The 2012 AIBs | shortlist released

The shortlist of entries in the 2012 AIBs, the international media excellence awards, has been announced.

“The shortlist has been even more challenging to compile this year,” says Simon Spanswick, AIB chief executive. “We received more entries from more organisations than ever, and most were of an extremely high standard. This made selecting the finalists for the 2012 AIBs extremely difficult. Some hard decisions were made, and now it is up to our global panel of judges to deliver the names of the winners in this year’s competition.”

The international panel of judges includes programme makers, journalists, editors, producers and executives across every continent – full details of all the judges are here. Over the coming four weeks, they will be evaluating and reviewing entries and submitting their results in time for the annual gala evening on Wednesday 7 November.

“This year, the judges are receiving the entries electronically,” says Spanswick. “For the first time, we have done away with the need to ship DVDs, audio CDs and accompanying paperwork around the world by courier. Instead, all the material is online for judges to watch or download at their leisure. It makes these awards a little bit greener.”

The gala awards evening in London will be hosted this year by Evgenia Altfeld, a presenter/producer at RTG TV in Russia. Evgenia has worked in TV news in Russia before becoming a political spokesman in the St Petersburg region. She joined RTG TV in 2011 and now produces and presents a range of programmes for the Russian travel channel.

To reserve places at the 2012 AIBs, visit the AIBs page on this site, or download the booking form here.

The 2012 AIBs are sponsored by Eurosport and RTG TV.

AIB 2012 Awards Launched

The 2012 AIBs are now open for entries.  Download the entry booklet.

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The official launch of the AIBs 2012 took place back on Monday 2nd April at MIPTV in Cannes in front of an audience of broadcasters from all over the world.  Our thanks go AIB member France24 who hosted the event on their stand.

Each year, AIB organises a global search for the very best content. Programmes are entered by broadcasters, independent producers and journalists from countries on just about every continent, including Antarctica. The goal for each entrant is the same – to be recognised by their peers in the international broadcasting business by winning an AIB Award. We know it means something. It helps producers spot rising talent. It provides a bench-mark for the information branch of the media sector. In the last 8 years, we’re proud to have helped talented people further their careers.

The winners of the 8th annual awards will be announced at a gala evening in London on Wednesday 7th November 2012.  Book the date in your diary and watch out for more details. Click here to find out about Partnership Opportunities that prov

Image showing the different categories in the 2012 AIBs

ide more than nine months exposure to major international broadcasters worldwide and to 25,000 media industry professionals throughout the worldwide. 

This year, in addition to our regular awards covering radio and television current affairs, documentaries, investigative journalism, children’s programmes, science, sports technology and marketing, we are proud to announce two new awards which reflect the changing face of broadcast journalism:

  • Best short documentary, feature or report which highlights the increasing production and consumption of top-quality short programmes from a range of new and existing content producers
  • Best coverage of London 2012 which looks forward to the coverage of the Olympic Games which promise to break new ground in terms of 3D production and use of social media and second screens

The AIB is also looking to keep our judging panel fair and fresh. Although we’re based in the UK, we are proudly international in our outlook. Launching the awards on the France24 stand was deliberate. We’re aware that Western media has an Anglo-Saxon bias. Which is why our awards have always attracted entries from producers who don’t work in English, yet have an important story to share with their audiences. We also know that with the current financial crisis, you need to be creative and clever to get the budgets you need to do a proper job.

Our judges know how to spot genius when they see or hear it. So we’re looking for new judges who will help us continue the tradition of seeking out brilliance. We really do concentrate on world-class content. Anyone can set up a gong-factory – it takes real hard work to be fair.

For full details about the awards, download The AIBs 2012 entry book here.

Preparing for 2011 Launch

The Association of International Broadcasting (AIB) is preparing hard for the launch of the 2011 AIBs, international media excellence awards.  After last year’s increased entries and highly successful awards event, whose highlights you can see in a video on theaibs.tv home page, we are looking forward to even more entries and enquiries are already coming in from those wanting to reserve the date of the 2011 AIBs ceremony (Wednesday November 9th, so book it in your diaries).

There will be one or two different categories this year to reflect the changing face of broadcasting and the widening scope of member’s activities.  Also, for the second year of the People’s Choice category, we will be choosing a subject that is a current major focus of world news and one that will continue to evoke much comment and discussion over the rest of this year and beyond.

Much more detail will follow shortly.

Voting has started

It seems as though we have been waiting a long time for voting to start in the People’s Choice category, “Best Coverage of Climate Change”. We launched the 2010 AIBs, international media excellence awards, on 12th April 2010 and were excited to announce our two new categories – one for “Best Children’s Factual Programme/Series” and the other the People’s Choice.

The People’s Choice is a radical departure for the AIB, since it will be the first time that an award has been judged by online viewers rather than a panel of distinguished broadcasters. We had lots of questions to consider before launching it: “Would broadcasters want to submit their work to be judged by online viewers?”, “Would we have enough entries?”, “Would we attract a big enough online audience?”. But we felt that with the increasing convergence of broadcast and online media it was important to reflect this with an award that involved the online community and the new ways that broadcasters need to engage with their audience and obtain direct feedback. We also felt that the chosen subject for 2010, climate change, attracts such wide interest and even controversy, that viewers will be drawn to watch the short list and make their own choice.

The first set of questions, about broadcasters’ involvement, has been satisfactorily answered with a high quality field of entries from which it was difficult to chose the short list. The resulting short list contains strong entries from major broadcasters such as the BBC, CNN and Sky, as well as important contributions from China (Phoenix Satellite TV) and the United Nations – not forgetting the Belgian entry from VRT.

Now we are excited that a small selected group are trying out our system in a “Premiere” viewing of the entries and that general voting will begin next Monday. We will be building up the campaign to involve the largest possible number of viewers from all over the world during the next month.

If you are not part of the Premiere viewing that is currently going on, why not instead have a look at some of the interesting entries that did not quite make the short list? Click here to view them.

Record number of entries

We are delighted to announce that have received a record number of entries for the 2010 AIBs with many coming from broadcasters and independent producers who are entering for the first time.   There is a good spread across most categories.  In particular we are very pleased at the number of entries for our two new categories with 15 entries for the “Best children’s factual programme/series” and 10 for the “Best coverage of climate change”.

Over the next month, we will be examining in more detail the way broadcasting is dealing with climate change as we prepare for the People’s Choice vote of our shortlist in this category

Entries pouring in for the 2010 AIBs

As you will have seen, we have extended the deadline for entries to be submitted to the 2010 AIBs, the international media excellence awards, until 1600GMT on 16th July due to numerous requests. Broadcasters, content producers, providers of technology and others are responding to the extra time granted with large numbers of entries arriving at AIB headquarters every day.

So far companies in 21 countries have entered – from Argentina to China and from Australia to the USA. From phonecalls made to the AIB, we also know that many more entries are on their way.

It is particularly pleasing to see new companies entering for the first time – companies like KI.KA (Der Kinderkanal von ARD und ZDF) in Germany, TV Antena 1 in Romania, Russian Travel Guide Co Ltd Russia, Conker Media Ltd UK, Press TV Iran and eTV South Africa.

It is still not too late to enter if you are a producer or broadcaster of international TV or radio programmes (whether using terrestrial broadcasting, satellite, online or mobile) or if you produce the technology to power broadcasts, or if you run marketing programs for broadcasts (see the categories page on the website for the full list of different awards).

But with only one more week to the deadline, you will have to hurry so if you still want to enter go to the entries page for full details