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The International Emmy Awards have been growing in strength from year to year. These recognise the best in television from around the world. This time around The International Academy of Arts and Sciences (Iatas) wants India to be a bigger part of the awards and the Academy. With that aim in mind Iatas president and CEO Bruce Paisner is coming down to India next month to meet with the top television industry professionals. He will be assisted in this by Anil Wanvari a member of the Academy.
In an interview with Indiantelevision.com, Paisner talks about the role the Academy plays in recognising the best of global television, country participation, the importance of having digital media awards.
Excerpts:
What role does The International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences play in facilitating awareness of global television programming?
We pride ourselves in offering every year, a unique cultural showcase of the best television currently produced around the world. When a producer or broadcaster enters a programme or performance into our competition, they open themselves up to many wonderful opportunities: being nominated or winning an Emmy of course, but also, having their programme watched by jurors from all over the world.
Additionally, our network of over 600 Members from 50 countries who represent all sectors of the television industry including mobile and Internet, plays a major role in promoting our activities and the importance of entering into our competition. In light of this, we are doing more activities with our Members and more international outreach.
How has your flagship event, The International Emmy Awards, grown over the past five years?
The buzz around the awards has grown. Last year we gave Special Awards to Lorne Michaels and Simon Cowell. Past award recipients in the last five years have included Steven Spielberg, Al Gore and Oprah Winfrey. The global publicity and excitement around the event is rising every year and we are thankful to our Gala Partners, Phoenix Satellite Television, TV Globo, Microsoft, Dori Media Group, Ascent Media, Ernst & Young, Variety, Mip TV and Sofitel Luxury Hotels for their continued support.
How does the selection process work? Has country participation increased?
We have a total of 15 programme categories. Nominees are selected through a lengthy and rigorous judging process which takes place over a period of six months and three rounds of judging. Over 720 independent jurors, who are selected because they are experts in their category, participated in this process in 2010. There are four nominees in each category that make it to the final round
Regarding increase in country participation, in the past five years we’ve seen significant increase in participation in the competition from companies and countries from Asia and Latin America. Entries from Latin America have doubled and those from Asia, the Middle East and Africa have grown by more than 50 per cent. Unfortunately, India’s quality programming is vastly underrepresented so far. We look forward to that changing.
We also have a quarterly newsletter that goes to over 10,000 industry contacts worldwide and a Facebook and Twitter following. And as you know, since you have been hosting a semi-final round of judging for us for several years, we are present in over 15 countries every summer with local semi-final rounds of judging events organised by member companies. These events are strategic in creating awareness about the competition because they involve content producers directly. Once they see how the competition works, they are more likely to enter their programmes.
You added the digital Emmys a few years back. Was that done to acknowledge changes happening in a rapidly changing media landscape?
The International Digital Emmy Awards recognise excellence in programming and content created and designed for viewer interaction and/or delivery on a digital platform (i.e. mobile, internet, interactive TV, etc.) originating outside the United States. We have three categories: Fiction; Non-Fiction and Children & Young People. The competition has been growing over the past five years and we’re looking forward to more entries every year.
Our competition also stays one step ahead. One example is the digital Emmy awards, with the three categories which have evolved over the years and the presentation of a Pioneer Prize, which recognizes the outstanding contributions of an individual or organisation to the field of digital entertainment. Another example is separating the news categories to News & Current Affairs and presenting them at a separate News Emmy awards ceremony presented by the National Academy in New York.
Also, the Telenovela category was created three years ago because of the global nature of the phenomenon and the need for our competition to recognise this important genre became imperative.
Also, if you are involved in international television, you should consider becoming a Member. Our team in New York will be happy to help with any questions regarding Membership, they can email iemmys@iemmys.tv.
