SVG Europe Outstanding Contribution Award winner Barry Johnstone reflects on his career in new video

Barry Johnstone, CTV OB chairman and recipient of SVG Europe’s Outstanding Contribution to European Sport Broadcasting Award 2018

In advance of the SVG Europe Sport Production Awards 2018, Outstanding Contribution to European Sport Broadcasting Award winner Barry Johnstone reflected on some of his many career highlights in a video produced by the CTV OB team.

The Sport Production Awards ceremony took place at the end of the Sport Production Summit, which was held at the DeLaMar Theatre in Amsterdam on 13 September 2018.

Due to time pressures on the day it was unfortunately not possible to screen the video during the ceremony, so with CTV’s permission, we are delighted to share it now via the SVG Europe YouTube channel.

Since the 1980s Johnstone has been a mainstay of sports and music production in Europe and has also developed a reputation among US and world broadcasters as someone who can be relied on year after year. In 1992, when European Tour Productions was launched as a joint venture between the European Tour and TWI, CTV OB was involved and, in 1997, was awarded a five-year contract for ETP, allowing a fleet of OB units to be built specifically for golf coverage. CTV OB has been at the centre of every ETP event since then.

For a quarter of a century, CTV OB also played a key role in helping ABC Sports and ESPN deliver the Open Championship to viewers in the US; it now does the same for Sky UK and NBC Sports. During the London Olympics in 2012, CTV OB was at the centre of the TV production of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, one of the most complex ceremony productions ever.

In the video clip, Johnstone reflects on the early days and subsequent rapid growth of CTV OB, as well as the ways in which the outside broadcast sector has changed over the years.

Speaking in advance of the Sport Production Awards, Peter Angell – SVG Europe Sport Production Awards chairman and Lagardére Sports, SVP, Media Production – remarked: “The Outstanding Contribution Award was founded to recognise the icons of the European Sports Broadcasting industry, and following on from Manolo Romero’s debut award last year there is no one more deserving of this award than Barry. His personal contribution to the development of our business over the past four decades has been immense.”

David Shield, SVG Europe chairman and IMG Media, SVP, global director of engineering & technology, added: “Barry has been a great personal friend and mentor during my time at IMG. We are hugely grateful to him for the way CTV has supported European Tour Productions since their inception. He is a legend within the sports and entertainment OB business and justly deserves this prestigious award.”