TVNW News Release

 

Monday, April 18, 2005

 

VANCOUVER, BC -- TVNW Media Group has been appointed by the Vancouver Whitecaps FC, Canada’s best-known soccer club, to produce a weekly program of game highlights and features for broadcast on CityTV, the Vancouver-based channel of the CHUM network, one of Canada’s leading broadcasters.

Caps Corner, as the program will be known, will be presented by CityTV’s breakfast-time host Shane Foxman, and will reach over two million customers in southwestern British Columbia.  The move to network television, after last year’s deal with cable sports channel Rogers SportsNet, is another step forward for the acclaimed Vancouver soccer club, in its third year of a television production relationship with TVNW. 

Whitecaps general manager Bobby Lenarduzzi said “the move from a dedicated sports channel to network television reflects the growing popularity of soccer in Canada.  We’re delighted with this new TV deal and our relationship with TVNW.  Together we are working to a make the Whitecaps Football Club one of the leading soccer franchises in North America“.

Highlights from all Whitecaps home games at Swangard Stadium will be featured, as well as one home game played in Kelowna, BC, and several games from the road.  Coverage will run weekly, on Saturdays at 2pm, from April to August and beyond, if, as expected, the teams reach their respective playoffs.

The Whitecaps’ women’s squad is presently the top women’s soccer club in North America, after capturing the W-League crown last September against the USA’s New Jersey Wildcats.  Caps Corner will feature regular appearances by, among others, Whitecaps star and Canadian international Kara Lang, one of the best-known players in the country.

On the men’s side, the Caps will be chasing the elusive United Soccer Leagues Division One title after reaching the Western Conference final over the past two seasons.  Caps Corner will also feature highlights from the Whitecaps’ match at Swangard on 17 July against Sunderland FC, which is on course to be promoted to England’s Premier League next season. 

The Sunderland match will bring back memories of strong English links to the club, which was coached by former England manager Sir Bobby Robson in the 1970s. England internationals Trevor Whymark, Allan Ball and Peter Beardsley have all worn Whitecaps jerseys, and Ball, Whymark and club general manager Lenarduzzi helped the Whitecaps win the North American Soccer League (NASL) championship in 1979.

Over the past two years, TVNW Media Group has become one of Canada’s leading sports television production companies: Managing director Martin Perry and his team produced coverage of the ITU’s Triathlon World Cup series, FIS World Cup skiing, the 2002 FIS Snowboard World Championships, the 2003 World Weightlifting Championships, the 2002 Mountain Bike World Cup in Scotland and the 2002 and 2004 Canadian Arena Cross Championships.  TVNW was also host-broadcaster for the Vancouver Whitecaps FC in 2003 and 2004 and the 2004 Harry Jerome International Track and Field Classic and “Miracle Mile.

Perry brings an extensive track record to the table, including Olympic Games, live international cricket, British and international athletics and other live and post-produced major sports events. His soccer credits include production stints for Match of the Day and FA Cup Grandstand on the BBC in the UK, as well as UK commercial channel ITV’s European Cup coverage. He also produced news coverage of the 1994 FIFA World Cup for Channel 4, also in the UK.

In 2000, Perry produced a week-long series of highlights from that year’s Gravity Games in Rhode Island which ran in prime time on BBC2 and garnered the highest-ever audiences for “alternative / extreme” sport in UK television history.  He has also produced a wide range of corporate videos for companies such as Evian, Relic Entertainment and the Vancouver Coast Guard, as well as the Microsoft-sponsored Child Exploitation Tracking System, launched across Canada this month, and a series of music videos for artists like Mariah Carey and Luther Vandross, Beth Orton and the Prodigy.

While in the UK, Perry created an improvised sitcom, West Heath Yard, for Channel 4, billed by UK music magazine NME as “the best music comedy on TV”.  His highly successful Boardstupid series ran for five years on Channel 4 and was nominated for numerous awards.  Perry was also the originating producer of the BBC’s Fantasy Football League, the comedy-based football programme that contributed to the mid-1990’s resurgence of soccer in the UK.

TVNW has developed a highly-regarded DVD package for the world’s largest video games producer, Electronics Arts, and the company is now working on a video game project for TV, as well as a series of documentaries, dramas and reality TV programmes.