PARIS: The winners of the winners of the sixth Hot bird TV awards were announced at a ceremony in Venice, last week. 
An annual event to recognise the excellence in satellite broadcasting of thematic television, Hot bird TV awards are organised by Eutelsat and Eurovisioni, and sponsored by Alcatel Space, Arianespace and Astrium.
The winners were selected by a jury comprising European television journalists from Le Monde (France), La Stampa and Satellite (Italy), The Daily Telegraph (UK), The Echo Of Moscow (Russia), Ta Nea (Greece), TV Sat Magazine (Poland), Milliyet Sanat (Turkey), Suddeutsche Zeitung (Germany) and Agencia EFE (Spain). The nominees were short listed during jury meet held in Rome last month, says a company release.
The jury scanned 120 thematic channels broadcasting in 13 languages separated to shortlist the nominees into eight categories: News, Cinema & Fiction, Culture, Documentaries, Kids, Music, Sport, and Various.
While Minimax (Poland) and Rai Sat Ragazzi (Italy) are joint winner in the Children category, Sky Cinema Author (Italy) and TCM (France) share the onus in the Cinema & Fiction section. Rai Nettuno Sat (Italy) won in the Culture category, Grandes Documentales (Spain) and Voyage (France) bagged the laurels for best Documentaries. It was Canal Clasico (Spain) that was awarded the honours for Music category, Rai News 24 (Italy) for news and ESPN Classic Sport (France) for Sport. In the Other section it was Public Sénat (France) that took home the trophy.
The criteria that the jury looked for was display of particular originality and quality in programming and presentation.
Besides the regular awards, some special awards were also constituted to recognise special achievement. Eutelsat awarded special prizes to Euronews- to commemorate a decade of broadcasting news, information and current affairs in seven languages, and to TPS Star that has merged premium films and sports into one channel offered within the TPS pay-TV package in France.
Satexpo, the international conference and exhibition on satellite communications held in Vicenza from October 2 to 4 also gave prizes to Sky Italia and its new sports channel Sky Sport.
According to Eutelsat CEO Giuliano Berretta, "We are very pleased to see the onward growth of thematic satellite television that stands as a rich complement next to general entertainment channels. This year has been marked by the arrival of new concepts and talents that illustrate the inherent dynamics of thematic television. I would like to thank and congratulate all the channels that were considered for an Award by the jury for their contribution to a growing store of creativity for the millions of viewers that watch television through Eutelsat satellites".