TV audience triples as 2006 Giller Prize is awarded

NEWS RELEASES

CTV TELEVISION

SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE

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CTV ratings alert: record Giller Prize broadcast peaks at 515,000 viewers on CTV

2006 Giller Prize is the most-watched ever as CTV congratulates winner Vincent Lam

TORONTO, Nov. 8 - It's a Giller record: 515,000 fans of Canadian literature were watching last night when Toronto emergency doctor Vincent Lam accepted the 2006 Giller Prize for his short story collection Bloodletting &
Miraculous Cures.

In the end, an average audience of 351,000 viewers - the most ever - had tuned in to CTV's primetime presentation of The Giller Prize, more than triple that (+244%) of last year's cumulative broadcast on CTV and talktv.

The Giller Prize also finished with 164 per cent more viewers compared to the 2004 telecast when 133,000 viewers watched on CBC.

In all, more than 1.3 million Canadians watched some part of last night's record broadcast.

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Toronto, ON – Vincent Lam has been named the 2006 winner of The Scotiabank Giller Prize, Canada's premier literary prize for fiction, for his novel Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures, published by Doubleday Canada.

The announcement was made at a gala dinner and award ceremony that drew more than 450 members of the publishing, media and arts communities.

Hosted by Justin Trudeau, The Scotiabank Giller Prize was broadcast across Canada on CTV and, for the first time, live around the world on The CTV Broadband Network at CTV.ca

The telecast will air again on Saturday, Nov. 11 at 4 p.m. ET on CTV (check local listings), as well as on-demand on The CTV Broadband Network at CTV.ca

The largest annual prize for fiction in the country, The Scotiabank Giller Prize awards $40,000 each year to the author of the best Canadian novel or short story collection published in English and $2,500 to each of the finalists.

A shortlist of five authors and their books was announced on October 3, 2006.

Those finalists were:

- Rawi Hage for his novel De Niro's Game, published by House of Anansi Press

- Vincent Lam for his short story collection Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures, published by Doubleday Canada

- Pascale Quiviger for her novel The Perfect Circle, translation by Sheila Fischman, published by Cormorant Books

- Gaétan Soucy for his novel The Immaculate Conception, translation by Lazer Lederhendler, published by House of Anansi Press

- Carol Windley for her short story collection Home Schooling, published by Cormorant Books

Selected by an esteemed jury panel comprised of The Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson and distinguished Canadian authors Alice Munro and Michael Winter, the five finalists were chosen from 101 books submitted for consideration by 36 publishing houses from every region of the country.

Of the winning book, the jury remarked: "This series of inter-linked stories is a profound and meaningful glimpse into a world which seems on the surface to be purely medical, but leads us into the metaphorical. The characters and the situations are unexpectedly bound together and make us, as readers, not just witnesses to, but participants in, the world that has been created for us."

Vincent Lam was born in London, Ontario and grew up in Ottawa.

His family is from the expatriate Chinese community of Vietnam.

Vincent Lam is a doctor who did his medical training in Toronto and is an emergency physician who also does international evacuation work.

His non-fiction writing has appeared in The Globe and Mail, the National Post and the University of Toronto Medical Journal.

Lam's first novel will be published by Doubleday in 2007.

He and his wife live in Toronto.

During tonight's award ceremony, a roster of celebrity presenters – Margaret Atwood, Wendy Crewson, Sophie Gregoire, Eric Peterson, Albert Schultz and Janet Wright – read the jury remarks, introduced video profiles of the short-listed authors, and presented each of them with a leather-bound copy of their book.

2006 marks the second year of the partnership between The Giller Prize and Scotiabank.

On September 22, 2005, Jack Rabinovitch and Rick Waugh, president and CEO of Scotiabank, announced that the bank would become the first-ever co-sponsor of Canada's richest literary award for fiction.

Under the new agreement, the prize became known as The Scotiabank Giller Prize.

The purse doubled, growing to Cdn $50,000 with $40,000 going to the winner and $2,500 being given to each of the four finalists.

Beginning last year, CTV became the exclusive broadcast partner for The Scotiabank Giller Prize.

The Scotiabank Giller Light

Also on November 7t – and for the 4th year in a row – Frontier College hosted The Scotiabank Giller Light at The Steam Whistle Brewery.

Their goal is to raise funds to help children and youth improve their reading and writing skills through an expansion of Frontier College's Homework Clubs and its after-school literacy program for inner-city students.

To date, the Giller Light has raised well over $40,000 for Frontier College.

Please visit GillerLight.ca for more information.

Public library promotion

As it has for the past four years, the prize partnered with public libraries across the country for the "Guess the Giller" promotion.

A pilot project with the Toronto Public Library in 2003 launched the promotion, which now runs in 17 libraries across Canada.

Winning entries receive a complete set of the current year's short-listed titles.

Scotiabank

Scotiabank is running the "Guess the Giller" contest in its 950 branches across Canada.

Scotiabank is committed to supporting the communities in which we live and work, both in Canada and abroad.

Recognized as a leader internationally and among Canadian corporations for its charitable donations and philanthropic activities, in 2005 the Bank provided more than $40 million in sponsorships and donations to a variety of projects and initiatives, primarily in the areas of healthcare, education and social services.

Scotiabank is on the World Wide Web at Scotiabank.com

CTV

CTV, Canada's largest private broadcaster, offers a wide range of quality news, sports, information, and entertainment programming.

It has the number-one national newscast, CTV National News With Lloyd Robertson, and is the number-one choice for prime-time viewing.

CTV owns 21 conventional television stations across Canada and has interests in 16 specialty channels, including the number-one Canadian specialty channel, TSN.

CTV is owned by Bell Globemedia, Canada's premier multi-media company.

More information about CTV may be found on the company website at CTV.ca.

For more news about the prize, including past winners, jury members and short-listed authors, please visit XcotiabankGillerPrize.ca

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