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 ...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
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...
03/07/2026
New bundle & three Single Packs
Continuing to expand their already sizeable orchestral collection, VSL's latest release introduces three new Single Pack...
03/07/2026
Venue installs new ATC-equipped control room
LSO St Luke's, a unique music venue that also serves as the home of the London Symphony Orchestra, have rec...
03/07/2026
Caden Pearson appointed new Commissioning Editor for NITV
3 July, 2026
Media releases
National Indigenous Television (NITV) has strengthened its commitment...
03/07/2026
1 February 2023
SHARE Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email
Munich, Germany, 1st February 2023: Cinegy GmbH, the premier provider of software technology for digit...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Death Star
Andy Marken July 2, 2026
0 Comments
Look, I can't get involved. I've got work to do. It's not that I like the Empire; I hate i...
03/07/2026
Berklee's New Visual Identity: Honoring Our History, Building for What's...
03/07/2026
Scripps Research scientists awarded $2M to advance global disease surveillance Two Gates Foundation grants will expand wastewater surveillance and AI-driven dis...
03/07/2026
Joan Pulupa joins Scripps Research faculty to study the organization of DNA in brain cells and its links to neurodegeneration Using smell-sensing neurons and ad...
02/07/2026
Entering her senior year, this hometown girl is paving a career in live sports production gaining experience in replay and audio and as a TD
In the live-sports...
02/07/2026
In-venue and creative video staffers at the professional and collegiate level ha...
02/07/2026
BLAST, a competitive entertainment company focused on esports, has announced more than $133 million in revenue for 2025, representing more than 40% year-over-ye...
02/07/2026
Riedel Communications has announced official SKAARHOJ panel support for SimplyLive production workflows, enabled through the SimplyLive 2.1 release. The integra...
02/07/2026
The Fire Rescue Service of the Czech Republic has deployed LiveU video-over-bond...
02/07/2026
Gravity Media USA has announced the appointment of Brittney Boston as Head of Business Development, effective July 1, 2026. Based in Nashville, Tennessee, Bosto...
02/07/2026
TwelveLabs, a video intelligence company, has announced $100 million in Series B funding co-led by NEA and NAVER Ventures, with participation from Amazon, Radic...
02/07/2026
The Pro Padel League (PPL) has announced a broadcast partnership with USA Sports that will air five PPL championship matches on CNBC during the 2026 season, the...
02/07/2026
LiveLike, a digital fan engagement platform, has announced eight confirmed FIFA ...
02/07/2026
Cobalt Digital has received Future's Best of Show Award, presented by AV Technology at InfoComm 2026, for its blueCORE family of standalone signal processor...
02/07/2026
Synamedia has announced the appointment of Dr. Tzvi Gerstl as Chief Executive Officer. Paul Segre, who has served as CEO for the past six years, will transition...
02/07/2026
The Esports Foundation (EF) and Sony Group Corporation have announced an expanded collaboration for the Esports World Cup 2026 (EWC), taking place in Paris, Fra...
02/07/2026
Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. ( Z') has announced exclusive broadcast and digital rights for the Bundesliga in India for five years, beginning with the...
02/07/2026
An effort uniting News, Sports, Local, and Telemundo, the 50+-camera live produc...
02/07/2026
Zoey Deutch, John Slattery, Ken Marino, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, and Ben Wang appe...
02/07/2026
Stammering, stuttering, strangulated tones
The Crow Hill Company's latest creation promises to be the most original sound set they've produced to d...
02/07/2026
A new era in unmixing and spectral editing
The latest version of Steinberg's spectral audio-editing software has just arrived, building on the strength...
02/07/2026
Aims to simplify additive synthesis
Sine Machine is the debut launch from Melatonin, a Vienna-based developer who have spent the past six years creating wha...
02/07/2026
Products to remain fully active & supported
Following the news of Native Instruments joining the inMusic brand line-up, Academy and Emmy Award-winning visua...
02/07/2026
What you missed!
Last weekend, Saturday 27 June 2026, saw the debut of Sound On Sounds new GearExpo UK event, the largest dedicated pro-audio event to take ...
02/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/07/2026
Following the successful launch of its inaugural APAC Mentoring Programme last month, the Rise AV APAC Regional Council will bring the conversation around mento...
02/07/2026
Blackmagic PYXIS 6K Used to Shoot Director Takahisa Zeze's Cry Out
Brie Clayton July 2, 2026
0 Comments
Highly mobile camera supports tense and de...
02/07/2026
Broadcast Solutions acquires BFE, expanding its lead in European broadcast, medi...
02/07/2026
Berklee Alum and Faculty Perform at Boston Public Library's 250th Anniversar...
02/07/2026
Broadcast Solutions GmbH, a leading systems integrator and provider of innovative solutions for the broadcast media industry, is acquiring BFE Studio und Medien...
02/07/2026
Cinegy GmbH, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has extended the ingest facility at leading Brazilian sports company LiveMode, work...
02/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/07/2026
Standalone processors acknowledged for the innovation and value they bring to Pro AV
Cobalt Digital, a leading designer and manufacturer of signal processing ...
02/07/2026
Synamedia announced today the appointment of Dr Tzvi Gerstl as Chief Executive Officer. Paul Segre, who has served as CEO for the past six years, will transitio...
02/07/2026
Screen Australia backs audience-led filmmaking with new insight-driven initiativ...
02/07/2026
Screen Australia refines guidelines for Narrative Content Development and Docume...
02/07/2026
Maxon Autograph: Introduction to working with Tables
Simon Ubsdell July 1, 2026
0 Comments
An overview of Autograph's ridiculously powerful tables...
02/07/2026
Boston Conservatory's Soir e Breaks Records to Fund Student Scholarships The event achieved 127 percent of its fundraising goal in an evening celebrating ...
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 
