Winners of the 2012 Eutelsat TV Awards announced

The Eutelsat TV Awards is an annual international event recognising the best TV channels broadcast by satellite. More than 120 channels from 19 countries participated in this year’s competition, with a jury of international media experts judging their programming formats, innovation and audience relationship.

The winners were TELETOON+ (Poland), best children’s channel; PREMIERA (Russia), cinema; TOP SECRET (Russia), culture/documentaries; MBC 1 HD (UAE), fiction/general entertainment; REAL TIME (Italy), lifestyle; C Music TV (UK), music; SKY TG24 (Italy), news; EUROSPORT (France), sport; with Spiegel TV Wissen (Germany) awarded best new channel.

 TRT Haber (Turkey) received the people’s choice award and Shakespeare from Kabul, BBC PERSIAN (UK) was voted as best programme by a jury of TV viewers.

“Creative programming, engagement with viewers and a feel for new trends are core to great TV,” said Michel de Rosen, Eutelsat CEO, at the Awards ceremony in Venice.

Simon Albury, former Chief Executive of the Royal Television Society and patron of this year’s jury added: “It’s no understatement to say that 2012 has been an historic year for TV. Audience records were broken around the world for mega events like the Olympics and broadcasters showed their boundless capacity to create innovative programming ideas and to turn the arrival of new platforms and changing viewing habits to their advantage. At the end of the day great viewing is about great content and this is what we have celebrated tonight at the Eutelsat TV Awards.”