Canada failed to own the podium in Vancouver, but the CTV/Rogers-led Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium succeeded in owning the sofa.

And how.

Canadian viewership for the 2010 Winter Olympics smashed previous TV audience records, including 26.5 million hockey-mad Canadians, or 80% of the population, viewing some part of the men’s gold medal game as it aired live on nine TV networks nationwide in eight languages, according to BBM Canada data.

But now that the Vancouver Games torch has been snuffed, the big question remains: How does a TV network and its varied tentacles make money off expensive Olympic rights?

Despite dazzling viewership from home soil advantage and their 360 online push, both the CTV/Rogers-led consortium and NBC lost money in Vancouver. Rick Brace, CTV president of revenue, business planning and sports, now insists CTV will break even after the London 2012 Summer Games, which the consortium will also broadcast.

But the beginning of wisdom in Olympics coverage is to recognize that these are the Olympics. For example, the Olympics are sold to advertisers on the total number of viewers that watch the Games, and not on segmented demos as in primetime viewing. So we learnt a new audience metric in Vancouver: CUME, or the cumulative TV, radio, online and print reach.

What else did we learn in Vancouver?

Despite fast-emerging online options, Canadians still value their TV sets, especially with the Games in HD. TV’s broad reach meant viewership spiked during key live events, including the gold medal hockey games and the opening and closing ceremonies in Vancouver.

At the same time, Canadians went online to the CTVOlympics.ca and RDSolympiques.ca video offerings as never before to watch and re-watch Olympic moments live or on-demand – and all in HD.

Internet connectivity meant peak viewing for online video occurred before the opening and closing ceremonies, and in the hours after both events when viewers went online to relive the best TV moments. Here the strategy was the CTVOlympics.ca video player enabling the CTV/Rogers-led consortium to offer live Olympic coverage to as big an audience as possible for advertisers.

All of which makes the Olympics no simple TV package to value as you negotiate for rights with the IOC, and one where the value of digital and other assorted rights remains uncertain.

The issue is: What is going to drive growth for, and profits from, Olympic viewership in the future? Will it still be the TV set as Canadians continue to defer to the biggest screen in their home, or will growth eventually come online as TV Everywhere services like Apple, Hulu and Vuze further undermine conventional TV?

That said, the CTV/Rogers-led consortium did well to monetize the Vancouver Games by opting for a 24/7, wall-to-wall TV and online strategy.

That contrasts with NBC delaying broadcasts of major sporting events as it once again relived the 1990s by directing audiences to primetime viewing. The cross-border contrast was sharp: the Canadian coverage was characterized by what viewers could do as they ranged across 11 nationwide TV networks to view events in Vancouver live, while NBC was about what U.S. TV viewers couldn’t do outside of primetime.

As Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Gray wrote of the Peacock channel’s coverage of the 2010 Games: ‘What happens in Vancouver happens on NBC four hours later.’

The irony is NBC Sports introduced that multi-channel pervasiveness that typified the Canadian consortium coverage during earlier NBC broadcasts of the Winter and Summer Games.

The Canadian consortium in Vancouver took it to the next level, and in the process possibly found the best way to monetize expensive Olympic rights by providing 24/7 coverage across 11 TV channels and a myriad of digital platforms. It helps that local Canadian TV stations belonging to CTV and Rogers allowed the marathon Olympic coverage on their services, where local NBC affiliates would not.

Another advantage over NBC? Driving Olympic sporting events to TSN and Rogers Sportsnet. Somehow shifting the preliminary U.S. win over Canada in men’s hockey to MSNBC, so you can show ice dancing on the main NBC network, isn’t the same as airing the game on an established specialty sports channel like TSN or Sportsnet.

That’s precisely the advantage rival ABC has with its behemoth ESPN service, and why the betting is ABC/ESPN has the inside track on snagging the U.S. rights to the 2014 and 2016 Olympic Games.

Kudos to CTV and Rogers for already figuring out that the Olympics, expensive as their rights are, go far to validate their TSN and Sportsnet channels as destinations for marquee sporting events.