India is such a prominent player in the television industry and unfortunately, this is not reflected in the International Emmy Awards competition. We hope more Indian television professionals will get involved with us and thanks to the wonderful platform offered by Indiantelevision.com and Anil Wanvari, we hope this will be possible. |
Tag: Al Gore
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‘There is significant increase in competition from companies and countries from Asia and LA’ : Iatas president and CEO Bruce Paisner
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Al Gore, Cameron Diaz throw weight behind ‘Live Earth’ concerts to fight climate crisis
MUMBAI: Detailing an effort to engage billions of people across the globe, Kevin Wall, former US VP Al Gore, Pharrell Williams, film star Cameron Diaz, and the MSN Network have launched Save Our Selves (SOS) – The Campaign for a Climate in Crisis. The announcement was made at the California Science Center.
SOS is designed to trigger a global movement to combat our climate crisis. It will reach people in every corner of the planet through television, film, radio, the Internet and Live Earth, a 24-hour concert on 7/7/07 across all 7 continents that will bring together more than 100 of the world’s top musical acts. Live Earth alone will engage an audience of more than 2 billion people through concert attendance and broadcasts. MSN has partnered with SOS to use its reach to make the Live Earth concerts available across the globe.
The Live Earth audience, and the proceeds from the concerts, will create the foundation for a new, multi-year global effort to combat the climate crisis led by The Alliance for Climate Protection and its Chair, Vice President Al Gore. SOS was founded by Kevin Wall, who won an Emmy as Worldwide Executive Producer of Live 8.
Wall said, “Our climate crisis is the paramount challenge facing humanity. SOS is more than a global distress call. SOS will give the world the tools we need to answer that call with meaningful action. The most important part of SOS is how individuals, corporations, and governments respond.
“Our climate crisis affects everyone, everywhere, and that’s who SOS is aimed at. Only a global response can conquer our climate crisis. SOS asks all people to Save Our Selves because only we can.”
Gore featured in a documentary about the environment An Inconvenient Truth which is the favourite to win an Oscar. He says, “In order to solve the Climate Crisis, we have to reach billions of people. We are launching SOS and Live Earth to begin a process of communication that will mobilise people all over the world to take action.
“The climate crisis will only be stopped by an unprecedented and sustained global movement. We hope to jump-start that movement right here, right now, and take it to a new level on July 7, 2007.”
MSN corporate VP and chief media officer Joanne Bradford says, “At MSN, we have the worldwide audience and the technology stage to help unite a global community around SOS and Live Earth.
“Anyone around the world with an Internet connection will be able to come to MSN to view not just the concert events, but also an extensive collection of interactive media that will entertain, educate, inspire and ultimately drive change.”
Wall has announced that 25 of the 100 top musical acts that have answered SOS’s call and are performing at Live Earth. SOS is also engaging other celebrities, CEOs, athletes, academics and government leaders to engage their constituencies. Please see that attached list of 25 artists.
Wall adds, “More than 100 artists are performing at Live Earth and they’re all headliners. That’s what it takes to engage billions of people. We’re not just engaging fans of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Snoop Dogg, or the Foo Fighters and Faith Hill. We are engaging them and everyone in between.
“We have been overwhelmed by the response from the artist community and are feverishly working out the logistics for all of the bands that want to be involved. Today we are announcing just the first 25 and will soon be announcing even more headliners who, for contractual reasons, cannot be announced today.”
The campaign’s identity is based on SOS, the international Morse code distress signal: three dots, followed by three dashes, followed by three dots. SOS is the most urgent, universal message we have, and SOS will use that signal as a continuous distress call to prompt individuals, corporations and governments around the world to respond to our climate crisis with action.
Wall says, “SOS is creating an unmatched communications platform to take on an unparalleled crisis. Our message must saturate the globe if we are to succeed, and we will. In the US, we’re partnering with NBC-Universal and its networks. On satellite radio, we have SIRIUS and XM. In the UK, we’re partnering with the BBC. In Japan, we have a historic partnership with two broadcast partners. We have already secured television, Internet and wireless coverage in 120 countries, and the rest are soon to come.”
Wall announced that Live Earth concerts will take place in the Brazil, Shanghai, Japan, Johannesburg, London, Sydney, and the US. Live Earth will be broadcast worldwide on MSN, which was the first sponsor to answer SOS’s call. MSN is one of the world’s most popular Internet destinations, and as such will allow the SOS campaign to have a global reach. MSN has services in over 42 markets and 21 languages, and more than 465 million people around the world visit MSN each month. Beginning today, people can go to http://liveearth.msn.com and begin participating in the global movement, and on 7/7/07, to watch the Live Earth concerts.
