Behind the Scenes at NBC s Olympics Hub

RIO DE JANIERO- During his more than eight years with NBC, Darryl Jefferson, vice president for Post Operations & Digital Workflow, NBC Sports & Olympics, has seen the rapid evolution of production advances for the network's Olympics coverage. He's directed the network's Olympics production to an entirely file-based workflow, which has enabled NBC to enhance and accelerate its move to multiplatform distribution and enabled its Stamford, Conn. headquarters to serve as the hub for Olympics production. In a recent interview with TV Technology, Darryl discussed his role at the Rio Games and how NBC is ramping up its technical infrastructure to deliver more than 2,000 hours of Olympic linear programming across 11 networks.

TV TECHNOLOGY: What is the difference in your role now as opposed to what it was in London?

DARRYL JEFFERSON: I now oversee the post-production operations for the sports group, so all of our football, NASCAR, all the other things we do in the so-called off-season and the Olympics. I also oversee our digital workflow group that does asset management, file movement, file registration, graphics, post-audio, that type of thing. The team is larger and also does more than the Olympics.

TVT: In your transition to VP, was it a case of basically adapting a lot of the techniques that you learned in Olympics production to other sports production at NBC?

DJ: Yes, every workflow has to be slightly tailored, but yes. Some of the technology-such as the technology stack that were using in the Olympics, we know it will scale to this many concurrent programs, so youre able to really test the waters at this kind of intense event and know that for 17 weeks of football, or for the length of the hockey season, or for some longer period of time, you know you have solid technology.

TVT: What is different in what youre doing in Rio than what you were doing in London, or Sochi for that matter?

DJ: Theres a lot that's different. In London, for example-because, at the time, we had what we thought was a lot of connectivity between New York and London-we replicated both high- and low-res footage. Things would be recorded in London and replicated to both high- and low-res back to our mothership, which at that point was Studio 8H at 30 Rock.

NBC Olympics has a team of approximately 1,000 managing its Olympics programming in its Stamford Conn. sports facility that opened in 2013.

LINK:	http://www.tvtechnology.com/news/0002/behind-the-scenes-at-nbcs-rio-ol...
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