TORONTO – With record numbers of Canadians viewing the Winter Olympic Games on CBC Gem, the streaming platform experienced several outages due to what’s being called “an unprecedented number of people actually willing to watch something on it.”
The first reported outage came after 814,000 Canadians attempted to watch the Games’ Opening Ceremonies, breaking the previous record of 17 viewers held by the 2021 Giller Prize Awards.
In a statement, CBC CEO Marie-Philippe Bouchard expressed surprise that so many people were watching programming on an app that’s free. “I mean I thought we had the infrastructure to be Canada’s streaming destination for the Winter games, but maybe we should have started small, like with a AAA hockey tournament or local dog show.”
Bouchard then added how she’s currently in talks with app developers to see how they can handle such traffic in the future. “We’re working hard to make sure our app has the infrastructure needed to handle the Men’s hockey game on Thursday, provided no more than 19 people log on.”
Viewers experiencing the outage in real time turned to social media to vent their frustration, including some non-sports fans who were reportedly upset they couldn’t watch The Great Canadian Baking Show or North of North. Others didn’t seem as bothered by the outage, including some who suggested that maybe Olympic events will end up watched by millions on Netflix like other beloved CBC properties such as The Great Canadian Baking Show or North of North.
In a related story, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre doubled down on his promise to defund the CBC after he couldn’t log into Gem with his Facebook account.