Live Earth is being produced by Control Room, of which Kevin Wall is the CEO. Control Room has produced and distributed more than 60 concerts since its founding a year and a half ago featuring Beyoncé, Madonna, Green Day, Dave Matthews Band, Keith Urban, James Blunt, Snoop Dogg, the Rolling Stones, among others. Its multi-partner network provides a global reach for live offerings through broadband, television, digital movie theatres and mobile phones throughout the U.S. and the world.
Live Earth will implement a new Green Event Standard that will become the model for carbon neutral concerts and other live events in the future. The Green Event Standard is being developed in partnership with the U.S. Green Building Commission to create a way for venues to be Leed-approved.
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DD, Mike Pandey launch a brave green series
NEW DELHI: Three-time “Green Oscar” winner environmental filmmaker Mike Pandey says there is a great scope for a film like “Al Gore” which seems to have transformed the American environmental conscience leading up to massive pressure on the retrogressive Bush administration, but says Bollywood has not grown up and there is no money for that kind of endeavour.
Speaking to indiantelevision.com ahead of the launching his latest series for Doordarshan, “Earth Matters” in its second avatar, Pandey said: “I’d love to do that kind of a film, but where is the money? Bollywood still spends money only on crass commercial ventures and ignores real issues.”
Pandey added: “I still make these films though there is very little money in it.”The series will be telecast from February 4, and Director General LD Mandloi told indiantelevision.com: “We have paid Rs six lakh per episode, but the cost could have been higher for the filmmaker,” corroborating Pandey’s version.Interestingly, he said, “This is the first time an environmental series is being made in India in Hindi.” The earlier series of the same title was in English.
Mandloi said: “We had received major appreciation for the first series and thus decided to do this new series. Unfortunately, everything nowadays is seen in terms of ‘marketability’, but as a public broadcaster have a different agenda.”
The second series will be of 26 episodes and shown every Sunday at 11 am on DD. Mandloi said that DD is committed to such environmental programmes, despite the fact that consciousness on such issues in the country is not as high as it is in the west.
He quoted fabled Hindi poet Muktibodh: the world must become much better and cleaner that it is today and for that we need a good sweeper.
Mandloi said that the last figures for DD viewership was 800 million (realistically put, around 350 million) and for this new venture, 321 AIR radio centres and 30 channels of DD would be pressed into service for a massive awareness campaign, and also that billboards would be put up at all DD and AIR stations.
The series – shown in snippets as a preview at the Indian Habitat Centre today – has captured a wide range of sensitive issues and veers right away from the rather puerile attempts to indulge in jargonistic poster-films that mark novice enterprises in the field. From the unseen Andamanese tribes and their lives – they actually seem straight out of Africa and make the audience feel they are seeing something foreign – to dances of Manipur and the relationship of such dances and rituals with the inherent lifestyle of the native people who live amidst nature, the series has some major surprises.
There are episodes also on other countries like places in Africa and Sri Lanka. Pandey said there is need for people across the share their experiences and help coexist. Pandey, addressing the media later, Pandey said that people in India should be aware of issue such as the ones he has filmed on. There is need for understanding and thatcomes from education.
He revealed that as a comparison, at a recent film festival on environment abroad each 40-minute film cost Rs 22 crore. That is the kind of investment people make abroad on such issues.
“We do not realise that our lives depend on just two insects: the butterfly and honeybee, which pollinate 87 per cent of the plants and give us the food and fruits we survive on. Long ago, education was taken away from us. The emphasis was on how to survive. But that has changed and now we need to take heed of how to keep the earth green.” This is the message that Pandey feels should go out to the Indian vernacular audience needs to see.
Pandey has also delved on issues like stem cell research and on our scientists and their IPR related progress.
