Pixart wins major Olympic contract

Atlanta, ga: Two Montreal firms are among the first victors of the 1996 Olympic Games. Productions Pixart and its wholly owned subsidiary Pixtelcom have signed commercial contracts to provide equipment and technical services to three major French television networks at the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, ga.

The deals with TF1, France’s largest commercial broadcaster, France 2 and France 3 are worth an estimated $7 million.

Pixart president Jacquelin Bouchard says the company hopes to sign additional clients for the ’96 Games and is negotiating service deals with as many as four or five other European broadcasters.

During a June 15 press tour of the Olympic installation site in Atlanta, hosted by Marc Boucher, Quebec delegation director in Atlanta, Bouchard said the French networks’ lack of familiarity with North American ntsc standards and the numbing quality of communications between American technicians and the French broadcasters helped secure the deal for the Montreal company.

Pixart has serviced similar events for TF1 in the past, albeit on a much smaller scale, including the World Cup of Soccer in Dallas last year and the Grand Prix Molson du Canada, the annual Formula 1 car race held in Montreal.

The logistics and engineering design for the Atlanta Games installation will be supplied by Tele-Blitz International, a joint venture set up by Pixart and a CFCF Inc. group company.

Hire more staff

Pixart special advisor Marc Parent says Pixart and Pixtelcomm will hire some 75 technicians, sound engineers and studio dops for the event, which will require an impressive equipment inventory of over 100 vtrs, 20 studio cameras, routing and switching equipment, 12 editing studios, and at least three fully equipped mobiles.

The equipment will be transported from Canada to Atlanta for installation by July 6, 1996. Denis Harrison of Tele-Blitz is responsible for equipment acquisition.

The Quebec group will rout and edit eng feeds from their European client crews, the three Pixart-managed on-site studios and from the European Broadcasting Union crews which are providing the general pool feed.

Pixart has grown at a 15% clip in recent years and is reporting revenues of close to $13 million for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1995.

In programming, Pixart and a joint-venture company called Productions jbm supply magazine, children’s and dramatic programming to Radio-Quebec, Radio-Canada, Canal D and Canal Famille.

The company is also undertaking its first foray into feature films this month, and Bouchard says he’s seriously looking at coventure possibilities in Asia.

Canada’s broadcasters at the Summer Games, cbc and Radio-Canada, will establish their own technical services infrastructure. The Games run July 19 to Aug. 4.