BANGALORE: The 74th year of Kannada cinema will see two film award ceremonies on back to back Sundays in early March, both at the same venue – the Bangalore Palace grounds.It will be promoted and broadcast by two Kannada channels.
The first one, Airtel Pyramid Saimira Cinegandha awards 2007, is to be held on 2 March. This was announced by Kannada channel Kasthuri and Pyramid Saimira in Bangalore.
Earlier, Sunfeast-Udaya had announced the Sunfeast Udaya TV awards to be held on 9 March. Year 2007, which saw a number of Kannada films hitting the jackpot at the box office, is being touted as the golden era for Kannada cinema by Kasthuri TV – a channel headed by Anitha Kuamaraswamy’s Kasthuri Media (KMPL) who is the wife of former Karnataka chief minister Kumaraswamy.
Eighteen categories of awards have been announced. Besides, there are special awards – Saptaswara awards to seven music directors; Snehasanjeevi awards to four Kannada film personalities as well as the Dr. Rajkumar Trinetra awards to his sons Shivrajkumar, Raghavendra Rajkumar and Puneeth Rajkumar.
KMPL claims that it has appropriated weightage to various parameters for determining the nominations and the winners, some of which are: A jury comprising of actor Srinath, veteran journalist P G Srinivas Murthy, Karnataka Film Chambers of Commerce secretary Thomas D’Souza, Karnataka censor board panel members Srinivas Christa and Girija Mahesh; the films performance at the box office; SMS votes; data collected from randomly picked 2000 people from each district of the state. Next year, Pyramid Saimira’s Saminathan plans to bring in actual count of viewers and their votes – from around 1.5 million cinegoers.
Besides key sponsors Airtel and Pyramid Saimira, Kasthuri has roped in other national and regional sponsors including Frito Lays and Venkateshwara Textiles. Big FM which came in late, is the radio partner.
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Sunfeast & Udaya announce Kannada Awards 2006
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