From the playoffs to the much-anticipated Grey Cup, every Canadian Football League game for the next five years will be broadcast by CTVglobemedia’s TSN — on multiple distribution platforms including TSN, TSN HD and TSN.ca.

As part of TSN’s new five-year deal with the CFL, which commences on June 26, the channel will air Montreal at Hamilton and B.C. at Calgary. It will be the first time since 1977 that an opening game is held at Hamilton’s Ivor Wynne Stadium.

New to the broadcast team this year are two-time Grey Cup champion Duane Forde and sideline reporter Sara Orlesky. Alongside play-by-play announcer Rod Black, Forde will act as a game analyst and reveal his all-Canadian team, while Orlesky will report the latest football news on the marquee night of the week in the 12th season of Wendy’s Friday Night Football.

Enhancing the production elements will be an HD robo-cam and upgraded telestrator. The robo-cam will give viewers a look at the entire field, while the telestrator will aid TSN analysts in identifying players on the field using a pop-up name option.

As a season-opener leading up to the games, TSN will produce and televise a one-hour CFL on TSN Preview Show on June 23 — hosted by Dave Randorf, and featuring analysts Chris Schultz, Matt Dunigan and Jock Climie.

The CFL Playoff game/broadcast schedule will be announced in the coming weeks.

In other TSN news, Sunday’s U.S. Open Championship coverage raked in some record-breaking audience levels. The national average audience for the first four rounds hit 361,000 viewers, a 43% boost over last year’s overall average of 253,000 viewers. That’s a 6% increase over the previous high of 341,000 in 2000.

The fourth-round coverage attracted 700,000 viewers, the highest U.S. Open final-round numbers in TSN’s history. Audience levels were up 26% compared to last year, and up 19% over the previous high in 2005.

The Sunday telecast peaked at one million viewers during the last hour and a half of play, as Tiger Woods tied Rocco Mediate with a 12-foot birdie putt on the 18th green.

Woods won his third U.S. Open trophy on Monday.

From Media in Canada