The sports world brings both business and pleasure to Louise Bergeron. Her position as Directeure technique (Technical Producer) with le Réseau des Sports (RDS - the French-language sister channel of The Sports Network, TSN) in Montreal involves overseeing the production and broadcast of many different sports, games and events - everything from Saturday-night hockey to Formula I races to the Canada Games.


Louise, 35, joined RDS when the network first went on the air, in August 1989. She thrives on the variety she encounters every day on the job. "I work on all the programs, especially the sports news."

Louise's five-page single-spaced job description details a wide range of responsibilities. The Technical Producer is responsible for planning, directing, organizing and overseeing the management of technical and human resources assigned for the production and broadcast of TV programs. As the head of the technical team, the Technical Producer is in charge of discipline and quality control. Physical and psychological stress is a given, what with logging long hours in the control room and hauling heavy equipment when covering outside events.

The job involves a smorgasbord of skills. "You need to have a global view of how television works. A lot of what I do is troubleshooting. I walk around with a cordless phone. When a call comes in, off I run to solve the problem," she says.

Louise is constantly darting back and forth between the technical side of her job and the "people" part. "Personnel management can be quite delicate. We give feedback and prepare annual evaluations. Machines can be more straight-forward to deal with than people!"