Channel 7 AFL host and commentator Bruce McAvaney won the Media Personality of the Year Award at the North Melbourne Grand Final Breakfast over the weekend.
The prestigious award is bestowed to a person in the media who has made a significant and outstanding contribution to the football industry for an extended period of time.
The first award was presented to Doug Heywood in 1983. Other past winners include Dennis Cometti, Mike Sheahan, Sandy Roberts, Rex Hunt, Scot Palmer, and Caroline Wilson among others.
The win caps off a great year for Channel 7’s AFL coverage which also took out the AFMA’s Most Outstanding TV Program in 2010 with Friday Night Football.
Bruce has hosted and commentated on a broad range of sports to great acclaim including eight Olympic Games, tennis, horse racing and athletics to name a few. And, of course, his AFL broadcasting stretches back to 1990.
Bruce’s television career began in Adelaide in 1978 when he joined ADS7 to read sports news and produce the weekly Racetrack show. His first big break came in 1980 when he hosted the Adelaide end of Channel Seven’s telecast of the Moscow Olympics. Bruce then went to his first Olympics in 1984 when he traveled to the LA Games to host and commentate.
He went on to call the Melbourne Cup from 1985 to 1988, report from the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh, co-host the 1987 World Athletics Championships in Rome, the 1988 Grand Prix Athletics in Berlin and hosted the 1988 telecast of the Seoul Olympics to overwhelming public and critical acclaim.
Since then, he has hosted and commentated events such as the AFL (10 Grand Finals including the 2010 Grand Final ), Brownlow Medal, Melbourne Cup, Bathurst 1000, Australian Open Tennis, Australian Masters Golf, Bledisloe Cup and Tri-Nations Rugby, 2003 Rugby World Cup, five World Athletic Championships, two World Swimming Championships, the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games, 1992 Barcelona Olympics, the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, the 1998 Nagano Olympics, 2000 Sydney Olympics, 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, 2004 Athens Olympics, 2006 Torino Winter Olympics and 2008 Beijing Olympics.
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