Telly town experts meet to judge the semi final round of International Emmy Awards hosted by Indiantelevision.com

Indiantelevision.com recently played hosts to some of the most talented industry big wigs who got together to judge the semi final rounds of the prestigious 41st International EMMY awards. Judging two categories -‘comedy’ and ‘telenovela’, the judges had to select the best entry among the Latin American contenders. Judging the comedy entries were the beautiful actresses Shilpa Taluskar and Divyanka Tripathi along with directors Harshad Joshi and Prabal Barauh, writer Amit Aaryan and Director of Big Synergy, Anita Kaul Basu. And on the other hand actresses Meghna Malik, Aashka Goradia and Shruti Ulfat, producers Rajan Shahi, Yash Patnaik and Sudhir Sharma took to judge the drama series for the telenovela category. These people took to some serious judging and spoke to us on their experience of being part of such a recognised award show. Rajan who has been part of the event for the past nine years (from the time Indiantelevision.com has been hosting it) said, “For me it is an educational experience since we get to see so many different kind of works from across the world.” Anita Basu here added, “I have been part of this event for the past three years and I enjoy watching these international content, and I feel our shows can give them an equally tough competition. For me, anything that is engaging from the start wins and therefore I judge keeping that in mind.” Talking about Indiantelevision.com’s involvement in the EMMY’s Nathaniel Brendel (EMMY Judging Director, The International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences) said, “The entries are segregated into four regions and one of the semi final rounds is judged in India. Indiantelevisin.com has been helping with the judging for the last nine years, and now we are hoping for some entries from India too. I have heard so much about them, and I do plan to check out some shows now.” With Nathaniel praising Indian shows, it is indeed a wondering thought that in spite of having such popular shows and an audience worldwide, why don’t we see Indian shows on such platforms? Sudhir answered our question saying, “Our industry is still in an evolving phase and it will still take some time when we can come up on this stage. And of course the lack of information indeed acts as the biggest hurdle.” Shilpa further went on to say, “Indian comedy shows are equally or actually better in terms of performance and content. Shows like Dekh Bhai Dekh and Zabaan Sambhal Ke have been such interesting subjects back then; it’s astonishing not to see our shows up here. Our projects are definitely much better and true to life kinds.” The judging which was segregated into two parts- content and execution – put the judges to lot of thinking before they could choose the best out of them. When we queried the judges on the importance of these factors, Divyanka quipped, “I think execution is more important any day. If it was all about written words, only novels would have been sufficed, why make shows. It’s just that when someone enacts the same, it takes the content to another level.” But Yash had a different take to it as he averred, “I feel both hold equal importance. A good concept executed badly can make it bad and an ordinary concept executed well can make it extra-ordinary. So a balance has to be maintained between them.” While the judges had a gala time judging the entries that came in, the only call and need of the hour are for nominations from India to pour in by next year. The 41st International EMMY awards will be held on 25 November 2013.