Paris 2024: Behind the Scenes at NBC Sports’ Record-Setting At-Home Operation in Stamford
The ST 2110 and Dante facility produces 1080p HDR, 50-Hz content
Since cutting the ribbon on its Stamford, CT, broadcast center following the London 2012 Games, NBC Sports Group has escalated the facility’s role in its Olympics broadcast operations with each successive Games. Implementation of the at-home efforts were accelerated for the Tokyo 2020 and Beijing 2022 Games because of COVID-related challenges, and NBC hasn’t looked back. Stamford is squarely at the center of NBC’s Paris 2024 production with more technical infrastructure, crew, and live shows located there than ever before.
“The period of COVID production expedited a lot of technology and infrastructure that would have been implemented down the road but out of necessity were fast-tracked,” says NBC Olympics Production Executive Producer/President Molly Solomon. “We are now one unified team: there’s no evidence of distance between us [in Paris and Stamford] because of three years of planning between production, operations, and engineering. There is no latency in our interaction. Aren’t you always on a headset anyway [no matter where you are]?”
The heart of NBC Sports’ Olympics broadcast operations in Stamford, CT
Nearly 2,000 NBC Sports staffers — nearly two-thirds of the entire Olympics coverage team — are working at the division’s headquarters in Stamford, handling what ultimately will be more than 7,000 hours of programming across NBCUniversal’s linear and digital platforms. While the team in Paris is focused on capturing the Olympic action as it plays out, it’s up to the crew in Stamford to take in thousands of live and ENG feeds from Paris and package them for the millions of viewers watching.
“The collaboration between Engineering, Operations, and Production is so closely knit and is key to our culture here at NBC Sports,” says Tim Canary, SVP, Engineering, NBC Sports. “As with any production, teamwork across all of our groups is critical. I couldn’t be happier with the team here and proud to see the ownership and growth from everybody who has pulled together to make our Olympics productions a success.”
NBC Sports’ dayside crew in Stamford during the Paris 2024 Games
During the 19 days of Paris 2024 coverage, Stamford is housing 17 production-control rooms, the lion’s share of NBC’s live studio productions, 28 off-tube announce booths, a dozen “flex rooms” that can serve a variety of needs, 24/7 live ingest and editing, the massive Highlights Factory operation, the broadcast-operations center, and more.
Game-Changer: The Move to ST 2110 and 1080p HDR Across the Board
Like NBC’s Paris effort, the Stamford operation is a fully 1080p HDR, 50-Hz production with 10 channels of Dolby Atmos across the board. In addition, nearly the entire operation relies on SMPTE ST 2110 for video and ST 2110-30 for audio, with a separate Dante network for audio, thanks to significant upgrades in IP technology following Beijing 2022.
NBC Sports’ Kevin Callahan: “Production members get quickly acclimated to the new systems and new facilities, thanks to the flexibility we’ve created here.”
“The biggest shift for these Games,” says Kevin Callahan, senior director, system engineering, NBC Sports, “is that everything flows through Stamford in some form. There’s not a single control room in Paris that can go to air without passing through Stamford. We’re able to do that largely because of the [upgrades] we’ve made since Beijing, with about 95% of our control rooms being native 2110 and the entire facility [running in] 1080p HDR 50.”
Stamford’s routing core has grown exponentially with the move to 2110: from roughly 3,000×3,000 to 5,000×11,000 sources/destinations with the new IP router (a Cisco switch with Grass Valley orchestration and EVS Cerebrum router control). Switchers in the larger control rooms went from having 20 router feeds to 128 feeds. Each control room is outfitted with a Densitron 2RU touchscreen router panel, streamlining operations for the production teams.
“With all the rooms being 2110, the sky’s the limit,” says Callahan. “That has really unlocked our remote workflows. We’re now able to do all our REMI workflows with split video and audio levels. Every control room gets their own source list that they can share across the board so they can name every source whatever they want — just like they do in the trucks. That’s a simple thing, but it has been huge for our production teams.”
Control Rooms: Record Number of PCRs Drive Stamford-Based Productions
The 17 production-control rooms in Stamford comprise 12 full PCRs, four Riedel Simplylive rooms, and one mobile unit. That is up from the 11 PCRs and three mobile units deployed for Tokyo 2020.
PCR12 serves as the Gold Zone control room
PCR2 serves as the home of NBC’s Primetime in Paris, marking the second Olympics that the primetime show has been produced in Stamford. The fully ST 2110 control room is outfitted with a Sony XVS-9000 switcher, Evertz ev670 multiviewers, EVS Cerebrum router control, and Calrec ImPulse audio-routing core.
