Paris 2024: A Look at a Century of Olympics Sound and Picture When the Games debuted on broadcast in 1924, radio was in its tweens' By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Thursday, August 1, 2024 - 9:00 am
Print This Story
As broadcasters from all over the world cover the action in all 35 venues of the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, it's a moment to look back at coverage of the Games a century ago, when broadcasting itself was still in its tween years.
In fact, it was from the Paris 1924 Olympics that radio first beamed the action, belated as it was. The telegraph was still being used to distribute results and scores. Radio Paris, founded the year before, essentially invented Olympics broadcast commentary with journalist Edmond Dehorter, and, every evening, the BBC summarized the day's events, according to the Olympics Museum.
Aside from the fact that bulky tube-powered broadcast equipment and equally cumbersome carbon microphones made remote production a kind of Manhattan Project, newspapers - the dominant media of the day - compelled the Beeb to broadcast bulletins only after 6 p.m. so as not to compete with their late editions. That mentality continued through the Los Angeles 1932 Summer Olympics, when papers dreaded being scooped by radio and the Games' organizers feared that live radio broadcasts would hurt ticket sales.
That concern was shared by MLB owners, who prohibited live radio during regular-season games, and by some Ivy League universities, including Harvard and Yale, which in 1932 decided that they would not allow any of their football games to be broadcast on radio that fall. (NBC and CBS, however, did manage to provide live coverage of the 1932 Winter Olympics.)
TV Coverage of the Games Television came into the picture - so to speak - for the Berlin 1936 Summer Olympics, when selected events were beamed live to athletes in the Olympic Village and to the wider public watching in 25 special public auditoriums and beer halls equipped with screens in Berlin, Potsdam, and Leipzig. On radio, the opening-day ceremonies in 1936 were heard in Los Angeles at 8 a.m. Pacific Time via NBC on both KFI and KECA; KHJ listeners heard the CBS-network feed from Germany.
For the Paris 1924 Olympic Games, results and scores were sent from the telegraph and telephone room at the Colombes Stadium (Photo: Getty Images/WSJ)
Television picked up the pace after the 1940 and 1946 Olympics were canceled because of World War II. In 1948, Olympic images from the London Games were transmitted directly into homes for the first time, live from Wembley Stadium and the Empire Pool.
Already, things were moving beyond the simple factual broadcast of the day's events, the Olympic Museum notes. Filming was live, angles and perspectives were multiplied, stories were told.
And they were film cameras. Actual video cameras, using the then-state-of-the-art Image Orthicon-tube camera developed by RCA, were deployed by broadcaster RAI for the first time at the 1956 Winter Games in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. Four cameras were installed along the bobsled track, allowing television viewers to follow almost all the race as it unfolded.
Rome 1960 was the first Olympics to be broadcast live across Europe, using 40 black-and-white cameras, 11 mobile units, and 11 video recorders and providing slow motion for the first time. (It was also the first time that TV overtook radio as primary broadcast medium for Olympics coverage.) Coverage was delayed to the U.S., with video cassettes flown via commercial airliner to New York, where ABC's Jim McKay added commentary.
Tokyo 1964 was the first to reach a worldwide audience, via the first satellite broadcasts (over Syncom 3, the first geostationary communication satellite). Color television arrived four years later at the Mexico City 1968 Games, for which wireless, hand-held color cameras were deployed for the first time.
At the Munich 1972 Games, 25 competition venues were equipped with television cameras. The other 10 had cinema equipment, but all were used for television broadcasts using film-to-tape transfers. At the 1972 Winter Games in Sapporo, Japan, helmet-mounted minicams were introduced for the Alpine downhill-skiing competition, underscoring Japan's growing dominance in miniaturized electronics. That trend was inflective for the growing awareness that viewers wanted to get ever closer to the action.
(Summer and Winter Olympics were usually held in the same years until 1994, when they began to alternate two years apart. Though driven by advertising dollars, the change helped establish the Winter Olympics as a broadcast-sports entity. The 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway, were broadcast in more than 120 countries and, for the first time, to the African continent.)
Enter Olympic Broadcasting Services After that, the momentum of technological advance gained real steam. For the Seoul 1988 Summer Olympics, public broadcaster KBS built a state-of-the-art, nine-story complex, its nearly 700,000 sq. ft. housing four TV studios, 14 radio studios, and a 2,000-seat auditorium. For Barcelona 1992, CDD cameras, normally used in astronomy, made their appearance, as did digital video recorders.
Throughout the 20th century, national and regional broadcasters managed the Olympics broadcasts. In 2001, that changed: the International Olympic Committee established its own filming and broadcasting service, Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS), making coverage of the Games no longer dependent solely on the host country. That, in turn, accelerated the pace of technology deployed for the Games.
The Beijing 2008 Games were the first to be produced and broadcast entirely in HDTV. London 2012 experimented with multichannel audio and 8K cameras, and live broadcasting in 3D was tested for the first time. The Opening and Closing Ceremonies and the m
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
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...
02/05/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
01/05/2026
January 5 2026, 18:30 (PST) NBCUniversal's Peacock to Be First Streamer to ...
06/04/2026
Michigan legends bring a new voice to the broadcast as TNT Sports and CBS Sports...
06/04/2026
From high school sports all the way up to the major leagues, building high-quali...
