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Record $153 million paid for broadcast rights

Local radio station will change its tune now that parent company has won rights to broadcast 2010 Winter Olympics

Mountain FM will have a new sound as the 2010 Winter Olympic Games approach.

No longer will it continuously play musical hits of the ’80s, ’90s and today, rather it will be airing stories about athletes hitting the slopes, Games spectators hitting the Sea to Sky corridor, and locals finding their way around the event.

The proposed change follows the awarding of Canadian TV, radio and Internet rights for the 2010 and 2012 Olympic Games to Bell Globemedia, in partnership with Rogers Communications, earlier this week in Lausanne, Switzerland.

"The general approach will be that the seven (radio) stations from Vancouver up to Whistler, for the period of the Games and a period of time before the Games, will have their programming focused around the Olympics," said Tony Viner, president and CEO of Rogers Media from Switzerland.

"… Does that mean they might move away from a music format? Potentially.

"It really is a no brainer that if you have radio stations in the middle of the Olympic activity they are going to be Olympic radio stations."

Rogers owns Mountain FM and several other stations in the Lower Mainland, including Jack FM, CKWX 1130, Clear FM and Star FM.

Paul Fisher, vice-president of Rogers Vancouver said all the stations would be working to reflect what their communities need to know while Vancouver and Whistler are hosting the 2010 Games.

"We will adjust our programming to suit the needs of the whole Vancouver community as well as Squamish and Whistler," he said.

"We don’t see this as a change in format because Mountain is a community station. So all we are doing is enhancing some of the community coverage."

The Bell Globemedia bid of US $153 million ended the CBC’s 12-year run – from Atlanta in 1996 through Beijing in 2008 – as Canadian Olympic broadcaster.

"We’re very disappointed, no question," Nancy Lee, head of CBC Sports, was reported as saying.

"We think we put in a great bid. We worked long on it. It was a good bid. We couldn't have worked harder on it and we were just clearly outbid on it."

While CBC has released no set figure it’s believed their bid came in at between US$90 and $100 million.

Part of the attraction of the Bell Globemedia-Rogers partnership was the array of broadcast options it presented the IOC. Bell Globemedia owns the CTV Network, TSN, the French station RDS, CTV NewsNet and Outdoor Life Network. Rogers has the Sportsnet channels, two multi-cultural TV stations and a network of radio stations.

The CBC’s partners are believed to have included Telus, Canwest Global and The Score.

IOC president Jacques Rogge, in announcing the wining bid of $153million US, said it was an increase of 124 per cent on the $73 million the CBC paid for the 2006 Winter Games in Torino and the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing.

Bell Globemedia offered US$90 million for the 2010 Games alone and US $63 million for the 2012 Summer Games, another high profile event with a quintet of glamorous cities bidding to host it. The Bell Globemedia deal marks the first time the price tag of the Winter Games has exceeded that of the Summer Games.

In offering an explanation as to why Bell Globemedia offered such a large purse president and chief executive officer of the organization Ivan Fecan said: "We certainly believe that 2010 will be the biggest sporting event in Canada this decade, it may well be the biggest event this decade.

"We also think there is a huge amount of interest from viewers and advertisers for 2010 and so we put on thinking caps and sharpened pencils and decided we wanted to make a strategic but responsible bid."

The consortium expects to have 22 hours of Olympics on CTV daily with 4,000 hours planned overall on all media providers.

There will also be Internet streaming, although details on that were vague as Bell Globemedia works on technology.

"It is a little bit early to determine how we are going to exploit those rights," said Fecan who is also CEO of CTV Inc. "But I think given the composition of the family at Bell and Rogers… we have a great interest in the Internet rights.

"We really wanted to make this not just the most extensive coverage but the most inclusive coverage ever attempted in Canada."

The media group has also committed to covering even more amateur sports and financially supporting Canadian athletes.

This commitment was an important part of the winning strategy said Rogge.

"Vancouver needs to finish (in first place) like the Norwegians did in Lillehammer in 1994 and the U.S. did in Salt Lake in 2002," said Rogge.

"That is the reason we paid great attention in studying the bids, to be sure the federations and athletes would have proper support, and we are assured that that is the case here."

Dave Cobb, senior vice president of revenue, marketing and communications for the Vancouver Organizing Committee, said the IOC’s choice is a good deal for the 2010 Games.

"It is certainly higher than it has been and I think it is an endorsement for the Games," said Cobb from Vancouver.

"I think it will be great for our project and we will have a great partner."

The deal already puts VANOC ahead of the TV rights revenues of US$348 million outlined in the bid book.

Cobb said VANOC was working on its business plan and looking ahead to its meeting with the IOC later this year about revenue sharing from the TV rights.

Traditionally the IOC has shared almost 17 per cent of the TV revenues with the organizing committee of the Winter Games. But the IOC is currently revisiting this arrangement so VANOC won’t know for several months exactly how much money it will receive.

The IOC is just starting to negotiate TV rights deals with Australia, and then it will turn to Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East.