BAFTA Television Awards Reflect Changes in Popular Entertainment

Callum Gill

Editor

BAFTA’s television awards went ahead yesterday with much aplomb but significantly reduced viewing figures on last year. With Britain’s Got Talent drawing a whopping 12million viewers over the weekend, BAFTA’s 4.4million means just over a third of the amount of BGT viewers made the effort to watch the ceremony. Although it could be argued that awards ceremonies are somewhat self-congratulatory affairs where the TV industry recognises the brilliance of the TV industry, for me, these awards are vital to ensure that standards of programming do not dip. Without goals and benchmarks to aim for, how can TV ever be expected to progress and improve? These BAFTA’s seemed to recognise the changing landscape of British television reflected by some surprise nominations and some surprising wins.

June Brown, whose nomination for best actress was unusual for a performance in a soap, failed to take home the award; a step too far for soaps this year perhaps. Struggling Broadcaster ITV were surprised to pick up gongs for the Bill and their coverage of the Formula 1 Grand Prix victory of Lewis Hamilton, an award almost universally handed to the BBC’s Olympic coverage before the winner was announced. The awards which seemed a shock to some observers but came as no surprise to us here at E3 were the BAFTA for best entertainment programme and the Phillips Audience award. The X Factor beat off competition from The Apprentice, QI, The Sunday Night Project and TV Burp to pick up the best entertainment programme award and this is a reflection of the huge public interest and engagement with the talent show. Advertisers and events organisers have understood the power of this programme for some time now and are continuously looking to hire former X Factor contestants to associate their brand or experience with this hugely influential brand. The Phillips audience award shocked some due to the winner, Skins, enjoying significantly smaller viewing figures than its competitors such as Coronation Street and The Apprentice. The nature of this award’s voting almost guaranteed Skins the win, as the online and text based voting system seemed to inadvertently target Skin’s primary, tech-savvy, audience. Ultimately, the results from this years BAFTA’a should act as a lesson to entertainment industry professionals. Writing off potential victors based on trends from previous years and underestimating your target audience can be costly for anyone using entertainment as a selling point. All in all, these BAFTA’s seemed to do a good job reflecting an tenacious but slightly weary industry, while pushing to the fore those entertainment concepts which really will really work in 2009.

Upsets at the Baftas (guardian.co.uk)
Top shows vie for audience award (news.bbc.co.uk)
ITV cuts: Could X Factor and Coronation Street be affected? (telegraph.co.uk)

This entry was posted on Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 12:44 pm and is filed under Celebrity News, E3 Artists, Entertainment News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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