BNT SERIES “THE FORTH ESTATE” WINS A PRESTIGIOUS EUROPEAN AWARD

The BNT series ‘The Forth Estate’ is the award winner in the category ‘fiction/drama’ in one of the most prestigious contests for European TV programmes, Prix CIRCOM 2014. The announcement was made on 14th April after the judging of the international jury of 14 TV professionals from different European countries, which took place in Sofia, Bulgaria. The official awards ceremony will be held during the CIRCOM Regional conference on Thursday, 8 May, in Cavtat, in Croatia.

BNT is the only TV station among the award winners, which is located to the east of Paris. Over 220 entries from 30 countries participated in Prix CIRCOM 2014 competition. BBC had the largest number of entries. The judges described the “The Fourth Estate” BNT series as very dynamic and really well made.

Eduardo Bonilla, from RTVCYL, Spain says it is a great series, with a very good idea, characters, wonderfully written script and mainly with a rather difficult subject.

Jacqui Hodgson from BBC, UK, explained she watched only one episode and would like to find what would happen at the end of the series. She says it was very intriguing and dynamic and was very surprised that such type of political story was told.

The judges have commented that there were heated discussions over what makes a winning programme and what qualities are required, which has nothing to do with how big the TV broadcaster is or how much funds it has. They added that their decisions were based on the quality of the productions

Johnbert. Dijker from Omroep Flevoland, Holland says the judges discussed and disputed over various things – the story, camera work, journalistic work because everything needs to be perfect for a programme to win such an outstanding European award.

The Prix CIRCOM awards were first presented in 1990. These are the most important international awards for regional programmes produced and broadcast by the public service regional stations in Europe.

This year’s edition of the contest included the following categories: documentaries, sports, magazine and news magazine, fiction/drama, programmes for minorities in society, video journalism, the rising star, investigative journalism and the special award for Citizenship Co-production.