JUNO Opening Night Awards

Like many events produced in the fall of 2021, the JUNO Opening Night Awards, Presented by Music Canada, produced by e=mc² events, and nominated for “Best Virtual Awards Show” started as a live event.

However, rising infection rates forced the team to pivot, creating a new hybrid experience that blended live event production elements with traditional broadcast scenarios. The result was an energetic, interactive, emotional show celebrating Canadian talent.

Hosted by Angeline Tetteh-Wayoe from CBC/Radio-Canada, the show kicked off with a live chat with 5 nominees from different categories. The Zoom room with these nominees was a beautiful moment as these artists would not have interacted with each other at a live event. They were showing off their outfits, saying hi to each other’s children, and giving each other energy and support as one duo had just finished their first live performance in 2 years!.

This technically and logistically challenging event brought together 6 highly experienced Producers from Canadian music, live events, audio visual, and broadcast industries. That, mixed with several stage managers being new to virtual events, could have created a “too many cooks in the kitchen” problem bottling up solutions and dragging down the show.

It’s a credit to everyone who put aside their egos and participated in extensive discussions, planning meetings, spreadsheets, operating procedures, internal scripts, and training sessions. Professionals from different backgrounds knew when to lead and defer to experts in other fields, honest enough to admit when they didn’t have the answer.

There’s way more to tell you about this event, key features, and evolving challenges including key personnel testing positive hours before showtime, travel restrictions and so much more but that will have to wait for a longer vehicle than this one little post.

Congrats to everyone who helped make this event a great success, & good luck at the Canadian Event Awards Gala from Liberty Grand Entertainment Complex on Sept 28, 2022. The CEA Gala is the last event of CSE Live 2022, EventFest, Canada’s premier event for Canadian event professionals and can be found here