Canadian broadcasters and broadcast designers reaffirmed their excellence at the Promax&BDA 2001 conference June 20-23 in Miami Beach, taking home numerous awards in various categories.

The convention, the world’s largest gathering of promotion, marketing and design professionals in TV, digital media and radio, included sessions, speakers, 100 exhibitors, and two awards ceremonies. Promax&BDA represents the coming together of the two primary organizations representing these sectors of the industry, and the conferences allow its 4,200 member companies to share information, experiences, and concepts relating to their work.

Awards at the event are hardly given out stingily. Of the year’s record number of entries, 450 took home Promax Awards and more than 400 were bestowed with BDA Awards. The Promax categories focus on the promotional efforts related to networks, TV stations, cable systems, and interactive and home entertainment, while BDA concentrates on on-air, Web and print design.

Montreal CTV affiliate CFCF 12 won a whopping six gold and five silver Promax Awards, many of which were centred on the network’s 40th anniversary spots. CBC shared gold and bronze BDA awards with Toronto design shop Tango Media Group for on-air design for the 2000 Summer Olympic Games. Meanwhile, the in-house crew at Radio-Canada in Montreal took gold for sports program campaign for Jeux Olympiques and silver for news program campaign for Ce soir au Telejournal/Le Point.

Global Television’s Hamilton-based member station CH Television took home five golds and one silver in the categories of branding/image, news program promotion and campaign and sales presentation. Global Calgary won one gold and three silvers in the news promotion category, while Global’s B.C.-based CHEK, BCTV and CKVU took home one award apiece.

CHUM Television claimed five awards: Promax gold and BDA silver for FT-FashionTelevision, BDA gold for in-house-produced image production (campaign) for MuchMusic, BDA bronze for a Bravo! promotional on-air campaign for Beggars and Choosers, and another BDA bronze for Star! News in the out-of-house open category.

Silver in the TV station (in-house) – non-promotional animation category went to both Vancouver Television and TSN, while TFO-TVOntario won silver in the music package/sound design/post score or instrumental theme for Ozone.

Front, a Toronto-based design firm, took home five Promax awards. Four were for its work for international children’s network Nickelodeon in the promotional animation, holiday/season program promotion and best use of music categories. Front’s other award was for sales presentation – video, for its collaboration with Astral Media highlighting the broadcaster’s Pay-TV networks and its contribution to the Canadian film and TV industries.

According to Jeff Rustia, president and head of creative at Front, there were up to 6,000 entries per category. Although the overall Canadian award haul is down from last year, Canada trailed only the U.S. and the U.K. in terms of Promax awards won.

‘It’s tremendous recognition from the industry that our work is world class,’ says Rustia. ‘When we’re dealing with Canadian networks, they are looking for branding companies that can truly compete in the global marketplace, and this is definitely a nice feather in our cap.’

A full list of winners is available at the BDA and Promax websites. *

-www.bda.tv

-www.promax.tv