== Deadline extension – the final deadline for
submissions is now Friday, February 22 ==
The Connies, the awards that encompass the best of TV and media innovation, have been launched for 2019 and are open for entries. This year the International categories include ‘The Premium TV Award’, where the best new TV services and projects are investigated in Oscars-style, and ‘Excellence in Analytics & AI for TV and Video’. There is also a category for ‘Best User Experience – All Channels & Platforms’ (UK + International). The Connies winners will be announced at an awards lunch at The Banking Hall in central London on Wednesday, May 8, 2019. The final (extended) deadline for submissions is now Friday, February 22.
The ‘Excellence in Analytics & AI for TV and Video (International)’ category rewards companies for the use of data analytics, artificial intelligence or machine learning to improve television – as a form of entertainment, as an operations process or as a business. The use of machine learning to enrich metadata or to identify parts of a sports match that should be turned into highlights, or the use of AI to improve responses to network errors, and the use of data analytics to predict churn are examples of the wide range of applications that are relevant to this category. The use of machine learning to enhance video compression is another example.
As in previous years, the ‘Video Technology Hero (International)’ category is looking for the solutions that are solving the big problems or opening the door to the major opportunities in the television and video markets. The technology must be used to enable or support the delivery of a television/video service. Technologies can come from every part of the delivery chain, from data centres and headend or playout facilities through the broadcast networks to end-user devices. Previous entrants included video processing, content protection, cloud, UX and customer premise equipment solutions, as examples.
Here is the full list of categories for 2019:
- Best Research Project/Initiative
- Best Use of Connected Data
- Connected Campaign of the Year
- Video Technology Hero (International)
- The ‘Premium TV’ Award (International)
- Excellence in Analytics & AI for TV and Video (International)
- Best User Experience – All Channels & Platforms (UK + International)
- Best Use of Connected Technology
- Connected Agency of the Year
- Connected Media Owner of the Year.
Our entry forms ask for a maximum of 1,300 words explanation and the entry price (by the first deadline) is £99 per entry. You can read the full entry guidance for each category, find out more about the awards, and enter The Connies, here.
Mark Cross, Director at Chartroom, is the Chair of Judges again and is joined by:
International category judges
- William Cooper, Founder and Chief Executive, informitv
- Steven Hawley, Principal Analyst and Consultant, tvstrategies
- Ian Nock, Managing Director and Founder, Fairmile West
- Benjamin Schwarz, Consultant, CToic Consulting
- John Moulding, Editor-in-Chief, Videonet.
Judges, all other categories
- Richard Marks, Director, Research the Media
- Stacey Anklam, COO, autograph
- Anne Tucker, Head of Research and AV, Mediatel
- Tracey Follows, Founder, Futuremade.
The Connies reward innovation and recognise emerging best practice across all sectors of the media landscape from content distribution technologies to advertising planning and media research. They are produced by Mediatel Events, the company behind a collection of thought-leadership conferences including Connected TV World Summit, Videoscape Europe, Future TV Advertising Forum, and The Future of Brands. The company also hosts the Mediatel Research Awards every year.
The Connies are supported by Videonet and our sister publication, Mediatel Newsline. Both magazines will report on the publication of the awards shortlists and eventual winners.
These awards are a great way to demonstrate your innovation to the world. At last year’s event, Freeview Australia won the ‘Best TV/Video Service Update or Launch’ with its Freeview Plus offer, and Media Distillery won the Gold award for ‘Contribution to User Experience – TV & Video’ with its Next Generation Replay Experience. Verimatrix, the revenue security and video analytics company, won the Grand Prix (winner of winners) for the international categories, having impressed judges with the potentially game-changing capabilities of its Federated Rights Management solution, which re-imagines the content security workflow for a hierarchical ‘wholesale/retail’ content distribution architecture. Federated Rights Management also won the ‘Video Technology Hero’ category.
You can read more about last year’s results, and see our profiles of the winning entries, here.
This year, ‘The Premium TV Award (International)’ recognises an outstanding achievement in the delivery of a premium TV service and/or premium TV programming to consumers. It is open to all Pay TV and free-to-air platform owners, broadcasters and subscription channel owners, SVOD providers, Pay Lite/Skinny services, direct-to-consumer distributors, social TV curators and any other media company offering content that is deemed by the judges to be of premium quality (which excludes user-generated and very low-budget).
For ‘The Premium TV Award’, Videonet magazine is leading an ‘Oscars style’ compilation of candidates that are presented to judges for shortlisting. You are welcome to propose an entrant for consideration (your own company or a third-party) by emailing john.moulding@mediatelevents.com by Friday, January 4, 2019. For this category, we will only consider achievements that can be shown to be live as of Friday, January 4, 2019. Initiatives/achievements/services that are ‘only’ in friendly-user tests, beta or any other pre-live form on this date will not be considered. Please note that the winner of this category will not be considered for the Grand Prix award.
Check out all the categories at the Connies website, here. Via this link, you can read an overview of the awards, see photos from last year’s awards lunch (which is very well attended and lots of fun), see all the categories and their entry guidance, and also enter. If you have any questions about the guidance on the international categories, please contact john.moulding@mediatelevents.com
