VENICE, ITALY. The winners of this year’s Hot Bird TV Awards were announced at a gala ceremony in Venice in the company of over 200 international broadcasting executives.
A record 160 channels were participating in this year’s Hot Bird Awards, the international event for thematic satellite channels broadcasting over the Eutelsat system. A total of 13 countries were represented at the ceremony at the Scuola Grande of San Giovanni Evangelista, Venice on Friday, November 25.
Winning public and private channels from eight countries reflected the vitality of the satellite broadcasting market and its capacity to innovate.
“The winners at this year’s Hot Bird TV Awards showcase global excellence in programming and a capacity for creative inspiration and quality,” said Michel de Rosen, Eutelsat CEO.
“The strength of the winners in each of the categories demonstrates a wealth of talent and our congratulations go out to them all and to the participating channels who combine to make this an exceptional event.”
Founded in 1998, the Awards comprise ten thematic categories, the People’s Choice Award, and Awards for Best Programme and Best New Channel launched over the last 12 months.
The full list of results
Children’s channel – Carousel from Russia
Cinema channel – There were two joint winners, Kino Soyuz, a channel specializing in movies from all states in the former Soviet Union and Italy’s Sky Cinema 1 HD
Culture/Education channel – the new Babel channel from Italy and a special mention for Rai Storia, also from Italy
Documentaries – the first free-to-air channel from Discovery in Europe, DMAX Germany
Fiction/General Entertainment – Sky Uno from Italy
Lifestyle channel – the newly launched Rai 5 (Italy) and a special mention for the local channel NRJ Paris (France)
Music channel: France Ô from France, a chgannel specialising on the culture from the French overseas departments
News – BBC Arabic (UK) and the first r24 hour regional news channel TG Norba 24 (Italy) with a Special Mention
National Window – TVE Internacional (Spain) and a special mention for SMtv from San Marino
Sports channel – Trace Sports France, a new kind of sports channel which looks ‘behind the scenes’.
The People’s Choice award went to the kids channel MiniMini (Poland)
Best programme – The Beethoven Project (Deutsche Welle TV) and a special mention for Comedy Central Polska (Poland)
Best New Channel award – TG Norba 24 Italy, the firsty 24/7 regional news channel on satellite.
