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
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
01/06/2026
Designed to solve a common problem in broadcasting, the automated workflow detects, identifies, removes, and documents copyrighted music
AudioShake has introdu...
01/06/2026
The sports-analytics company combines its data with proprietary AI to help leagu...
01/06/2026
Category line-up & sponsors announced
Photo: Paul Clarke
The Production Music Awards (PMA) have announced that submissions are now officially open ahead of...
01/06/2026
New hybrid sample/synthesis instrument revealed
Excite Audio have just released the latest instalment in their Evolve series, which has been developed in co...
01/06/2026
Latest TONEX expansion captures three rare vintage amps
The newest addition to IK Multimedia's ever-growing TONEX line-up introduces a set of three incr...
01/06/2026
Musically intelligent soft synth gets upgraded
Scaler Music will be probably be best known to many for their music theory tools, but their product range al...
01/06/2026
SBS confirms its broadcast sponsors for FIFA World Cup 2026
1 June, 2026
Media releases
SBS has secured Hyundai, Hisense, Macca's, Rexona, bet365, Com...
01/06/2026
Rohde & Schwarz Satellite Industry Days 2026 guided by the motto From Earth to ...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Marshall Electronics is showcasing a comprehensive lineup of next-generation POV cameras, purpose-built to power today's connected AV environments, at InfoC...
01/06/2026
Adobe Announces Concept to Vector
Deepa Subramaniam June 1, 2026
0 Comments
One of the biggest frustrations we hear from designers is how difficult it...
01/06/2026
Vampire Feature Night Patrol Graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton June 1, 2026
0 Comments
Colorist shapes dark, gritty tone for horror thri...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Mardi 2 juin 14h00
FilmLight (ARRI), 10 rue Ren Boulanger, 75010 Paris
Rejoignez-nous pour d couvrir comment FLAPI (l'API FilmLight) peut transformer e...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
31/05/2026
Olivia P rez-Collellmir to Premiere Original Work at Gaud Centennial in Barcelona The Berklee graduate and faculty member will debut her choral symphony with...
31/05/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Wins 15 Awards at the Canadian Screen Awards - See Pho...
31/05/2026
Taiwan is home to more than 500 NVIDIA ecosystem partners. More than 1 million N...
31/05/2026
As factories move from isolated automation to plant-wide intelligence, manufacturers need AI systems that can connect live machine signals, quality systems, wor...
31/05/2026
The NVIDIA AI Cloud ecosystem is accelerating the global buildout of AI factory infrastructure. Partners are expanding capacity to meet growing demand from ente...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Zero in on one that says yes (and no)
Andy Marken May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Hero image courtesy of Deposit Photos
For content creators the most difficu...
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
29/05/2026
Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...
29/05/2026
Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...
29/05/2026
Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...
29/05/2026
In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...
29/05/2026
The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...
29/05/2026
Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...
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 
