Draft:ORTO Courier (magazine)

ORTO Courier was the official magazine of the CBC-TV and its Olympic arm ORTO, an acronym for Olympics Radio and Television Organization (English) and L'Organizme de Radio et Television Olympique (French). Published quarterly in English and French, its content was a mix of official news and information about the status of venue sites and state-of-the-art broadcasting equipment for transmitting the Games as well as more in-depth features on past Olympics Games, particularly those with advanced technologies, beginning with the German company Heinman that produced the Superikonoskop for the 1936 Berlin Olympics; 1960 Rome Olympics; Tokyo (1964); Mexico City (1968); and Munich (1972). Contributing writers were engineers, journalists, and administrators with a wealth of of experience and expertise in their respective fields, and have contributed to the success of the coverage of 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics.

There were 3,000 broadcasters from 115 nations worldwide that joined the CBC in relaying the excitement and spectacle of the Games around the world. It was estimated that one billion people watched and listened to the 1976 Olympics on television and radio.

Throughout the two-week period of the Games themselves, CBC-ORTO successfully provided other, visiting broadcasting organizations with comprehensive live coverage of all events for broadcast to their home countries. At the same time in Canada, CBC-ORTO anticipated the Games with a variety of programs about their history, their major sports and events and the people who took part in them.

ORTO Courier magazine

ORTO Courier/ ORTO Courrier was conceived as a bilingual quarterly magazine in late 1974 and early 1975 with the task of keeping world broadcasters abreast with the plans, the operations and the achievements of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the host broadcaster for the Olympic Games, utilizing a specially formed CBC unit for the occasion called L'Organizme de Radio et Television Olympique (ORTO) with a well defined mandate: to assist Canadian and foreign television and radio broadcasters in reporting the Games of the XXI Olympiad at Montreal in July 1976.

It was an internationally circulated magazine which came out quarterly for a total of only six editions over a two-year period (between 1975 and 1976) during the time when construction and preparations were in progress. ORTO Courier was published in two Canadian official languages -- English and French -- and had a circulation of 15,000, mailed specifically to broadcasting institutions across the globe. The magazine was sent free of charge to all foreign broadcasters who were also preparing to broadcast Olympic events from different sports venues in Montreal and area, as well as sailing events in Kingston to their home country. It offered an insight to the preparatory developments in construction of the venues, particularly the stadium, designed by Roger Taillibert, and mostly the technical side with the commentator's unit called la consolette -- known as the star of the grandstand -- used for the dissemination of the broadcast. Plus, other particulars in the latest, state-of-the-art technological advancements, facilities, housing for athletes, and other important news from past Olympics were also featured in the magazine.

The magazine was published by the Olympics Radio and Television Organization (ORTO) of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the host broadcaster for the Games of the XXI Olympiad at Montreal in 1976. The Public Relations Services was responsible for writing and producing the six issues over a two-year anxious period leading up to the great event. ORTO Courier's Editor-in-chief was Philippe Paquet, a former government communications officer, and Michael M. Petrovich (aka Michel or Mike Petrovich), the editor.