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The Event
The ball has been set rolling for Television’s biggest Annual Festival-the Hero Honda ITA Awards, 2005. Now in the fifth year of a highly celebrated existence, these Awards are a unique and unprecedented endeavour to honour excellence on the canvas of Television, in the country.
Each year a new history is being created in terms of entries from the Industry in the Jury segment of the Awards. This time, the number has reached a staggering 2017 Nominations from 340 TV shows, representing the entire spectrum of the medium, be it Soaps, Comedies, Telefilms, Documentaries, Musicals, News & Current Affairs, Lifestyle-shows and what have you. As may as 46 channels have been featured this time… in short, you name it and it is there.
Says Anu Ranjan, President of the ITA, ‘All this has been possible because of the unqualified and unflinching trust of the Industry that we have been able to earn by virtue of unquestionable integrity and transparency in the Awards. The entire Award-process in simply impeccable’
The Award-process is one of its kind, indeed. After the Nominations are entered by various Production-Houses and Channels, they are put to microscopic evaluation through a unique modus operandi in the Judging-process. It is a two-tier Jury system, where the quality and merit of each of the Entries is evaluated at two stages, totally independent of each other. This makes it the most complete and consummate process of Judging, ever.
The final results are known only on the day of the Awards Ceremony, while the Envelopes are opened. The Academy, itself, never comes on scene as far as the Judging is concerned and the entire process is conducted by the outside Agency, Eikona.
`That explains some of the so-called low-profile but amazingly meritorious Performances and Shows winning the coveted Trophies, each year’, says the ITA Convenor, Shashi Ranjan. ‘Every time, the results have won a stunned and stunning praise by one and all, because of the relentless pursuance of excellence in the most implicitly transparent manner in these awards’, he further stresses.
That apart, the other segment, ‘the Popular Awards’ also has been nothing short of colossal. In it, a vast magnitude of the TV-watchers vote for their favourites through the Internet and Postal-ballots. The Public Poll has been slated between the 1st August,’05 to 15the October,’05 and already, the number of votes cast has soared to more than one lakh on the Internet.
`If this is not mind-boggling, what is?’ gushes the ITA SEO, Vierendra Bhargav, ‘Actually, the HHITA Awards has emerged as a true cynosure of both the Industry and the Audiences as well. For the TV world, it is akin to the Olympiad, where participation is more important than winning.’
And thus the wheel is in full spin - racing towards the Finale amidst peels of joy and abandon from all of those, even remotely attached to or interested in Television. ‘Bravo!’ is all one can gasp at the enormousness of the venture… and that is undoubtedly because when `push comes to shove’, the Indian Television Academy has no peers.
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