Sixth NT Awards celebrate the best in news business

The news television industry came out in droves to celebrate success on 25 March evening at New Delhi’s Taj Palace Hotel. Representative of TV news channels reporting in Marathi, Hindi, English and Telugu all came together under one roof, forgetting rivalries, news breaks and to hold themselves under the spotlight at the Indiantelevision.com’s Sixth News Television Awards. Presented by LR Active Oil, with the support of many other industry partners, the NT Awards had a packed house as 116 awards in various categories were given away by dignitaries from politics, sport, society and culture. The chief guest for the evening was Information and Broadcasting Minister of State (independent charge) Manish Tewari. “While the government is all for taking self regulation forward, there is need to decide where freedom of press ends and reasonable restrictions begin," he said. He also congratulated the winners and the organisers for celebrating the vibrancy and robustness of the television industry and presented a host of awards to winners. “We received more than 1000 entries from the various news channels and had lots of help from those in public life and from journalists in Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad to short list the winners. Ernst and Young helped us in tabulating the peer judging process,” says Anil Wanvari, CEO and Founder of Indiantelevision.com, “The awards are growing in strength and I thank the industry for all the support it has been giving our initiative.” The event was anchored by Cyrus Broacha and dashing Kavita Kaushik whose quips had news professionals in splits throughout the evening. Awards were given for the best in categories like crime shows, sports shows, technology, documentaries with limited episode, TV news presenter, TV news anchor, investigative feature, investigative news report, entertainment news show et al. Special awards were given to Contribution to News Television, Innovation and Leadership in App Development, Most Extensive Social Media TV News Brand, Best News Channel Website, and for News Cinematographer. Aroon Purie, founder-publisher and Editor-in-Chief of India Today and the Chief Executive of the India Today Group stated that contrary to the general view, self regulation has made great strides in Indian television. He added that the News Broadcasters’ Association is taking a pro-active stance to raise standards of content. “The verdicts are being accepted by the channels and apologies made whenever required,” he pointed out. Rajdeep Sardesai, Editor-in-Chief of IBN18 Network, praised the strides by regional channels and expressed the hope that Hindi news channels would mend their “moral compass” by taking up serious issues. The awards function came at the end of a news summit on "Getting out of the Squeeze - Learning to live in a digitising India" which saw I&B secretary Uday Kumar Varma, I&B joint secretary Supriya Sahu and representatives of leading news channels, MSOs, technology providers and others in the television news industry taking part in different sessions. Click here for the full list of winners.