Lake Country podcast producer wins coveted Sports Emmy Award

An Okanagan local is an official Emmy Award winner.

Jordan Wiberg is a musician and podcasting producer who owns his own recording studio out in Lake Country called Okanagan Music + Sound.

During the past two years, Wiberg was commissioned to produce two podcasts about the Beijing 2022 Olympics, called In The Village and The Podium.

The Podium podcast was 31 episodes featuring stories that you wouldn't hear about on primetime TV.

"Stories like malfunctions during the opening ceremony and how parents felt about their kids winning a medal," Wiberg told KelownaNow.

In The Village was 18 episodes focused on the life of athletes inside the Olympic Village. Wiberg explained that they touched on everything from the food, accommodations and even interviewed a horse.

"Me and my partner Romain Dompnier were basically given full creative freedom in how we would tell each story," said Wiberg. "We would interview guests and hosts with a loose script in place, then we would take the interviews and create an engaging story arc complete with sound design and music."

Wiberg credited a lot of Red Bull for getting him through the gauntlet of writing, editing, interviewing and mixing two episodes per day while the Olympics were taking place.

"During the games, my partner was in Tokyo interviewing the athletes while I was sleeping (opposite timezones)," Wiberg explained. "Then, just before he would go to bed, he would upload all of the interviews that was collected throughout the day and I would edit them all while he was asleep."

"We'd connect briefly right after he'd wake up to review everything together before the episode was published. If everything was good to go, we would hit publish and start the whole routine over again."

Wiberg previously went viral with his song Up Here, In Canada, which has racked up over 2.3 million views.

After the Summer Olympics had finished, on the advice of NBC leaders, Wiberg put together a few highlights clips from the podcast and submitted them for Emmy consideration.

He didn't think anything was going to come of it.

"But, just over a month ago, I got an email from a VP at NBC saying 'Congrats! We Won! And my wife and I couldn't believe it," said Wiberg. "I went to the Emmy website and sure enough, there was my name sitting in the winner's category for 'Outstanding Interactive Experience- Event Coverage.'"

"We still can't believe that there's an actual Emmy sitting in our house, let alone one with my name on it," he explained. "We've finally accepted that it's real!"

"My kids now think I'm as cool as Steve Carell because we have the same trophy and I hope that never changes."

If you are interested in listening to the Emmy Award winning podcast, you can check out the Spotify link or here for Apple.

For more information on Wiberg, please click here.