what to expect.
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...
17/10/2025
Q&A with Boston Conservatory Choral Conductor Stephen Spinelli How his research into the lost manuscripts of composer Florence Price led to a Grammy-winning c...
16/10/2025
SVG Sit-Down: FUJIFILM Execs on GFX ETERNA 55 Camera, Importance of Shallow-Dept...
16/10/2025
Squash's Most Ambitious Broadcast Production To Be Deployed at Comcast Busin...
16/10/2025
Main Street Sports Group Inks Deal With Omaha Productions, Launches Original-Con...
16/10/2025
A Historic Precursor? FIFA, HBS, DAZN Offer an Inside Look at Production of FIFA...
16/10/2025
Prime Video Offers Sneak Peak at New NBA on Prime StudioThe massive 13,000-sq-ft, two-story studio features a LED regulation half court and hoopBy Jason Dachman...
16/10/2025
SVG Remote Production Forum Draws Record Crowd for Visit to PGA TOUR Studios, De...
16/10/2025
BitFire's Ben Grafchik on How Growing Cloud Workflows Are Impacting the Live...
16/10/2025
AI technology is advancing quickly, bringing both new creative possibilities and...
16/10/2025
In 2017, Imani Ellis launched CultureCon, a conference that's become a must-attend event for more than 10,000 diverse creatives and Black professionals to c...
16/10/2025
It might still be a little early to break out the tinsel and mistletoe, but Spotify's already queuing up some holiday magic. This year's Spotify Singles...
16/10/2025
Earlier this year, our in-house publishing imprint, Spotify Audiobooks, put out ...
16/10/2025
VAMPIRE has been integrated onto GM Defenses Infantry Squad Vehicle (ISV), providing a mobile solution to effectively and affordably counter small drone threat...
16/10/2025
The AgilePod mounted on the host aircraft....
16/10/2025
60% say infotainment systems are a critical purchasing or leasing consideration,...
16/10/2025
NEW YORK The Broadcasters Foundation of America has launched its 2025 Year-End Giving Campaign, which seeks to raise donations from tax-deductible personal and ...
16/10/2025
Roku has added several new features to its user interface and operating system meant to make it easier to discover and personalize content, the company said....
16/10/2025
NEW YORK CNN has announced that its All Access subscription tier will launch in the U.S. on Oct. 28, providing audiences with a centralized destination for CNN&...
16/10/2025
Student Spotlight: Alan Villanueva The graduate student and saxophonist, who performed on Natalia Lafourcades Latin Grammy-nominated Live at Carnegie Hall alb...
16/10/2025
The XR Sports Alliance (XRSA) has announced the third cohort of members. The new members include Maple Leafs Sports & Entertainment (MLSE), the Vegas Golden Kni...
16/10/2025
NEW YORK The Broadcasters Foundation of America has launched its 2025 Year-End Giving Campaign which seeks to raise donations from tax-deductible personal and c...
16/10/2025
NEW YORK Australia's Nine Network and the NHL today announced a media partnership that will bring the world's premier professional ice hockey league to ...
16/10/2025
Parks Associates has released new data showing that nearly half (45%) of U.S. internet homes watch free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) services and 89% of U.S...
16/10/2025
TROY, Mich. -New data from J.D. Power's 2025 U.S. Residential Internet Service Provider Study shows that residential wireless internet providers are growing...
16/10/2025
TV's most charming detective drama * Shakespeare & Hathaway: Private Investi...
16/10/2025
Back to All News
Thailand's Legendary Outlaw Returns: Tee Yai: Born to be ...
16/10/2025
Back to All News
Christmas Is Just Around The Corner: Home For Christmas Season...
16/10/2025
Back to All News
Trist n Ulloa Stars in El crimen de Pazos, the New Netflix Ser...
16/10/2025
ABS Completes Redomiciliation to Dubai Development Authority as Part of Strategi...
16/10/2025
This Saturday October 18 Katja Mia will burst onto the radio airwaves for the first time as she joins 2FM. Katja will be standing in for Bl thnaid Treacy on Sat...
16/10/2025
This October, RT is delighted to support Wexford Festival Opera, Babor International Arts Festival for Children, Open House Dublin and 36 other arts and cultu...
16/10/2025
GeForce NOW is more than just a platform to stream fresh games every week - it offers celebrations for the gamers who make it epic, with member rewards to sweet...
15/10/2025
Across the world, early-career reporters are interrogating systems that shape daily life, from mortuaries and classrooms to the corridors of legal education and...
15/10/2025
St. Louis Blues Pay Tribute to Ozzy Osbourne in New Pregame Open VideoThe NHL franchise worked with production firms 2WEI and 4th Floor CreativeBy Mark J Burns,...
15/10/2025
Cobalt Digital, G3DVu, Proxima Vision, and Telos Alliance Renew Premier Sponsors...
15/10/2025
By Paige Bethmann
Before my grandmother passed away in 2019, I went to visit her in the hospital where she'd been for a few weeks. When I arrived, the nurs...
15/10/2025
Two years ago, Spotify set out to grow the entire publishing industry by making ...
15/10/2025
People turn to DJ for a listening experience that feels personal, dynamic, and j...
15/10/2025
Las personas recurren a DJ para vivir una experiencia de escucha personal, din m...
15/10/2025
Rock legend Bruce Springsteen and luminary actor Jeremy Allen White came togethe...
15/10/2025
At Spotify, we're all about supporting rising talent and helping them connec...
15/10/2025
New SBS Documentary Series THE CANCER KILLERS Premieres 4 November on SBS & SBS ...
15/10/2025
SBS celebrates the Festivals of Lights with bold, illuminating stories across th...
15/10/2025
One of humanity's most profound questions continues: Is there any place in our galaxy suitable for life beyond Earth? NASA intends to find out, with the hel...
15/10/2025
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......
15/10/2025
Scality, a global leader in cyber-resilient storage software for the AI era, today announced the advancement of its comprehensive AI ecosystem certification pro...
15/10/2025
The Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) today unveiled key highlights of the 2026 HPA Tech Retreat, scheduled for Feb. 15 19 at the Westin Rancho Mirage Go...
15/10/2025
At NAB Show New York 2025 (Stand 244), Interra Systems will showcase the future of media QC, monitoring, and captioning, highlighting its award-winning, AI- and...
Live From Paris 2024: CBC Calls Canada House Home, Enhances Connection With Athletes Moving out of the IBC puts the Canadian broadcaster right in the mix for French, English viewers back home By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director 
