Yukon Territorial Government Tourism/Dog Mushing Department attempted to cash in on Olympic tourism spinoffs by offering Yukon sled dog imagery for 2010 Olympics (CBC Yukon and CBC North are also major sources of dog mushing propaganda).

CBC News: 'Tourism officials market Yukon imagery to Olympics broadcasters'

A free dogsled trip for some television network executives may pay off for Yukon tourism officials, who hope the networks will use Yukon scenery as the backdrop for their Winter Olympics coverage next year.

Officials from TV networks covering the Olympics were in the Yukon earlier this month on a dogsledding adventure trip paid for by the Canadian Tourism Commission.

"They were so excited by their trip to the Yukon that we have commitments from all of them to bring a crew up here to the Yukon to shoot additional footage," Denny Kobayashi, marketing manager with the Yukon's Tourism and Culture Department, told CBC News.

"We're going to be in front of 200 [million] to 300 million people as a result of this coverage."

Executives who came up for the sled-dog trip included a producer from NBC, the head of an Australian network, and the producer in charge of Olympics coverage for CTV.

Kobayashi said he expects images of the Yukon's rugged scenery will form the background images for those networks' Olympics programs, even though the Olympics themselves will be held in Vancouver and Whistler, B.C.

"They were blown away by how the experience was so uniquely Canadian that they said, 'Boy, this is the story that we want to tell about Canada,'" he said.

"With all due respect to our good friends in Vancouver, they are a very urban, multimillion-person city. And how people see Canada, Yukon has to offer. This is what these folks want to show to their audiences around the world."

Kobayashi said he expects the Tourism Department will spend about $5,000 each to show film crews from the three networks around the territory.

[The Yukon economy will surely perish without 'sled dogs' to exploit}