By: Korie Marshall
For the first time in history, people across Canada will be able to experience the excitement of the Canada Winter Games through a daily broadcast on nation-wide television, with the help of our own VCTV.
“Canada Games TV Today” is a 30-minute online show that will be produced daily during the upcoming Winter Games in Prince George from Feb. 13th to March 2nd. The show will provide viewers across Canada with daily Games highlights and behind-the-scenes athlete profiles. It is a partnership between the 2015 Canada Winter Games, ViaSport British Columbia, the British Columbia Institute of Technology, and Destination BC.
Canada Games TV Today was intended to be an online only show, but when Gord Peters, station manager for VCTV, saw a press release about the upcoming project, he contacted the organizers to see if they had a broadcaster. They didn’t.
“I said ‘Did you know that we have Canada-wide distribution now through Bell and Telus satellite networks?’ and they said ‘Really?’ It’s in Prince George, it’s part of our region, we’d love to carry the show.” Peters says it took a while to get authorization from Canada Games and ViaSport BC, but the agreement was announced on Jan. 30th, just two weeks from the start of the Games.
“It’s not like CTV or CBC where they broadcast 12 hours a day of Olympic coverage, but it will be a 30-minute recap
of the day’s events and profiles of athletes, that sort of thing,” says Peters. He says ViaSport BC will make their online version available to the public at 5:00 pm every weekday, and VCTV will mirror that. VCTV will also rebroadcast the show the next day, probably around 10 or 11 am. There are 13 episodes all together says Peters.
“It will be exciting for us, a little tiny broadcaster,” says Peters. “We don’t have an exclusive agreement with them, but it’s less than two weeks to the games, it is unlikely they will have another broadcaster come online at this late date, so we could very well be the exclusive Canadian broadcast distributor.”
“We’re very excited about it,” says Peters, noting there will be some profiles on area attractions on the show as well. “If people want to come up to the Prince George area, they have to come through Valemount.”
“This is the first time in history that all Canadians will be able to witness the excitement of the Canada Winter Games,” says ViaSport CEO and Canada Games alumna Cathy Priestner Allinger in a news release. “ViaSport means ‘through sport’, and this show is one of the ways that we are helping to inspire people and energize communities via sport. We are thrilled that Valemount Community TV has offered to extend the reach of this show through its broadcast channels.”
“VCTV provides great community coverage, and this partnership with ViaSport means we can showcase our beautiful region and the 2015 Winter Games spirit to a much wider audience,” says Prince George-Valemount MLA Shirley Bond. “This initiative is also providing a hands-on skills training opportunity for BCIT students, who will learn the tricks of the trade as they contribute to this exceptional programming. Thanks to Gord Peters for always working hard to ensure that VCTV is something we can all be proud of.”
The show will be broadcast in both official languages on local channel 7 and on channel 653 on the Bell and Telus satellite networks across Canada.
VCTV is a project of the Valemount Entertainment Society, a non-profit organization set up in 1987 with the main purpose of providing rebroadcasting services for video and radio to the area. Along with VCTV, the society rebroadcasts six TV stations and three radio stations, including an emergency broadcast system on 104.1 FM. VCTV reaches 2 million subscribers across Canada on the Bell and Telus satellite networks.
