"The Olympics is a huge event for the BBC," he tells me. "It genuinely is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and particularly when it comes to digital media. I think that's the really exciting thing. This is happening in our own backyard at exactly the moment digital media goes mainstream. We couldn't have picked a better time to do this. And it's also the biggest challenge. We need to make sure we take advantage of this one-off moment - if we don't then we've clearly messed up.

"The thing about sport is that you get the chance to try out lots of other things around other events. The World Cup this year has been a really important test ground for us, it's constantly evolving.

"It's an event that ratchets up the appetite the audience has for consuming a sporting event, and staying in touch with it in all kinds of different ways. Ultimately the BBC is a broadcaster, and people want to be able to follow these sports by sitting in front of the television in a fairly traditional fashion, but what we are finding is that people want new ways to watch as well on top of that. It's not threatening the TV viewing it's reinforcing that relatively linear way of consuming an event.

"Our online operation is clearly at the centre. It's about iterating that service and taking advantage of the technological development and also the audience take-up. There are a couple of really key areas - mobile and IPTV. I've lost count of how many times over the last 10 years people have said this is the year for mobile TV, and we're not there yet, it's still emerging. What's changed in the past couple of years has been around smart phones and apps and that ability for people to be much more connected when they are out and about.

"The capacity that a platform like IPTV gives you is the ability to unleash a lot of the stuff that you've had to hold back. There's stuff we would have loved to have been doing for years, but we haven't had the technology to enable us to do that.

"The big innovation in this area for us is YouView (formerly called Project Canvas), launched by the BBC in partnership with Channel 4, five and ITV and more recently also with BT, Talk Talk and Arqiva.

"It's all about harnessing the internet with TV. It's genuine convergence - you're watching television in your living room but it is being delivered by IP through broadband. The broadcaster can show much more than just linear TV channels, and you get the interactivity that the internet gives you. It's a two-way path. You can also tap into all kinds of social media. You can genuinely interact with other people and with the broadcaster while you are watching TV

"Essentially this is the next generation of Freeview - it's Freeview with added bells and whistles. We can give access to every bit of sport that is happening at the Olympics in a way that we can't on the red button because of the number of streams that we've got."

But what about the likely take-up of this new technology prior to London 2012?



"That to me is the big challenge. When it comes to digital media you've never got enough time. YouView gets launched early 2011, which gives us 18 months to really ramp up the marketing. I would hope that by the time we get to 2012 there would be more than a million people able to access it.

"We know about the way people consume sport, we've seen over the past decade the services that have worked very well, the explosion of the red button around sport - absolutely driven by Wimbledon first and then the Olympics - and we've seen what's happening on the internet through iplayer. We've noticed the peaks and troughs. Those peaks are often delivered around big sporting events so it's a fair bet that 2012 is going to deliver some significant audiences.

"At that point you start to think about what is the most overused word in the Olympics. Legacy - the L word. The reason it is overused is because 2012 cannot just be a big party for two-and-a-half weeks. In terms of digital media there has to be a way of looking at this event to make YouView resonate with the audience so that they can see how else they might be able to use it."

Gallop takes pains to point out that he doesn't consider himself an early adopter when it comes to digital media in his own life.

"I'm not driven by the desire for technology for technology's sake - I don't have to have the newest thing. I'm a sports fan, and a news junkie, I want information, I want to feel connected to it. When I'm out with my kids on a Saturday afternoon I'm still keeping up with my football team (Tottenham Hotspur).

"It's also about catching up with stuff you've missed. iplayer is definitely a piece of digital media that I consume. Then social media - I would consider myself to be particularly interested if not obsessed with Twitter at the moment. I am not a particularly active tweeter, but I am fascinated by what other people are saying, particularly from a broadcasters' perspective.



"I'm intrigued by how you can capture a segment of the audience and the conversations they are having with the huge caveat that the audience on Twitter is demographically very narrow. As it gets bigger and bigger and as whatever is the next Twitter comes along, then it will become more representative."

"The fourth bit for me is the second screen experience. With the BBC's coverage of Formula One we have a main TV service where we try to give as much information about what is happening as we possibly can, but inevitably the camera is on one fixed point in the race.

"Alongside the linear TV coverage we now have 'driver tracker' in conjunction with the Formula One management. They have tracking technology - a map of the circuit - and you can see where every car is in real time. It's an accompaniment to your main broadcast, and increasingly people are starting to use the main screen on the TV and have that on their laptop. That's another way that digital media has improved my viewing experience."

So will second screen experience be a part of the BBC's plans for 2012.

"Some of these things might still be quite niche. We can't be seen to spend a ridiculous amount of money developing a tool for just two-and-a-half weeks. You can imagine some scenarios where it could work really well - sailing for example - and it's already being done by other people."

BBC Sport's current home is the iconic yet slightly jaded BBC Broadcasting House (one of the world's first purpose-built television studios 50 years ago). They move out of London to modern, digitally-enabled buildings in Salford in 2011. The contrast is as stark as the difference between past Olympics broadcast coverage and the digital revolution planned for 2012.

So if Salford is the post-2012 future for BBC Sport, what does Gallop see as the post-2012 future for sports broadcasting?

"We've seen the revolution around HD. We've done trials here working with super HD with partners in Japan and Hong Kong and it's incredible. You have screens the size of a large wall and it is like looking at something in real life. You are looking at footage of a basketball match and you can pick out everything about the people in the crowd in the distance - it's quite distracting.

"We're blown away by what it looks like but is that how the audience want to follow sport? It's the same with 3D - as a public sector broadcaster we have to be sure that that is really what people want, as you are talking about significant investment here.

"The talk about the 'digital Olympics' and that coronation soundbite - I don't want to make that sound like something absolutely revolutionary, as if your life is never going to be the same again. This is about harnessing what digital media can do and something that feels relatively gradual. It's iterative. Science fiction is about looking at going round in jetpacks and I can safely predict that we won't be going round on jetpacks for 2012 - that is one of the few predictions I am prepared to make."

As I left I did wonder what the spectators at the first London Olympics in 1908, watching events at the White City Stadium just a stone's throw away from where BBC Broadcasting House is now, would think. It would be every bit as impossible for them to comprehend how viewers around the world will consume and interact with the third London Olympics in 2012 as it is for Ben Gallop to see himself flying around on a jetpack.

Louisa Gummer is the social networking manager for insidethegames

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