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An Interview with Jean-Pierre Oudaert, Eurovision's Supervisor for Special Operations
In 1956, Eurovision transmitted the first pictures of the Winter Olympic Games in Cortina d'Ampezzo. Since then, the world's greatest sporting events have been distributed via Eurovision to its member broadcasters and customers. In this month's edition of the Beijing Briefing, we meet Jean-Pierre Oudaert, Special Events Administrator for Eurovision's coverage of the Beijing Olympics. |
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Jean-Pierre, tell us about the changes you've seen over the years with Eurovision's network for the Olympic games.
J-P O: "The changes are incredible, even in comparison to Athens, which wasjust four years ago. In 2004, which at the time was a huge event for us, EBU offered five multilateral signals, three unilaterals, 40 dedicated and seven back-up circuits. We established 55 distinct simultaneous circuits.
"What that means in practice is much more capacity and the ability to offer member broadcasters and clients much greater flexibility. Of course, all of this capacity is in response to member and customer demand."
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Can you compare Beijing to Athens?
J-P O: "For Beijing, it's more multilaterals and, of course the added challenge of HDTV. This time around we are offering 12 multilaterals in SD (standard definition) and 2 in HD (high definition), as well as 4 unilaterals in SD and 1 in HD. HD is the way forwards now and we are leading the way with this technology. This time around we also have three spare paths and 90 dedicated circuits out from the International Broadcast Centre (IBC), plus 43 dedicated circuits into the IBC, 32 dedicated Ethernet circuits and 20 E1 dedicated circuits."
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And what would you say is the biggest challenge?
J-P O: "The challenge is the scope. It's a truly tremendous operation. Every Olympics is a challenge. I would say that Beijing, with all of the technical requirements and expertise demanded, is about two and a half times more important - in terms of professional challenge - than Athens was and, at the time, of course, we thought Athens was a tremendous technical feat."
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How many hours worth of transmissions will you be able to handle in Beijing?
J-P O: "The EBU's technical configuration will allow for 2,500 transmission hours. Roughly one quarter of transmissions will be done via satellite and the remaining three quarters will be via fibre. It's going to be an absolutely tremendous operation."
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And finally, Jean-Pierre, what are you most excited about with these
Olympic Games?
J-P O: "Actually, I am retiring after Beijing! So, to tell you the truth, what I'm most excited about is seeing us through this extremely challenging event and then moving on to the next chapter of my life!"
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