‘It never loses money, but I think it used to make a lot more money than it does now.’

Doug Sellars, executive producer of Olympic Programming for cbc, says when it comes to live sports on tv the competition is getting tougher, not just on the field or on the ice, but on the dial.

‘There’s a ton of choice out there, not only on tv but out beyond that. Costs for rights have been soaring, and the popularity of your broadcast is always tied to public opinion. Not too long ago the Blue Jays won back-to-back World Series titles, but ratings are way down after their performance in the last couple years.’

On the upside, cbc still has a strong grip on lucrative and prestigious Olympic coverage, and this year the Academy has given the producers an opportunity to get recognized for days one through 16 of the Centennial Olympic Games.

The Academy says the reason for parceling out live sports coverage from other sports-related programming is that it was simply time. It wasn’t making much sense to compare, say, Hockey Night in Canada to a news feature about a sports figure.

Although there’s general applause from this year’s nominees in the brand new category (officially called Best Live Sporting Event), there are a few minor gripes. While Sellars thinks it might not go far enough (‘Of course, we think there should be a night of sports awards all its own’), spokespeople from both other nominations – tsn’s coverage of the last Canadiens game at the Montreal Forum and ctv’s coverage of the Chicago Bulls in Toronto to face the Raptors – take some issue with the fact that they’re up against Olympic coverage, a behemoth event in terms of sports on the tube.

‘It’s like comparing a grape to a basketball,’ says Gord Cutler, senior producer for hockey at tsn. ‘While the Geminis are going in the right direction here, it’s ridiculous to have the Olympics included. We have one broadcast of a single game up against 16 days of international coverage.’

What all nominees do agree on, however, is that live sports coverage in Canada is grade a, even for events beyond what’s considered traditional viewing for Canadian sports fans, like basketball.

Jeffrey Mather, producer of the nba on ctv, says his network has been welcomed into the fold by the u.s.-based nba, and he’s taken advantage of invites to visit basketball broadcasting on Turner and nbc.

‘We’re improving every week, although it’s hard to get into a rhythm when we only produce 15 broadcasts of our own every season,’ says Mather.

And then there are the areas where Canadian sports broadcasters reign supreme, like hockey. Case in point: cbc, home of Hockey Night in Canada, has been invited to be the host broadcaster for hockey at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Japan.

‘Canada is full of great tv sportspeople,’ says tsn’s Cutler, who has also produced for nbc and Fox in the u.s. ‘But when you’re comparing Canadian coverage to u.s. coverage, Americans go for more glitz and sizzle. And you can’t even compare the two markets, it’s not even like apples and oranges.’

Interestingly, no one seems to be at all worried about the status of Canadian sports on Canadian tv, not even in the face of the u.s. nets and espn. They agree that there’s a huge appetite for Canadian sport, but cbc’s Sellars wonders if there’s enough to sustain another 24-hour service like ctv’s S3 proposal: ‘They’d have to concentrate their live programming in primetime, so you’d probably see some peculiar programming in the other hours.’

And as for cbc turfing sports all together, as some reports have recommended, Sellars says he wouldn’t bet on it.

‘We’re the one department in here specifically to make money,’ he says, ‘and we know that.

‘Having access to our own sports on tv is very important to Canadians,’ says Sellars. ‘What else unites the country like watching the World Cup? In what other country would you find a million people watching curling on a Saturday afternoon?’

Not in the u.s., that’s for sure. Maybe if the rock glowed