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ASTRA Awards shake-up

How does Deadliest Catch land an ASTRA Awards nomination when Mad Men, Dexter & True Blood don't? CEO Petra Buchanan talks about changes to Pay TV's night of nights.

Last week’s announcement of the nominees for the 8th Annual ASTRA Awards is a chance for the subscription television industry to acknowledge its achievers from 2009.

But this year despite a number of improvements taking place to the nomination criteria and judging process, there are changes that have some wondering about the final list.

This year ASTRA has merged International and Australian titles in the same category, which sees Deadliest Catch going up against local productions such as Australia’s Next Top Model and Selling Houses Australia for Favourite Program. Would there be red faces if it actually won?

Last year’s Favourite International Program and Favourite International Personality or Actor categories have been dropped.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars will compete with local productions Australian Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards and Camp Orange: The Final Frontier in the Children’s category.

In contrast Most Outstanding Drama has three local productions in Tangle, :30 Seconds and the UK-Aus co-production False Witness but no nominations for Mad Men, Dexter, True Blood or Breaking Bad.

TV Tonight spoke with ASTRA CEO Petra Buchanan about this year’s voting process.

Buchanan says channels must nominate for categories which are then overseen by a third party, Two de Force who are specialists in event management and awards.

“We are arms-length to make sure we are completely unbiased,” she said.

“There are a series of questions the nominees must provide detail on, which relate to the objectives of the programme. There are slight criteria differentials between programme-related categories and talent categories. One is much more subjective in terms of their performance.

“We then approach executives across the industry who form judging panels. We really try to have an inclusive spread to make sure we don’t have bias in any area or for any one channel.”

45 judges reviewed nominations and footage, awarding points to nominees before arriving at a shortlist of finalists. There are now 73 finalists across 17 categories.

“Then there is a discussion between those individuals, usually between 7 – 10 people in those voting pools. They discuss as group the top 4 or 5 and discuss whether that’s actually representative or if anybody needs to be brought up who may have distinguishing qualities or didn’t come through in the numbers tally.”

Buchanan says the judges have the flexibility to determine the number of finalists. Most Outstanding Actor (Male) has four finalists: Ben Mendelsohn, Matt Day, Joel Tobeck and Dougray Scott.

“They felt there was much closer competition there. We don’t set a perameter that says ‘You must choose 3, you must choose 5. We’re flexible enough to say this is about the best of the best,” says Buchanan.

Most Outstanding Actor (Female) has three: Kat Stewart, Justine Clarke and Catherine McClements. None of the girls from Satisfaction were nominated.

“There obviously were a number of other submissions in that category but on par in terms of the review and judging process, obviously these are the top 3 that they feel are Finalists,” she says.

Buchanan says the merging of Australian and International titles was to reflect the content on the Pay TV platform.

“I really felt our progamming stands on its own here in Australia and that people come to subscription television for both original content as well as international content.

“In the main we did see a lot more of the original content being submitted than international content.”

But with a $250 fee per nomination, some channels have been selective in what they have submitted, telling TV Tonight they preferred to focus on original productions rather than international acquisitions. Some sources said the focus of the night should remain on Australian productions.

Buchanan said the $250 fee was to cover the costs of Two de Force, and denied it affected the final nominee list.

“It’s the net coverage of the costs by a third party,” she said.

“We’re not doing it as a money-making exercise, it’s a coverage of time and energy, with costs related to processing and judging.”

ASTRAs also encourages channels to have nominees in attendance, which would be a consideration if international shows ended up scooping the pool.

“We would encourage and hope that they will be there on the night, because you wouldn’t want to create an event where you have an audience sitting and celebrating but nobody there to receive an award because they’re all overseas,” she said.

The executives also lock in the finalists in the two viewer categories, Favourite Personality and Favourite Program, based on submissions from channels.

But shows such as Mad Men, Dexter, True Blood, American Idol, Gossip Girl, Grand Designs, Project Runway Australia, Chandon Pictures, The Jesters haven’t made the cut, possibly because they weren’t submitted in the first place. These 2 categories are also likely to be won by shows on basic platforms which access the bigger audience. One source told TV Tonight it was disappointed there was no Comedy category.

Buchanan says judges drawing up the initial “Favourite” finalists rather than allowing the public to create the shortlist  to make the process manageable.

“The only reason there’s any involvement from the judges is that it’s a numbers game. At some point we have to make it manageable to run a competition process.”

This year’s ASTRA Awards has also responded to criticism over last year’s dinner presentation, with a black-tie theatre event to take place on June 24th at the State Theatre, Sydney.

It will be a night for the Pay TV industry, which was effectively snubbed with no Logie wins this year, to celebrate its growing presence and content.

“There’s a huge amount of talent in this industry,” says Buchanan, “and obviously we want it to be prominent.”

ASTRA Award 2010 Nominees

Voting will open on Monday.

5 Responses

  1. Pay TV was the biggest loser at the TV Week Logie Awards
    with not one success.

    Australians see no need to pay for television programmes ,
    with more Free TV coming available this year ,

  2. Bit strange…….how it was run last year was fine.What a lot of mucking around they have gone through.I would have thought just in a lot of categories where shows are nominated have been the highest rating programs for the year,that’s how it should be.Having to pay a fee is laughable as well,if i was involved i would’nt put up any of my shows

  3. The Logies are pathetic and the ASTRA awards are just as bad considering those omissions in the best Drama category. I now watch 90% of PayTv compared to 10% free to air. No wins whatsoever for any PayTv program at this year’s Logies is a blight on the Australian Television landscape and in my mind is absolutely criminal.

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