Olympic games: What's in it for me?

BEIJING --- As BOCOG and BOB welcome thousands of official accredited media organizations to the latest Olympic planning meetings, outside the rarified atmosphere of IOC sports circles something of a scramble for production resources is breaking out in Beijing and other cities.

Just as there are not enough hotel rooms in Beijing to accommodate the expected tourists, there is going to be a shortage of just about everything needed by thousands of broadcasters and producers arriving to produce their 'live from Beijing' lifestyle and current affairs shows.

Although the early birds are already well advanced, it is only now that the majority of media organizations without permanent presence in China are waking up to the need to plan strategically for their non-accredited operations in Beijing next year.

Beyond the obvious "apartment overlooking the Bird's Nest", everything from advanced technical staff to basic production and editing equipment is going to be in short supply. Outside the specialist media requirements, the massive corporate hospitality industry building around the Games means that non-official media will be fighting to secure the services of reliable support services.

According to long established production coordinators such as Chinalive, one of the most common media requests recently has been for "teams of English-speaking drivers who know Beijing backwards and have top of the range people carriers". If you live in Beijing, you will know the difficulty of fulfilling the first request.

For latecomers, it might seem logical to look at some of the cities around Beijing, but this also has risks. With stringent restrictions on movement for the duration of the Games, it is unlikely that cars with non-Beijing plates will be allowed inside the city at all.  

Given that official foreign media, Chinese media, official sponsors, Chinese corporations and Beijing government departments are all higher in the pecking order than non-official non-resident foreign media, there is a certain inevitability about what will happen. There will be some media organizations left with egg on their faces come August 2008 and that means production heads will roll.