The United Kingdom is getting ready for the 2012 Olympic Games, which promises to be one of the biggest events the country has staged. It also will involve one of the most complex, multi-layered broadcast efforts ever seen in the United Kingdom. While Olympic Broadcast Services (OBS) is in charge of the overall broadcasting effort, the BBC will play a huge role in providing innovative coverage of these games. The IBC E-DAILY spoke to Roger Mosey, BBC’s director of London 2012, about the U.K. broadcaster’s plans.

Mosey: I think the biggest single pledge we have made is that there will be 6,000 hours of broadcast coverage. For the first time, we want to make all 6,000 hours available to our audiences. We will have a service on BBC One, but then will offer viewers a choice of what they want to watch. This is more than double the available content which was available in Beijing, so satellite is one of the most important distribution mechanisms of content, and we will have a number of interactive streams on top of our regular channels.

Mosey: We shipped more video online on the first day in Beijing than we did in whole of the Athens Olympics, so you can see that exponential growth. I think the key challenge for us, and satellite is an important part of that, is how we navigate people through that. You can give people the main choice, but then if you have 22 to 23 feeds, how do you navigate people through that, plus the ability to draw up archive as well as the previous day’s headlines and highlights. That navigation challenge is a very big one for us.

Mosey: No. The host broadcaster brings everything in HD. I think in the BBC’s case, we will have more HD than before. By then BBC1 will be simulcast in HD

Mosey: There won’t be a BBC 3-D TV channel in 2012. I think you will see limited 3-D coverage of these Olympics. I think with 24 feeds coming in, it is not feasible or practical in terms of broadcast infrastructure to bring that in. I think it is quite right that the priority will be HD and 2-D. It would be shame if you did not capture some of this in 3-D. We certainly hope to facilitate some 3-D coverage on big screens or audiences in pavilions, but I don’t think 3-D is going to be a big in-house experience in 2012.

Mosey: Our position is that we would like to capture some of the Games in 3-D, but it is not going to be a mainstream proposition. Our priority is to bring content in 2-D HD. The key thing is content distribution, so for us, we have put the distribution pledge on the top of our list, not the 3-D pledge.