LONDON — With less than two weeks to go before the Olympic Games, hordes of competitors are pouring into London from across the globe and limbering up — but they're not athletes.
Promising coverage on an unprecedented scale and record-breaking use of social media, the 21,000 journalists, photographers, cameramen and technicians will in fact be twice as numerous as the athletes they are covering.
The BBC, Britain's official Olympic broadcaster, will offer up 2,500 hours of live coverage and "more online and mobile services than ever before."
"This will be the first truly 'Digital Olympics,' with the BBC offering viewers the most comprehensive coverage of an Olympic Games ever," the public broadcaster said.
With 765 staff accredited for the Games, the BBC's team will be a third bigger than the one it sent to the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
The broadcaster's Facebook page will stream the TV coverage live for the first time, and in a second innovation, viewers with 3D televisions will be able to watch athletes lurching off the screen into their living rooms.
The BBC will show the opening and closing ceremonies in 3D along with nightly highlights. The men's 100 meter finals will be the only sporting event shown live in the format.
NBC, the Games' broadcaster in the United States, is also planning to air more than 200 hours of 3D coverage with a next-day delay.
The US giant is sending a 2,700-strong team to London to produce at least 5,500 hours of coverage across several channels. And in another first, its Web site is set to broadcast every sporting event live.
"This will be the most comprehensively covered event in television history," said Mark Lazarus, NBC Sports Group chairman.
Of the international news agencies, Agence France-Presse will deploy a multilingual team of around 150 text, photo and video journalists to the British capital, plus 30 journalists from its German subsidiary SID.