Gladwell's Line- Lifting the the Olympic Sailing Television Game

by Richard Gladwell on 3 Aug 2010
This is the second part of a discussion with Paul France, one of the fathers of bringing live sailing to television screens. A former New Zealand national dinghy champion sailor himself, he has sailed boats – mono and lately multihulls – all his life.

To recap, France produced the live NZ television coverage of the Fremantle America's Cup 1986/87 before taking on a role as General Manager, Production for Television New Zealand In 1991 he stepped out of the director’s chair and did the set up for the coverage for 1992 America’s Cup, which included driving the development of the first real-time graphics system commissioned by Television New Zealand in conjunction with Animation Research Ltd. He then moved offshore as President of CNBC Asia (a financial news channel). He now lives in the Bay of Islands

Although France has never produced Olympic yachting coverage, he has vast experience in the coverage of sailing and yacht racing of different types. He comes from the era when producers were required to show the story using what would now be regarded as very minimal technology.

However the basics of good sailing television then, as now, remain the same.

The recent Olympic Commission Report for the International Sailing Federation painted a very unflattering picture of the televised side of the Sailing Olympics.

The short story is that sailing is the least popular televised sport and fifth to seventh most expensive to produce.

So how would Paul France cover the Olympic regatta – given these unflattering and unsustainable statistics?

'It all comes back to who are you doing it for. Almost without exception, a viewer, whether they be in Singapore, Newport or Auckland, has a very narrow and particular focus

'In a ten boat medal race the viewer is only really interested in where their boat is coming, and being able to show me a picture of that sailor.

'That means that you have to have a camera for each sailor and follow them around the course, and a different feed for every national broadcaster.'

In other words, In the Olympic Sailing Finals there are really ten countries with a serious interest in a medal race - and there is intense interest by those countries and their broadcaster as to who is going to win the medals on offer.

Rights and Host

Before we proceed onto how Paul France believes the Olympic Sailing coverage could be improved, first a quick explanation of what is a Host Broadcaster and a Rights Broadcaster.

The Host Broadcaster is the organisation charged with shooting the pictures, depending on the television infrastructure and experience of the host country of the event, the resources and people required to provide the images from the water may be drawn primarily from that country. Or, if there is not a lot of local expertise or equipment available, those resources are bought in from outside the country and applied to the event. The images taken all go into a pool from which the Rights holders, or Rights Broadcasters select images/video to produce their coverage.

The individual Rights Broadcaster usually has additional camera resources, maybe their own commentary team, producers and other staff on site at the Sailing venue; or back at the main Olympic venue; or in the country of the broadcast.

Their task is to compile the images provided by the Host Broadcaster into the coverage that is broadcast by the Rights Broadcaster in their area of coverage licenced by the International Olympic Committee.

A simple point of difference is that Host Broadcasters don’t broadcast to an audience, they just provide pictures to a Rights Broadcaster for editing and broadcast to their audiences.

It’s an image pool arrangement, if you will. The Host Broadcaster puts into the pool, the Rights Broadcaster takes out of the pool.

Unlike the 2008 Olympic Regatta in Qingdao, where the Host Broadcast function was undertaken by a team of some of the top sailing television expertise from around the world, Britain host for the 2012 Olympics, is a very good sailing television broadcaster and producer.

'It will be very interesting to see the coverage from the Brits at Weymouth – and how that works for each nation,' says France.

'Generally the stuff that is delivered by many Host Broadcasters, is utterly useless. In 2012, the Brits can’t provide coverage that just shows themselves – even though they are the world’s most successful nation at an Olympic sailing level.

Like covering a horse race!

'There has to be a neutral host broadcaster who just sits at each mark and shoots boat after boat as they go by.

'It is like covering horseracing – which is done to a coverage pattern. You have to cover the whole field for most of the race.

'Punters or viewers, are just interested in 'their' horse which might be coming first or it might be last, or it might be back but in a very good position. You have to show where all the horses are at 200 metres out from the finish', he explains, 'before you cut to the action as the leaders go for then line.'

The reality of the televised medal race is that like any Final Race in the Olympics, sailing or otherwise, fans are really only interested in where 'their' athlete finishes. Whether they win a medal, or why they missed out – and maybe if the world record is broken.

In an ideal world all the images and commentary will be live off the water to be broadcast at the time, or repackaged later depending on the needs of the broadcaster. Live coverage could be limited to the medal races only.

'Maybe, you would want the pictures of race finishes being able to be broadcast live.

'The real key to compelling coverage is the ability of a rights broadcaster to obtain material of particular interest to its audience and its audience alone. There is nothing remarkable about this. Major broadcasters will have their own cameras at very many of the venues.

'So, when a USA athlete wins the 100 metres sprint, the US broadcaster will have a live camera of their own alongside the track for the post-finish interviews. There is a lot of competition to have those cameras in place and, being a minnow, New Zealand will only rarely score such a resource at the main stadium.'

'Yachting is different though. I guess that a comparatively few countries will want a camera under their sole control on the race course for the Medal Race days.'

France envisages that a successful host broadcast operation would supply a base level of pictures of racing and make them widely available to rights holders. The host broadcaster should also create a range of daily edited packages which would suit the needs of countries with only a low interest in the yachting events.

'The real effort should go into ensuring that rights holding broadcasters with a genuine home-town interest in the racing are assisted to get the very best coverage for their audience, and their audience alone. '

A change in mind set needed

This requires a mind shift away from making the host broadcaster a priority, to one where the host broadcaster is there to assist the individual broadcasters'

'I do not see this as a big problem because there are a relatively few countries with this level of interest in sailing events. Also this shift in priority might persuade key rights holders such as the US to show more interest, given that they can exert a much greater level of control over the content'

Obviously with the Olympic Games, the results aren’t known before the Games start. There wouldn’t be a lot of point in staging the events if they were!

For Rights Broadcasters this means they have to be light on their feet and able to move their planned coverage around to follow the progress of their emerging heroes, who will hopefully make the Finals of their event, and as a real bonus win an Olympic medal.

The build up and Final itself is what pulls the home audience, hikes the ratings and justifies the expenditure on the Rights payment to the IOC.

Paul France explains: 'With most Olympics you get control of a camera for a certain period of time. If you example you have a potential winner in the 1500metres, you do a deal so that you have control of a camera in the floor of the Olympic stadium so that you can then cut to that camera. All that camera does is stay focussed on your hero. You don’t care about anyone else in the race – just your hero.

'You have to do that same thing in the yachting.'

A packaged solution

His solution to the coverage of the Olympic sailing regatta is to provide several sailing packages each day for the individual broadcasters. First is a standard package, covering the start of every race, for each class, the mark roundings within reason, the first ten boats to finish and some general images of the day.

Then for the Medal race, the broadcasters with competitors in the Medal race have the right to have a camera on the water to follow their competitor. That means ten cameras on the water, and ten camera boats. But for the cost conscious, it is only for the final few days of the regatta, but it would significantly increase the chances of live, or delayed coverage of the medal race – particularly for those who go on to win medals.

'All I’m really saying is that the Olympic Games is a different kettle of fish to the America’s Cup, and most other yachting events.

'It’s nonsense to think that one single feed of images provides any value. One sized shoe doesn’t fit all.

'What you need in the Olympics is a pool of images and commentary that the individual broadcasters can tailor to satisfy the interests of their viewers.'