Mandloi, however, said that the series will also be dubbed in English and shown across the country where Hindi is not understood and across various places in the world at a later date. Pandey said that these are archival series that can be played again and again and will ever remain important, though the making was extremely tough. On the impact of such films in India, Pandy gave one stark example, of how a film on destruction of the vulture population in India was seen by the Prime Minister and only then a decision was taken to stop production of a drug that had wiped out 87 million vultures in the country.
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Al Gore’s Current TV signs deal with BSkyB
MUMBAI: Former US Vice President Al Gore has unveiled plans to launch a UK version of his ‘user generated’ network, Current TV.
Current has signed an agreement with UK pay TV platform BSkyB to launch a localised version of its viewer-created TV channel in the UK and Ireland.
The announcement was jointly made by Current chairman Al Gore and BSkyB CEO James Murdoch. The agreement provides Current’s first presence outside the US and marks a step in fulfilling its plans of becoming an international media company, while for BSkyB it represents a first step in a strategy to develop a broader presence in the fast-growing field of user-generated content.
Current TV is the first TV network created by, for, and with a young adult audience, enlisting its audience as creative partners. To tailor its output to the local audience, Current plans to deliver a channel specifically designed for the British and Irish markets.
Viewer producers from the UK and Ireland will be able to submit their video segments via Current’s website and, if their work is selected for broadcast, they will also have a chance to have their pieces air on Current’s U.S. network and in other markets into which Current will expand in the future.
Since its launch in August 2005, Current TV claims to have been a pioneer in the world of user-generated content, with its ‘viewer created content’ or VC2, programming model. Rather than a traditional network with primetime shows and “appointment television,” Current offers short-form, nonfiction programming, called “pods,” which are only a few minutes long and which explore the issues of interest to young adults, including technology, fashion, music and videogames, the environment, relationships, spirituality, politics, finance, and parenting. In the US, approximately 30 per cent of the network’s content is created by viewers.
The agreement will allow Current TV to reach up to 22 million more viewers in 8.2 million households subscribing to BSkyB’s Sky digital service, equivalent to almost one in three households in the UK and Ireland. Over the past year Current has expanded its US carriage by 70 per cent from 17 million to nearly 30 million homes.
Gore says, “We are grateful to be working with BSkyB in our first international venture. This is a big step in fulfilling Current’s mission of sparking a global conversation among young adults. Bringing our viewer-created content model to the UK and Ireland will give millions of young viewers the opportunity to not only watch but also to create television programming that is relevant to them. We’re excited about being able to unleash the creativity of young people in the UK and Ireland, enabling them to share their stories with their generational cohort here and around the world.”
Murdoch says, “Current TV is bringing the web’s sense of empowerment to television for the first time. It has a uniquely collaborative approach to working with viewer producers that stands out among other platforms for user-generated video. As a first step towards Sky’s own moves in this fascinating field, we’re pleased to help give a voice to millions of young people throughout the UK and Ireland.”
Murdoch incidentally was one of the first to back Mr Gore’s campaign to persuade big business to face up to green issues. He said the partnership with Current TV was the first step towards the broadcaster, which will make it available free to all its 8.2 million subscribers, launching other user-content initiatives.
Internet networking sites such as MySpace and video sharing services such as YouTube and Google Video have forced broadcasters to learn from them. Political parties have also tried to get in on the act, as with the WebCameron Tory initiative.
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Yahoo partners with Al Gore’s Current TV for online video venture
MUMBAI: To explore the huge potential that the user-generated content offers in an online environment, Yahoo Inc. has associated with the US-based media company Current TV, promoted by former US vice president Al Gore, to create online video programmes.
The service, christened the Yahoo Current Network (video.yahoo.com/currenttv) will launch on 20 September with four channels.
One of the channels named Current Buzz will feature segments related to the news. The other channels will cover travel, sports and cars.
According to a New York Times report, each channel will have one professionally produced segment a day and about 10 segments designed by users. Amateur videographers whose clips are chosen for online delivery will receive $100. If a clip is also broadcast on Current’s television network, the producer will receive between $500 and $1,000.
The development underlines the market’s keenness towards web-based user-generated content. Microsoft on Tuesday announced its entry into the segment with the beta release of Soapbox on MSN Video. With this, Microsoft plans to take on YouTube, the market leader.