Reporting real-time live action such as the Olympic Games has always involved a unique style of broadcasting. It involves capturing live action as it unravels, where anything can and so often does happen. However, despite today’s advances in technology and interactive TV formats it remains a single channel broadcast approach.

At this year's Olympic Games in Beijing, LIVE, a European Union sponsored research project will test a new set of TV production tools and content formats that attempt to free the viewer from this single channel TV experience.

The LIVE system will make it possible to produce a national Olympic TV programme in which thematically interlinked channels are produced on-demand according to viewer feedback and the unfolding live action.