Almost six months after the Summer Olympics, France Télévisions is providing a new special feature for the Beijing Winter Olympics which start this Wednesday, with a new channel entirely dedicated and called “Beijing 2022 H24”. The group’s sports journalist, Laurent Luyat, explained on the show Media culture
what awaits sports-loving viewers. The entire team deployed on site is first in a health bubble, isolated from the population. “It’s absolutely mind-blowing,” argues one of the headliners of France Télévisions.
A channel entirely dedicated to the Olympic Games available on the internet
“It’s my 12th Olympic Games, I’ve never seen that!” Admits Laurent Luyat, explaining the conditions of arrival and the care of journalists at Beijing airport. Also invited, Stéphane Robert, editor-in-chief of the sports video offer of France televisions, clarified at the microphone of Philippe Vandel the operation of the channel dedicated to the Games, 7 days a week and 24 hours a day and launched this Wednesday with the curling event: “It is visible on the france.tv site, on the francetvsport application and we will only see sport.”
Stéphane Robert continues: “The idea is to really offer complementarity with the offer (on the France 2 and France 3 channels) and to have a maximum of shows for spectators and Internet users.” Among the 460 hours of programs planned, the group will offer live, deferred and “cold programs”, “with the retros in gold, the best medals of the last Olympics”, adds the project manager of this new channel.
On-air from 2 a.m. French time
In total, the organizers of the Games have set up three sites to host the events. “In Beijing will take place all the ice sports, namely skating, curling, ice hockey. A site is specially dedicated to alpine skiing”, indicates Laurent Luyat, in addition to bobsleigh, luge and skeleton. This last discipline is “very spectacular”, says the presenter. A third site, where the plateau is located, will notably host the highly anticipated biathlon events. The TV set will also be on the same model as that of the Tokyo Games.
The live broadcast will take place every day at 2 a.m. French time. In command of the show Olympic Club, broadcast daily at 5.30 p.m., Laurent Luyat will return for an hour to the highlights of the day, such as during the Tokyo Games, with the channel’s journalists and consultants and will receive the French medalists. The host will also be at the head of special issues of Stage 2.