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ASTRA Awards fails to let viewers short-list Favourites nominees

ASTRA Awards announces it nominees for the viewer Favourite categories. But when will it let viewers have input first?

2013-06-04_2031The ASTRA Awards has announced the nominations in five public voting categories, ahead of its awards night on July 25.

These include Favourite Male, Favourite Female and three Favourite Program categories.

But once again the nominees were all decided by ASTRA jury voting, and not short-listed by the public, which makes the categories something of a misnomer. Nominees were all submitted by channels for jury consideration and only now does the public get involved in actually voting. This differs markedly from the Logies which at least allows viewer to short-list Popular nominees from a lengthy list of potential nominees.

We are 11 years into the ASTRAs but if these categories are to be taken seriously they need a major overhaul.

Favourite Personality – Male
• Matty Johns (“NRL XTRA” & NRL presenter, FOX SPORTS)
• Andrew Winter (“Selling Houses Australia”, LifeStyle Channel)
• Peter Maddison (“Grand Designs Australia”, LifeStyle Channel)
• Danny Clayton (“The Riff”, Channel [V])
• Rove McManus (“Rove LA”, FOX8)
• Paul Murray (“Paul Murray Live”, Australian News Channel)

Favourite Personality – Female
• Melanie McLaughlin (Presenter and news presenter, FOX SPORTS)
• Sarah Jones (“FOX SPORTS News”, cricket reporter & Foxtel London 2012 Olympics host, FOX SPORTS)
• Shaynna Blaze (“Selling Houses Australia”, LifeStyle Channel)
• Deborah Hutton (“Foxtel Movie Show”, Arena)
• Carissa Walford (“The Riff”, Channel [V])
• Megan Gale (“Project Runway Australia” – series 4, Arena)

Favourite Program – Australian
• Grand Designs Australia – series 3 (LifeStyle Channel)
• Selling Houses Australia – series 5 (LifeStyle Channel)
• Tony Robinson’s Time Walk (The History Channel)
• Rove LA – series 2 (FOX8)
• Abalone Wars (Discovery Channel)
• Paul Murray Live (Australian News Channel)

Favourite Program – International
• The Ultimate Fighter 17 (FX Channel)
• Deadliest Catch (Discovery Channel)
• Kevin’s Grand Design (LifeStyle Channel)
• Storage Wars (A&E)
• TOSH.0 (The Comedy Channel)
• Real Housewives of Beverly Hills (Arena)

Favourite Program – International Drama
• Girls – season 1 (Showcase)
• The Walking Dead – series 3 (FX Channel)
• The Newsroom (SoHo)
• Game of Thrones – series 2 (Showcase)
• Hart of Dixie – series 1 (FOX8)

Viewers can vote until June 27 using a number of different methods:
• on Foxtel, at Channel 333
• at facebook.com/ASTRAawards
• by SMS to 1998 8899
• online at astraawards.com
• or,via the official online voting partner, news.com.au at news.com.au/ASTRAawards

The winners will be announced at the 2013 ASTRA Awards on Thursday, July 25 at the Sydney Theatre, Walsh Bay.

3 Responses

  1. It’s all about control for Brian Walsh and his team.

    As someone else said it’s about PR-ing their ‘superbrands’ — the brands that define the Foxtel platform.

    In fact, a ‘Foxtel insider’ has been very vocal in the past about how Brian chooses the winners anyway … even after the so-called “public vote”.

    Even if the public vote was ‘real’, the last thing they would want is for the public to vote for a show that has either been cancelled in the US or they have cancelled. For two reasons:

    a) that show no longer has any use for them in promoting the platform
    and
    b) it would look like they have made a bad decision by cancelling it

  2. Yes but the Logies is a total mess of best and popular categories.

    The ASTRA awards are just a PR stunt for Foxtel which now owns all Pay TV. Who cares? And what does it matter?

    Looking at the international programmes, male and female personality categories I have watched none of the nominees and don’t any of them. And could give a damn.

    I would vote for Time Walks and for Game of Thrones over S3 of the Walking Dead, just.

    Interestingly you have to agree to accept the prize (a hair do and trip to the awards) if you vote. What is second prize? Two tickets. I’d much rather watch a decent game of soccer on Foxsports than go to a silly, pointless awards ceremony full of vacuous D list celebrities.

  3. Completely agree David that the categories need a reboot and the public needs to be involved in creating the short list. I think ASTRA tried to do something different to the Logies (FTA) but instead just done it completely backwards and it isn’t good to say the least. I think they should keep the favourite males and females, but then split the Australian and International series into Drama/Comedy (like the every other TV awards program) or even add an Action category (which The Ultimate Fighter could fall under as well as shows like Burn Notice and Transporter called fall under as the Drama category is just too broad these days.

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