After months in the planning the TVBEurope team will be joining broadcast industry colleagues tomorrow and heading to the Hilton hotel in Wembley for an evening of wining and dining in celebration of talent in the industry. Thirteen awards will be presented across the Capture, Workflow and Delivery categories as well as four additional awards for Sustainability, Marketing, Outstanding Broadcast and Lifetime Achievement.
Big players have been shortlisted, including the BBC, Channel 4 and Sony, as well as major TV highlights like this summer’s FIFA World Cup and reality hit The X Factor. The TVBAwards was conceived as an event to recognise outstanding achievement across a wide sphere of the industry, not only from the established top brass but from emerging talent also.
Attendees will have the opportunity to hear from industry legend Dr David Wood, who will be at the TVBAwards to collect his Lifetime Achievement award. Starting out as a graduate trainee at the BBC, Wood then joined the Independent Broadcasting Authority, where he helped develop Teletext. In 1980 he moved to the European Broadcasting Union Technical Centre in Brussels, setting up a task force working to achieve a common world standard for digital TV, which Wood described as a “super challenge” in conversation with TVBEurope last month.
Wood can speak from experience about the changes and challenges in broadcast over the past five decades. “Broadcasting itself is riding stormy waters,” he said. “No one knows whether over-air broadcasting will be subsumed by internet delivery in the years ahead.” The changing nature of broadcast and content delivery is reflected in the TVBAwards. Nominated projects for Achievement in Multiplatform Content include the BBC World Cup live streaming and BFI player, while UK Education’s catch-up TV service is nominated for Achievement in Systems Integration.
However, Wood also commented that, “People’s need for an identity, and to relate to each other, will always be there. People have been telling stories of hope, fear, joy, and laughter for thousands of years.” People still enjoy a TV event, and New Years Day this year was evidence of this, with TVBAward-nominated Sherlock pulling in more than 3.5 million viewers. Broadcast on the same day, and also nominated for a TVBAward, David Attenborough’s Natural History Museum Alive 3D was a success for Sky1, with 583,000 viewers, a 2.4 per cent share.
“The rise of technical quality is inexorable,” said Wood, and this is something we wanted to incorporate into our first awards ceremony. The TVBAwards will celebrate the cutting-edge technology employed to create awesome imagery, with the Beyond HD Achievement in Image Capture. Nominated projects include nature documentaries, as well as the spectacular War Horse live in 4K.
There is still a day left to buy tickets to the event, which will include a drinks reception, dinner and an after party, as well as the chance to discover which teams and companies will be taking home the first-ever TVBAwards.
We hope to see you there!