“[The crews in PCR2] are in preproduction most of the day,” says Callahan, “watching all the feeds and compiling [content] to go into the Primetime segments that evening. They are watching it happen as it comes in and compiling the ‘best of’ [content] to put in the Primetime show.”
With technical infrastructure and layouts similar to PCR2’s, PCR3 handles USA Network’s round-the-clock broadcasts (being made available to distribution partners in 4K HDR with Dolby Atmos audio), and PCR4 serves the NBC broadcast network’s daytime segments.
Parked at the loading dock, Mobile TV Group 46 Flex serves as PCR17.
Two new fully ST 2110 IP control rooms, PCR11 and PCR12, were completed just prior to the start of Paris 2024. PCR11 is the home of diving during the day, NBC’s live Spotlight on Paris TikTok show from Team USA House in the evenings, and the late-night show closing out the day. The much-hyped Gold Zone whip-around show is produced out of PCR12.
PCR6 is shared by E! network, which carries daily Olympics coverage, and CNBC, broadcasting Olympics content on Saturdays and Sundays. PCR6.1 handles the studio segments for both E! and CNBC; PCR6.2, all live competition coverage on E!. PCR10 handles CNBC’s live event coverage on the weekend.
PCR8 produces all Olympics golf-tournament coverage as well as the Golf Central studio show, which covers both Olympic and non-Olympic golf throughout the day.
PCR7, 9, 13, and 17 are Riedel Simplylive–based systems — featuring a Simplylive Vibox production suite and a Calrec Brio audio console — that serve as REMI control rooms for multiple competition venues in Paris.
“Those are acting as the venue control rooms for us,” notes Callahan. “Three are mostly dedicated to beach volleyball, preliminary basketball rounds, and cycling road racing. We also use them on a rotating basis. Traditionally, we would have deployed flypacks onsite at the venue and incorporated them into a daypart control room either here or in-country. But this has been a great solution.”
A dozen “flex rooms” are being used for graphics, replay, and other needs.
Twelve of the flex rooms feature two-seat, multipurpose workstations serving a variety of needs: graphics, EVS replay, and other roles. Born out of the COVID era, these rooms are equipped with sliding glass walls that allow individual rooms to be combined into a larger space when needed.
The 13th flex room — the eight-seat “super flex room” — is being used for “Friends and Family” production. “That’s where we are trafficking all the friends and family of athletes, as well as all the watch parties,” says Callahan. “That [production crew] QCs those feeds, making sure the audio sounds good and pictures look good. They have their own EVS so they can bank interviews or watch parties to be incorporated into later shows.
“In the past,” he continues, “the ‘Friends and Family’ room was something we quickly stood wherever we could find space, but, this time, the super flex room has tons of firepower and a lot more tools at their disposal.”
NBCUniversal’s Tom Popple: “We have some amazing studios here. We also add researchers, writers, and other [support] people for extra support.”
And PCR17 — actually, Mobile TV Group’s 46 Flex mobile unit parked at the loading dock — is the home of daytime gymnastics and will shift to basketball finals late next week.
Studio Operations: Running Around the Clock From Across the Atlantic
Although NBC has several impressive studios in Paris, including the primetime and daytime studios, more live content than ever originates from Stamford’s robust complement of studios.
Studio 1, usually the home of Football Night in America and Golf Central, has been split to serve the end of the West Coast daytime broadcast (6–9 p.m. ET) and Live From golf coverage. Studio 2, handling USA Network’s 24/7 coverage, has three eight-hour shifts per day. Studio 3, a new state-of-the-art facility normally housing NBC’s Premier League coverage, serves Gold Zone (5 a.m.–5 p.m.), and Studio 7 is home to E! and CNBC Olympics coverage. Meanwhile, Studio 6 is dormant but is available should any issues arise with the other facilities.
Studio 1, home of the West Coast day time coverage
Studio 2, home of USA Network’s 24/7 coverage
“The biggest change this year is the time difference, which I think is a lot more manageable, and we’re able to deliver a lot more live [content],” says NBCUniversal VP, Studio Operations, Tom Popple. “We have some amazing studios here, and all the talent seems to be comfortable. We also add researchers, writers, and other [support] people to the studio floor for extra support, which is something we don’t always do on regular shows. That has been great.”
