Keeping the lights on

After getting through a weekend of no church due to heavy sleet in Texas, I was drawn to the disaster recovery processes at the Olympics even before the opening ceremony.

On the snowy evening of February 4, 2026, the eyes of the sporting world turned to Cortina d’Ampezzo for the inaugural mixed doubles curling matches of the 2026 Olympic Winter Games. The atmosphere was electric. Yet, just minutes into the competition, before the Opening Ceremony had even taken place, the venue plunged into uncertainty. A power outage “energy-related issue”, halted play, dimmed the lights, and cut heat to the nearby media center.

But if you are a broadcast engineer, church technical director, or live event producer, it was a profound case study in resilience.

For the casual TV viewer, it was a brief, perhaps amusing, pause. But if you are a broadcast engineer, church technical director, or live event producer, it was a profound case study in resilience. The interruption lasted only three minutes in the curling venue, but it delayed men’s luge training by a full half-hour and tested the nerves of every technician on site. The critical takeaway, however, was not the failure, but the recovery. Athletes kept moving to stay warm; fans cheered when the lights returned; the broadcast adapted.

Anatomy of an Interruption

To understand how to prevent failure, you must first understand your systems.

The outage was not localized to a single breaker. It affected the curling stadium and the nearby media center, which lost both lighting and heating capabilities.

It took about three minutes for curling, but thirty minutes for luge.

The difference in system recovery times is because curling just had LED lighting, while the luge track, with its complex safety sensors and timing gates, required a longer reboot and verification process.

The loss of heat in the media center emphasizes that backup plans must prioritize human comfort and safety, not just signal transmission. In a church setting, this might translate to a storm knocking out HVAC during a summer service; the technical plan must account for the environment in the room as much as the content on the screen.

DANTE Audio

The 2026 Winter Olympics broadcast relies heavily on Dante (Digital Audio Network Through Ethernet), the industry standard for Audio-over-IP. NBC Sports, for example, is using it to transport immersive audio (Dolby Atmos). When the power blips, the network is the first thing to notice. A robust Dante network is the difference between a failover without silence and a 5-minute system reboot.

Three things that matter to a reliable audio system in the event of failures:

Clock - The Heartbeat of the Network

The problem when the leader fails, the network must elect a new “Leader Clock”. If the device that was the leader (say, the FOH console) reboots, all audio may mute while looking for a new leader.

The solution: In the Dante Controller software, you must check the “Preferred Leader” box for your most stable, UPS-backed device (usually the main core or a dedicated master clock). This rigs the election, ensuring the network always looks to the most reliable device for timing.

Network redundancy

Dante offers a feature called “Glitch-Free Redundancy,” but it is widely misunderstood.

The Myth: “I just plug both ports into the switch for backup.”

The Reality: NEVER plug the Primary and Secondary Dante ports into the same switch.

The Correct Topology: You must build two physically separate networks, with separate power and cable paths.

• Network Blue (Primary): All “Primary” ports connect to Switch A.

• Network Red (Secondary): All “Secondary” ports connect to Switch B.

The Dante card sends the exact same audio packet down both cables simultaneously. The receiver listens to the Primary. If a packet is lost or the cable is cut, it instantly grabs the packet from the Secondary line. There is zero audio loss. This is “packet-level redundancy.”

People

I’ll talk about this more tomorrow, but the training, planning, and understanding of your system can’t happen during an outage. It takes time, knowledge, and the technical expertise to recover.

Switching between the creative and the technical at a moment’s notice is what separates you from the herd. While everyone has their unique giftings, learn to lean into yours, as well as those around you. Understand how your crew work when stress hits a high, and always remember to take a breath and celebrate the end of the day!

Part 2

Read Part 2: Olympic sized preparedness, where I talk about discipline in sports, broadcast, and church.

In the mean-time, let’s enjoy the games and get ready for the bussiest sports weekend of the year!