This year’s coverage of the Paris Summer Olympic Games is promising to be accessible to more viewers of all abilities than ever before, featuring more hours of closed captioned and audio described content as well as improved digital content accessibility.
NBCUniversal will make captioning available for all Olympic and Paralympic events airing across NBC’s broadcast and cable networks, including USA Network, CNBC, and the Olympic Channel. NBC will also provide captioning for all digital livestreams with commentary across Peacock, NBCSports.com, and the NBC Sports app.
Audio description will be available for all coverage on NBC, including daytime, primetime, and late night, opening and closing ceremonies on NBC, USA Network, CNBC and the Olympic Channel, and Peacock’s Gold Zonewhip-around show.
For the Paralympic Games, NBC Sports will provide live audio description for all broadcast and cable programming, including those aired outside primetime hours, as well as on all simulstreams. All Paralympics coverage available on Xfinity On Demand will also include audio description.
An Experienced Olympic Captioning Partner
VITAC, the largest provider of captioning products and services in North America, is no stranger to captioning the biggest events in sports ─ we’ve handled Super Bowls, World Cups, and Stanley Cups, tennis and golf championships, and regular season NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, and NCAA games.
The Paris Games mark the 15th Olympics captioned by VITAC, including, most recently, the Olympic Games in Beijing (2022), Tokyo (2020), PyeongChang (2018), Rio (2016), Sochi (2014), London (2012), Vancouver (2010), Beijing (2008), and Athens (2004).
Nearly all our departments are involved in preparing for the Summer Olympic Games. Starting July 26, we will begin a two-week surge in captioning as we caption over 2,100 hours of Olympics programming in English and Spanish across NBCUniversal’s family of networks as well as an additional 425 hours of French captions for broadcasters in Canada.
Our preparation and coordination for the Summer Games started months ago with meetings to determine networks, hours, and schedules. Internally, we’ve been working nonstop to ensure equipment and captioners are ready for the games and testing primary, back-up, and redundancy scenarios as well as IP connections and audio lines.
Our captioners will be on air around the clock for the duration of the games, doing their best to ensure that viewers see the most accurate captions possible.
Production coordinators will keep an eye on Olympic schedules and work with our broadcast partners to create prep materials for captioners to use to improve accuracy while writing live captions on the fly. These materials include, among other things, the names of athletes (both those competing this year and those who competed in the past — essentially anyone that could be referenced on the air), historical data, and scripts for the opening and closing ceremonies.
Once the games begin, coordinators work scheduling teams to ensure captioners are slotted for the events and monitor network feeds to make sure captions are displaying correctly across all broadcasts.
Though the Summer Olympics certainly will captivate much of the television audience, our normal captioning activities don’t stop when the Olympics begin. Competing networks still will be broadcasting programs that need captions of their own, and captioners not on the air for the Olympics will be working to cover our regularly scheduled programming.
How to Watch
The Paris Olympic Games are scheduled for July 26-Aug. 11.
The NBC broadcast network and streaming service Peacock will be NBCUniversal’s primary platforms for its coverage of events. NBC and Peacock will present live coverage of the opening ceremony on Friday, July 26, beginning at Noon ET. Telemundo will provide Spanish-language coverage beginning at 1 PM ET. Primetime coverage will begin at 7:30 PM ET/PT on NBC and Peacock.
Click here for more scheduling information.