November 9, 2010

Olympic digital coverage earns Gemini award

Deemed Outstanding Technical Achievement

A radical vision that was conceived five years ago by Ivan Fecan, President and CEO, CTVglobemedia and CEO, CTV Inc., allowed the country to embrace the 2010 Winter Games like never before and led to a record seven Gemini Awards for Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium for its revolutionary cross-platform coverage of Vancouver 2010.  The awards were presented last night in Toronto at the 25 th annual Gemini Awards celebrating excellence in English Language television.

“It takes a dedicated team across all departments to produce an event of this magnitude.  We were 1,400 strong in Vancouver, with each and every member of our group contributing to a new standard for Olympic Games coverage.  We are both humbled and proud to receive this recognition,” said Adam Ashton, President, Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium.  “It was a responsibility and our privilege to share the athletes’ stories to all Canadians, and we look forward to doing it all again at London 2012.”

The seven awards include a nod for Outstanding Technical Achievement in Digital Media.  This special award was presented to Alon Marcovici, Vice-President of Digital Media and Research, and his digital team in mid-October for breaking new ground with their unprecedented digital media coverage and consumer access to broadcast, live event and original content at www.CTVOlympics.ca and www.RDSolympiques.ca.  

Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium faced the challenge of presenting the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games to the Canadian public like never before. Its Digital Media team was tasked with producing a news and information portal which, for the first time in Olympic history, broadcast every second of the Winter Games. To do so, the team created an immersive, HD-quality live streaming player which enabled Canadians to pause, replay and rewind the live broadcast while being guided to key moments in time through an interactive and data-embedded video player. This live video player was key to the website’s overwhelming success. In the period from February 12th to 28th, the website delivered record results for interactive and online viewing in Canada: 215 million page views to 12.3 million unique visitors, with 28.5 million videos viewed. For its innovation in the realm of live online sports consumption in Canada, the CTVOlympics.ca/RDSolympiques.ca live event video player represents a huge leap in user experience and technical innovation in the Canadian marketplace. The Outstanding Technical Achievement Award in Digital Media is supported by Switch United.