Olympics: BBC cycling coverage a disgrace

All the sports coverage for the Olympics is done on behalf of the IOC by a company called OBS (Olympic Broadcasting Services).

The pictures that we see in the UK are wholy derived from OBS, with some additional studio shots from the BBC. Everyone else across the world also sees the OBS coverage, with additional local shots from their own broadcasters.

That, partially, explains the lack of focus of Team GB participants and the lack of the gap-time information: and the on-screen caption style, which is different, and peculiarly old-fashioned-looking, to the BBC’s normal sports captions.

Roger Mosey comments on Twitter:

<a href="https://twitter.com/Mark_Dyer">Mark_Dyer</a> I've just tweeted that the BBC shares the frustration. It's a problem between the organisers and the host broadcast operation.</p>— Roger Mosey (rogermosey) July 28, 2012

Gary Lineker adds…

This is the Olympics. The coverage is from a pool of broadcasters from across the world. I’m afraid that’s how it is regardless of who hosts

— Gary Lineker (@GaryLineker) July 28, 2012

the on-screen caption style, which is different, and peculiarly old-fashioned-looking, to the BBC’s normal sports captions.

The Olympic captioning seems very late 1990s in general. A lot of it is the very simple font, which I guess could be for the benefit of international viewers, and so presumably is something the BBC had no say over.

As for the cycling, even the commentators were asking for captions, and when Switzerland’s Fabian Cancellara was being shown stepping back from the race they were asking to be shown the action instead. On top of that, the bronze medal race was nearly missed out and they had no idea who won it. It doesn’t come across very well if even the broadcast team are frustrated by the pictures being shown.

Forget about the pictures, the commentating must have been in the BBC’s hands and was pretty awful, no comparison with the Tour on ITV4, Chris Boardman must have been horrified to sit there listening to: ‘they are sprinting for 4th, Greipel got 4th! Oh no wait I forgot about the 22 people who finished before Greipel, sorry’ and ‘a Spaniard got 3rd oh no a Dane, no wait he’s Dutch’, only for a Norwegian to get 3rd place… Bring back Phil Liggett.

The BBC are reportedly unhappy about OBS and part of the failure to provide timing information was a technical error, according to The Guardian.

In the last month we’ve watched British cycling history being made. This has been supported by excellent, knowledgeable commentary from Phil Liggett and Gary Imlach.

The coverage would have been improved immeasurably with them as part of the commenting team.

The coverage from OBS is nothing in comparison with what we’ve seen on Le Tour up until July 22nd

Did I not watch the same race? Phil Liggett was one of the commentators. And I agree the pictures weren’t great, but did you watch the Giro this year?

My mistake, it was Hugh Porter.

So, the IOC now claim there were technical problems… and apparently it is all Twitter’s fault

But the International Olympic Committee said fans sending updates to Twitter while watching the race had in effect jammed transmissions of race information.
Communications director Mark Adams said: “From my understanding, One network was oversubscribed, and OBS are trying to spread the load to other providers. We don’t want to stop people engaging in this by social media but perhaps they might consider only sending urgent updates.”

I mean, really…

For goodness sake.

OBS has been a shambles, from the debacle with Danny Boyle onwards. What was wrong with using local host broadcasters as the games did for over 50 years? Surely the host nation has the right for the games money to be spent on local provision rather than lining the pockets of the IOC members who reportedly own OBS?