LIVE! Broadcasting the Olympic Games

No radio or television coverage. So the only way to experience the Games live was to go there in person! This advertisement for the Games in London was aimed at the French, who were invited to travel via Dover or Ostend in Belgium. The poster refers to the Franco-British Exhibition, an initiative to commemorate the Entente Cordiale of 1904, in the years before the First World War. Ancient imagery (the laurel wreath) was still popular.

The person who had this ticket for the Olympic Stadium in London, on 24 July 1908, probably witnessed the incredible finish of the marathon. Despite finishing first, Italy’s Dorando Pietri, doped with strychnine, collapsed five times, went the wrong way, and was helped across the line by the organisers. So the gold medal went to the second runner, the American John Hayes!

These radio sets, magnificently designed (like this Art Nouveau-style Stewart-Warner, or this Atwater-Kent, named after the American inventor who also sponsored several radio shows), started to go in sale at the end of the 1920s, when the Games took on increasing importance internationally.
In the US, as the grinding poverty of the 1930s prevented families going to the cinema or going out to dinner, the radio became the only distraction, allowing people to keep updated on the Great Depression or to listen to the reassuring words of President Roosevelt. The broadcast of the Los Angeles Games had audiences listening with baited breath, even in the absence of images... Radio’s reign would last until the 1960s, before making way for television.

These radio sets, magnificently designed (like this Art Nouveau-style Stewart-Warner, or this Atwater-Kent, named after the American inventor who also sponsored several radio shows), started to go in sale at the end of the 1920s, when the Games took on increasing importance internationally.
In the US, as the grinding poverty of the 1930s prevented families going to the cinema or going out to dinner, the radio became the only distraction, allowing people to keep updated on the Great Depression or to listen to the reassuring words of President Roosevelt. The broadcast of the Los Angeles Games had audiences listening with baited breath, even in the absence of images... Radio’s reign would last until the 1960s, before making way for television.

Only spectators allowed to applaud the 100m runners, Great Britain’s Harold Abrahams or the USA’s Jackson Scholtz... The organisers feared that live broadcasting, which began modestly that year on Radio Paris, would empty the stands. In Great Britain, newspaper proprietors, worried whether their papers would survive, forced the BBC to broadcast bulletins only after 6 p.m.!

The photo... The newsreel at the cinema… The debut of radio... Yes, but drawings were still predominant in newspapers in the 1920s. This gave artists the right to access the track and the stands at the 1924 Games in Paris.

The condenser technique is still used today, and considered particularly good at conveying an atmosphere.

Berlin 1936 marked the start of TV broadcasting of the Games. Twenty-five “public auditoriums” and beer halls equipped with screens opened in Berlin, Potsdam and Leipzig.
These places allowed exactly 162,228 spectators to follow the competitions free of charge. It was a dream opportunity for the Nazi regime to show off its modernity and temporarily calm international concern. At the same time, film-maker Leni Riefenstahl, a friend of Hitler, began filming her documentary, Olympia, which magnified the bodies of the Olympic athletes and invented a way of filming movement.

Aptly named “Olympic”, this small television set could be found in many British homes during the 1948 Games in London.

This is an image-orthicon television camera used to cover the 1956 Winter Games in Cortina d’Ampezzo (Italy).
The idea was not just to broadcast, but also tell a story using several cameras, so much so that it was more exciting to watch the competitions on television than from the stands!
That winter, four cameras were installed along the bobsleigh track, so television viewers could follow almost all of the race.

1956 Winter Games in Cortina d'Ampezzo (Italy): official radio and television badge.

In the Olympic Village at the 1964 Games in Tokyo, athletes could watch the television coverage of their teammates’ competitions.
This was the first time the Games had been held in Asia. Japan spent considerable sums on the organisation, particularly for the media, to show the world how it had recovered from the Second World War.

At the Mexico City press centre. Between 400 and 600 million viewers could follow the Games live, and this novel planetary communion generated hope for the world, as viewers wrote to the US network ABC:
“Your coverage should be an inspiration in these troubled times. The Olympics prove that dedicated people can cast aside their differences and strive for perfection.” 
This was the time of smaller, lighter, portable, colour cameras. The cameraman got close to film, reflecting reality and giving it a meaning. The watchword was now “organisation”. Mexicans, Japanese, Americans and Europeans created joint film teams for the biggest competitions. Some 45 cameras recorded the events under way at 18 venues.

Munich 1972. Twenty-five competition venues were equipped with television cameras, the other 10 with cinema equipment – used for television.

1972 Winter Games in Sapporo, Japan. The man with the mini-camera on his helmet is about to film as he skis the downhill course (Alpine skiing competition). Miniaturisation of the equipment brought the cameras closer to the athletes and allowed viewers to be at the centre of the action.

An army of cameramen in very 70s-style orange jackets. Miniaturisation allowed them to film everything, everywhere, in every position!

Everyone remembers the emblem of these Games. Here it is on a portable radio, another symbol of the love story between the Games and the media.

