New look Television Awards launched

New Television Awards are being launched by the free TV broadcasters which will be a first for television in New Zealand. They will be the first to recognise excellence in all main genres of homegrown television, including news and current affairs.

Chris Taylor, Chairman of the NZ Television Broadcasters' Council, said "we are establishing these new awards to celebrate the best of the thousands of hours of Kiwi television being broadcast each year. We have invited Qantas to support the awards as they have a proud tradition of supporting journalism awards."

The winners of the awards will be announced in a gala ceremony on Saturday 12 November to be held in the Auckland Town Hall which will be broadcast on TV ONE, subject to funding. Mr Taylor said that the NZTBC had decided the broadcast would be rotated annually around the three members' channels starting with TVNZ.

Bruce Wallace, executive director of the NZTBC said the call for entries opens today, Monday June 20. Further information on entering is available here. The NZTBC has appointed the Conference Company as awards manager, Sharpe Events as event manager and Bridget de Launay as PR consultant.

Judging panels will be formed over the next two months with separate judging groups for news and current affairs and for all other television awards. Both New Zealand resident and international judges will be on the judging panels.

The chairman of judges for News and Current Affairs is Paul Norris, head of the Christchurch Polytechnic's NZ Broadcasting School. The chairman of judges for the Television awards (other than News/CA) is Graeme Wilson. He is Chairman of the NZ Screen Council and was Chief Operating Officer of Jupiter Programming in Japan - TV channel acquisitions, startups and operations - from 1998 to 2003 and prior to that was Managing Director, Television at TVNZ.

The NZTBC is made up of the three companies operating national broadcast television channels. They are CanWest TVWorks, Prime Television New Zealand and Television New Zealand.

Published: 20 June 2005

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