Studio 3, home of NBC Sports Gold Zone
Off-Tube Commentary: Three Flavors of Booth Provide Plenty of Flexibility
A total of 28 off-tube announce booths offer three levels of capabilities: super booths, graphics-enhanced booths, and standard booths. Says Callahan, “We took our old off-tube–booth system, which worked great and served us well in the beginning years, and rebuilt it from the ground up.”
The off-tube commentary operation at Stamford is built around a Calrec Apollo ImPulse core.
NBC built the new off-tube operation around a Calrec Apollo ImPulse core with Calrec Assist touchscreens to handle the audio mixing for all 28 booths, each having a Dante IP-based announcer console.
“Where we had a bottleneck before,” Callahan explains, “was if a person had COVID, needed to be in their hotel room, and was on a tie-line audio connect that needed to be incorporated. Pivoting on things like that was really hard, but now that it’s Calrec ImPulse–based and dynamic with Dante, we are able to pivot on the fly without having to start and stop. We’re able to accommodate a lot of those workflows and build in the capacity to start with. We have ‘oh by the ways’ built into the system.”
Four “super booths,” located inside what is typically PCR1, provide Fingerworks telestration capabilities as well as remotely controlled Sony FR7 PTZ cameras, allowing the talent to appear on screen.
Each of eight “graphics-enhanced” booths, located inside the Studio 4 space, has a producer who handles graphics creation and insertion. NBC is using Imagine Selenio network processors in Master Control Lite mode with pre-templated graphics from Chyron. The producers are able to template out up to eight graphics ahead of time, and an EVS Cerebrum panel allows them to preview the graphics and integrate them into the show.
“The producer handles all that,” notes Callahan. “We are able to offload a lot of the workflow that used to fall on the graphics team and give more control to the producer in the booth. That’s a nice feature that was requested after the last Olympics, and we may roll it out on an even larger scale next Games.”
One of 28 off-tube announce booths at Stamford
The remaining booths are standard off-tube rooms similar to those used for previous Olympics and are deployed for a variety of sports. NBC has also dedicated three booths to audio description for NBC primetime, NBC daytime, and Gold Zone broadcasts.
Tape Room: 194 In-House Record Channels, Plus More in the Cloud
The live-ingest and editing operation is up and running 24/7 for the duration of the Games. EVS and Avid editing stations (five dedicated to cutting events down) and media-management operations are overseen by a team of more than 60 operators and 40 production staffers, including more than 20 turnaround producers.
NBC Sports’ broadcast-ops, transmission, and ingest teams in Stamford
NBC has a whopping 194 record channels available at any given time. All channels are on Telestream Lightspeed servers, allowing content to be delivered to both media-asset–management (MAM) and production-asset–management (PAM) environments (previously, it was device-segregated).
For the first time, NBC has incorporated the cloud into its live-ingest operation, deploying Telestream in AWS to provide extra record capacity. “The operators here have no idea if [the content] is in the cloud or on-prem — even when it comes to pulling it back,” says Callahan. “Our team did an incredible job of integrating that so that the [end user] isn’t impacted at all.”
Live ingest is a 24/7 operation for the duration of the Games.
In terms of storage, all local records are still archived on-premises in Stamford on LTO tape, and key content from the cloud is pulled down and archived locally as well. With the move to 1080p HDR across the board, NBC added a variety of storage crates to its MAM and PAM systems to accommodate the larger format.
In addition to Canary and Callahan, key contributors to NBC’s operations and engineering effort in Stamford include Gary Bartunek, Stacey Georgiou, Merrick McQuilling, Paul Dryden, Pat Tolster, Mike Moutopoulos, Alec Ward, Teddy Faroni, Marc Silverman, Tom Locovare, Sam Sagarino, Adam Simon, Alex Kourelis, Trevor Cannie, Molly North, Chris Graham, Colin Whitehill, Eric Poellot, Ian Dawes-Kuchta, Robert McKnight, George Pace, Kal Almandalawi, Andre Veenhuis, Matt Green, James Purefoy, Doug Weisman, Scott Lizza, John Pastore, Rickey Hayes, Dave Meehl, Brian Shepherd, Riley Brady, and Andre Vawdrey.
“I’m immensely proud of the team,” says Callahan. “We haven’t stopped building since Beijing. We went straight into constructing all these new remote workflows for USFL and golf while also building up for the Paris Games. To finally be here with the building fully up and running for the Olympics is amazing. Our team has been able to help production members get quickly acclimated to the new systems and new facilities, as well as deal with any problems that arise and find quick solutions for them, thanks to the flexibility we’ve created here.”
NBC Sports’ early AM crew in Stamford during the Paris 2024 Games