RAPA Awards 2007 draws 1,000 entries

Mumbai: The Radio and TV Advertising Practitioners Association of India Ltd (RAPA), which honours outstanding creative work in the radio and television field, has drawn a thousand entries for the 33rd All India RAPA Awards for Excellence 2007. This is up 43 per cent, from the 700 entries last year.

Viresh Chaddha, Chairman, RAPA Awards committee, said, ''We are happy to get a phenomenal increase of more than 43 per cent in the number of entries for the 33rd All India RAPA Awards for Excellence 2007. These Awards are one-of-a kind, as they honour creative excellence in radio and television in all Indian languages, including Hindi and English. On the judging panel, we have several eminent luminaries from the media and entertainment field, many of whom are linguists. We are hopeful of getting quality entries that would raise the creative standards.''

RAPA is one of India's oldest associations of media professionals, having come into existence on 4 November, 1974, with like-minded creative professionals in the radio and advertising fields getting together to represent the industry. Initially, RAPA was confined to only radio advertising, with television becoming a part of the awards in 1981.

Each year, RAPA honours outstanding creative work in radio and television. For the work to be eligible for nomination for the 33rd RAPA Awards, it has to be telecast/broadcast between 1 January, 2007 and 31 December, 2007. However, the telecast criterion is not applicable to documentaries.

Additionally, the work should be produced between 1 January, 2007 and 31 December, 2007, in India. It can be in any of the following 17 Indian languages, including Assamese, Bangla, Dogri, English, Gujrati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

In case of bilingual work, the primary language needs to be specified. For example, if a spot has both English and Hindi in it, then for it to be considered in English, it should have more than 70 per cent of English content.

There are a total of 63 awards, including nine awards in the Radio category in each language and another six for all languages combined. Two awards are in the Television advertising category in each language and nine awards in all languages combined. There are 11 awards in the Television Production category (serials/ music videos/telefilms, documentaries, etc.) in each language and 18 awards in all languages combined.

There are seven special RAPA Awards for all round contribution to Radio/Television; outstanding voice performance; best performance on TV for male and female; campaign of the year on TV and on radio; and outstanding copywriter.