Olympic News

London 03.07.2012: The DIA Group’s The Crewing Company (TCC) and Alias Hire are readying themselves for London 2012 having secured contracts worth hundreds of thousands of pounds from broadcasters covering the Olympic and Paralympic Games. 

 

The Hackney Wick-based firms are supplying crew and kit to various domestic and international broadcasters for both events with big names such as ABC TV Sports and Events already on their roster.  

 

The Crewing Company will serve up crew with a variety of different skillsets including VTR managers, ingest operators, sound assistants and make-up artists. The highly experienced craft and technical talent will be placed not just in the Olympic village but all around the country including the various stadiums that are playing host to the Olympic football tournament.  

 

At the same time, Alias Hire has taken on more staff for the duration of the games, is extending its opening hours and will be supplying tape, memory cards and other media stock thanks to a deal struck with CCK Media Technologies. During the Games the company is also housing representatives and kit from audio equipment manufacturer Sennheiser. 

 

To be fully prepared for the world’s biggest multi-sport event both companies have had to be flexible, said TCC joint managing director Stuart Hatton: 

 

“Many of the roles we’ve been filling have been outside our usual area of expertise, especially the engineering, transmission and playout types however this means we now have an excellent new division of freelancers on the books who we intend to continue working with well beyond London 2012.”

 

Hatton added that while he and his company have scoured the world to find the right people, he’s been very keen to keep it local too. 

 

“We have signed some guys from across Europe plus Australia and South Africa,” he said. “But wherever possible we are trying to use crew from the east end of London.”

 

Mike Smith, the managing director of Alias Hire, welcomed the arrival of Sennheiser even though sharing space with them will make things a little cramped in the company HQ. 

 

He said: “Sennheiser will have stock on site for spares and new equipment and there will be two dedicated Sennheiser engineers based with us who will be able to offer a repair service for their own and additional broadcasters. It’s going to be pretty rammed in our unit which is very exciting.”

 

Sennheiser’s temporary “drop-in centre” will offer repairs and servicing for wired and wireless equipment, a re-tuning service for radio frequency (RF) equipment, RF venue site surveys, frequency calculation and emergency on-site support.

 

Even before the Olympics and Paralympics have begun TCC and Alias Hire have worked on London 2012 related projects, providing kit and crew for commercials, press calls and sporting events held at the new Olympic venues such as the BMX track and the aquatics centre. 

 

And while both companies still have capacity and slots available for anyone wanting to use their services for coverage of London 2012 other events are also on the horizon. 

 

“We are already thinking about the Commonwealth games in Glasgow and how we can plug in to that,” concluded Hatton. “We have grown from 500 to 700 registered freelancers since January. Our association with the Games has also generated a huge interest in new talent signing with us, with 1400 applicants between January and June. That is double what we received during the same period in 2011.”

 

The value of confirmed Olympics and Paralympics-related TCC business is £250,000 but with the addition of ad hoc and last minute business, this figure is likely to rise in the run up to the Games.