A total of 6,838 press armbands were needed for the journalists and media technicians who had come to cover the competitions!

When Seoul hosted the Games in September 1988, South Korea was enjoying impressive economic growth and taking the route of democracy. The imminence of the competitions forced the government to take the mass demonstrations of 1987 into account. A success for Olympism.
However, despite intense negotiations led by the IOC, North Korea boycotted the Games. To meet the growing needs of the electronic media, public TV channel KBS built an ultra-modern complex with nine storeys and of almost 64,000 m2, which hosted four TV studios, 14 radio studios and a 2,000-seat auditorium. Enough to do justice to the performances of these Games, including those of Steffi Graf (tennis) and Matt Biondi (swimming). Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson, who tested positive for steroids, lost his gold medal in the 100 metres. He was the first famous athlete to be disqualified for doping.

For the first time in 20 years, following the disappearance of the Eastern Bloc, there was not a single boycott. For the first time in 30 years, with the end of Apartheid, South Africa was allowed to compete. To celebrate this African reconciliation, Ethiopian runner Derartu Tulu performed a lap of honour with her South African rival, Elena Mayer. An Olympic moment par excellence! It was also in Barcelona that CDD cameras, normally used in astronomy, made their appearance, as did digital video recorders. Another new feature was touchscreens, which allowed the sports commentators to obtain information immediately and in real time. A foretaste of the arrival of the Internet! Some 3.5 billion people watched the Games on television that year.

Until 1994, the Winter Games took place in the same year as the Summer ones. But for financial reasons linked to advertising, the TV networks informed the IOC of their wish for the Summer/Winter Games to alternate every two years, which was accepted and would give the Winter Games greater visibility. They were no longer the poor relation of the Summer Games. In 1994, the Lillehammer Winter Games were broadcast in more than 120 countries, and on the African continent for the first time.
1988 Olympic Winter Games in Calgary. The microphone on the camera is no longer enough to reproduce atmospheric sound faithful to reality. Behind the cameraman, in a one-piece ski suit, the sound recorder and his boom play a decisive role.

How sophisticated! If Pierre de Coubertin could have seen this photo of cameras on pivoting stands above the Olympic Stadium, he would not have believed his eyes.

The arrival of the Internet would transform the habits of sports fans. Now they could follow the action wherever they were and choose the sport they wanted to watch. Television had brought the Games into people’s living rooms. Now they were everywhere - in offices, bedrooms, schools or cybercafés.

The stomach of Pudgy the penguin bore the address: FanM@il, an IBM platform which allowed spectators to send congratulatory emails to the athletes. The Games in Nagano were the second to have their own website, after the ones in Atlanta in 1996.

Since 2001, the International Olympic Committee has had its own filming and broadcasting service, Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS).
This means that coverage of the Games is no longer dependent solely on the host country.

Nine million tickets sold, highlights which included American swimmer Michael Phelps and Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, impeccable organisation – and some notable technological experiments: 3D, multi-channel sound, 8K cameras. London 2012 was also 3.6 billion viewers, and, behind the scenes, 20,000 journalists and media technicians!

It was in London, during the 2012 Games, that live broadcasting in 3D was trialled for the first time. The Opening and Closing Ceremonies and the men’s 100m were among the events used for this new technology, which had to be broadcast on a special television channel.
These spectators are watching a 3D broadcast of the Games at a special venue in the Olympic Park, the Panasonic full-HD 3D Theatre.

A historic moment! At the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, there were more hours of Internet coverage than television broadcasts. The use of social media really took off, with more than 2.2 million new followers on all platforms, and 7.7 million fans on Facebook.

Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) has constantly brought the Games closer to their fans. Since 2014, at the Winter Games in Sochi, the OVP Olympic video system application has allowed web users to compile their own programmes themselves! Available on computer, smartphone or tablet, OVP provides free access to events and statistics, with a much greater choice than on television.

It is a giant laboratory! And in this hive of innovations and specialised developments, the special work of the students and researchers in the Multimedia signal processing group, the Human computer interaction group and the Microelectronic Systems laboratory can help to make Olympic Games broadcasting even more surprising and personalised.

The panoptic camera is made up of a multitude of miniature cameras. It films in 360° in real time. It sees everything. The TV viewer can thus choose whatever angle and image he prefers, and see the Games just as he would like to! There are still a few obstacles to overcome: light contrasts, the increase in the number of images per second, or the delivery of a colossal amount of information to the four corners of the world.

I tweet, we tweet… Behind every screen, Games addicts communicate their allegiance to certain sports or athletes, and their emotions during competitions. What if we brought them together? Lausanne’s Federal Polytechnic (EPFL) created a program able to sort the tweets exchanged and file them by order of emotion. Graphics display, simply and instantly, the feelings of a whole community! Broadcasters can choose to show events depending on how many tweets they receive and the intensity of emotions. TV viewers are invited to compare their feelings, while affirming their adherence to the virtual Olympic community.