06/04/2026
Quickplay, an AI company for the media and entertainment industry, has been accepted into the Advanced tier of the TwelveLabs Ecosystem Partner Program. Quickpl...
06/04/2026
Grass Valley has announced the Future Playmakers Program, a global initiative to...
06/04/2026
El l der de operaciones impulsa la producci n en estudio mientras encuentra insp...
06/04/2026
The ops leader helps lead the charge in studio for the Spanish-language broadcas...
06/04/2026
Behind The Mic provides a roundup of recent news regarding on-air talent, includ...
06/04/2026
The National Hockey League (NHL), in partnership with Verizon and the New Jersey Devils, today announced the opening of the NHL Innovation Lab powered by Verizo...
06/04/2026
Rock League, a new professional curling league, has announced that ESPN+ will stream its inaugural 2026 season for fans in the United States. The first Rock Lea...
06/04/2026
Advanced Systems Group has announced the appointment of Andrea (Andy) Cummis as Vice President of Systems Design and Engineering. In this role, she will lead de...
06/04/2026
Backed by Bolt Ventures, the venture brings Bryson DeChambeau, Grant Horvat, and...
06/04/2026
With this environment we can start that collaboration even earlier because we ca...
06/04/2026
Like the immortal lives of vampires, some stories never really end. That's t...
06/04/2026
As podcasting continues to evolve, growth increasingly means building beyond aud...
06/04/2026
Multiband dynamics plug-in enhanced
California-based developer FSK Audio have released a significant update for their innovative multiband dynamics processo...
06/04/2026
Share official & user-created full-rig presets
IK Multimedia's latest TONEX update makes it possible for users of the popular amp and effects modelling ...
06/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
06/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
06/04/2026
Dalet Showcases Dalia Agentic AI and End-to-End Media Workflows at NAB Show 2026
Brie Clayton April 6, 2026
0 Comments
Dalet, a leading technology and...
06/04/2026
OpenDrives Shows Off Sports Expertise in Sports Business Hub located in NAB Show...
06/04/2026
Proton to Demonstrate 3D Application at NAB 2026
Brie Clayton April 6, 2026
0 Comments
Yet further creative potential unleashed through innovation in ...
06/04/2026
Autoscript Highlights Voice-Driven Prompting and PTZ Solutions at NAB 2026
Brie Clayton April 6, 2026
0 Comments
Experience Autoscript Voice, PTZ prom...
06/04/2026
Mediaproxy Highlights Significant Enhancements to its LogServer suite at NAB Sho...
06/04/2026
Wayne, N.J., April 6th, 2026 Phantom High-Speed announces the release of PCC 4...
06/04/2026
April 6th, 2026
TRIBECA STUDIOS AND LILLY ANNOUNCE WINNERS OF INAUGURAL VITAL...
06/04/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Expands Kids Entertainment Lineup With Playground App ...
05/04/2026
Tackles all reported bugs!
SoundBridge have just announced the launch of a new update that introduces a couple of minor changes to their remote collaboratio...
04/04/2026
The University of Arizona's Men's Basketball team has only loss twice th...
04/04/2026
1080p HDR arrives, a new generation of storytelling tools takes center stage, an...
04/04/2026
Michigan legends bring a new voice to the broadcast as TNT Sports and CBS Sports...
04/04/2026
Faster, cleaner and more intuitive than ever
The control software for Flock Audio's digitally controlled patchbay systems has just been treated to an up...
04/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
04/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
04/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
04/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
04/04/2026
DHD Introduces AI-Based Audio Noise Reduction to XD3 IP Core
Brie Clayton April 3, 2026
0 Comments
The accompanying image shows the rear panel of the ...
04/04/2026
Macnica Redefines ST 2110 Flexibility with Two Speeds on One Card
Brie Clayton April 3, 2026
0 Comments
New for NAB Show 2026, MEP100 SmartNIC now sup...
04/04/2026
Unified Media Workflows for Story-Centric Production
Brie Clayton April 3, 2026
0 Comments
Framelight X unifies field capture, editing and publishing ...
03/04/2026
Michigan's Fab Five will reunite for an alternate presentation of the Mich...
03/04/2026
Avid will exhibit at NAB Show 2026 (April 18-22, Booth N2226, Las Vegas Convention Center), demonstrating its Content Core platform and new AI-driven workflow c...
03/04/2026
Mark Roberts Motion Control (MRMC) has announced the appointment of Nick Barthee as Chief Operating Officer.
The announcement follows MRMC's transition fro...
03/04/2026
Interra Systems has announced that Elite Media Technologies has selected its BATON file-based QC solution for media workflows. Elite Media Technologies speciali...
03/04/2026
Ateme has announced that Moldtelecom has deployed Ateme technologies across its streaming workflow, covering encoding, delivery, operations, and analytics.
Mol...
03/04/2026
Grass Valley will demonstrate Framelight X, its content management platform, at NAB Show 2026. The platform connects capture, ingest, editing, and publishing in...
03/04/2026
Encompass Digital Media and Techex have announced a cloud-native Master Control ...
Paris 2024: A Look at a Century of Olympics Sound and Picture When the Games debuted on broadcast in 1924, radio was in its tweens' By Dan Daley, Audio Editor 
