In order to accurately measure the reach the Vancouver Games will achieve, Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium has developed a new calibrated multi-platform audience measurement system.

Called the Canadian Unique Multimedia Engagement (CUME) index, the measurement system is designed to report total, unduplicated audience reach across multiple platforms. As an example, if a person is watching TV and online at the same time, they will only be counted as one person. Total reach as defined by the CUME summary cannot exceed 100% of the population.

A CUME report will be released by 11 a.m. daily starting on Feb. 13. Additionally, ratings from the previous day’s broadcast will be released by 2 p.m., broken down by programming block. Audience highlights and most-watched events will also be covered.

The reports will detail the reach of each medium and the overall CUME summary. Included will be television (based on PPM), online from the consortium’s French and English websites (via Omniture), radio (BBM) across the 96 Rogers and Corus Quebec stations in the consortium and print based on the most recent NADbank readership stats for the Globe and Mail.

‘With our massive coverage on multiple platforms, we believe our presentation of Vancouver 2010 is Olympic Broadcasting 2.0,’ said Rob Dilworth, VP research, CTV, in a release. ‘We needed an effective index to appropriately reflect the number of Canadians who are experiencing our coverage of the Games. The CUME index is our best estimate of this total audience engagement.’

The methodology behind the new tool was developed by the consortium especially for the Games, based on research on the cross-platform use of media.