London – The 12th annual awards for factual television, radio and online productions (AIBs) were awarded at a glittering gala dinner in London, hosted by Mark Barton, the anchor on Bloomberg Television. Sponsors of the AIBs 2016 include global satellite communications company Eutelsat and broadcast consultants MediaGuru.
As well as rewarding programme makers, the Association for International Broadcasting presented its Founders Award to Abdul Rahman Ramadhan who for more than 35 years has been an unsung hero of news and documentary-making in Africa. He is “The Sound Man” who, working for Camerapix alongside the late legendary photojournalist Mohamed Amin, captured the sounds of war, famine and genocide across Africa.
Abdul was the sound recordist who worked with the BBC’s Michael Buerk, who brought news of the Ethiopian famine into homes around the world. This led to the creation of Band Aid and the global Live Aid pop concert. Alongside the presentation of the Founders Award, the global panel of judges of this year’s AIBs rewarded programme makers in 14 countries, ranging in size from an Argentinian radio station to major TV networks such as the BBC.
The UK’s Channel 4 television won four awards, and the BBC received four top awards plus four commendations from the judges. Key themes among the entries were the migrant crisis in Europe and in particular the effects on children. There was a range of productions covering issues around so-called ISIS, including the radicalisation of youth in western European countries. The judges praised the work of nominees, describing productions variously as “bold”, “engaging”, “compelling” and “comprehensive”.
The Association’s Innovation award was presented to the Private Engineering Office of Qatar for its ground-breaking TV and film archiving project that is preserving Qatar’s audio-visual archives on a scale unmatched anywhere in the world. With results in 17 categories ranging from news journalism to children’s factual, sport to investigate documentary, the AIBs cover the entire range of factual TV, radio and online production genres. There is an overall winner in each category and there are also special commendations that the judges said represented excellent work.
