The Art of Management

At the end of September Internews conducted an event titled as “The Art of Management”. Three days were dedicated to the conference Television: the Art of Management, the open competition for advertisements, workshops for journalists, open discussion of the packages presented to the competition for informational programs, and the award ceremony of the competition for informational programs.
At the conference Television: the Art of Management, conducted on September 29-30, representatives of TV companies, advertising and marketing agencies, experts from the CIS countries, Western Europe and the USA, discussed the issues of television management, the tendencies of TV broadcasting development in Armenia and worldwide, the influence of legislation on TV industry, effectiveness of advertising, etc. The conference was concluded by an open competition for advertisements. The winner of the best advertisement was decided by the method of brief voting of the conference participants. The ad of David Babakhanyan Zeon Internet Club scored the highest number of votes.

On October 1, the workshops of the following popular professionals from Russian television industry were conducted: Svetlana Sorokina (ORT) – for newscast anchors; Ilya Zimin (NTV) – for reporters; Yelena Sarkissyan (NTV) – for investigative reporters; Mikhail Spirov (Coordinate-20) – for designers and everyone who produces newscasts. Also, there was a seminar “Thinking Ads” conducted by Alexander Repyev, an expert in marketing.

80 reports from 16 TV companies were presented to the competition for informational programs, announced in July, 2003. After long discussions, the panel decided not to grant awards in three categories: investigative journalism, special events reports from the location and informational programs. No worthy winners were found for the first two categories, and the category of informational programs was abolished because the main news channels of the country hadn’t taken part in the competition. The panel was selected based on the principle of neutral attitude towards TV channels, from among experts in the sphere of journalism and television: Anna Kackaeva, training department director of Internews Russia, Astghik Gevorgyan, head of Journalists Union of Armenia, Karine Khodikyan, editor-in-chief of Grakan Tert newspaper, member of the commission on television and radio, Tigranuhi Tutunjyan, editor-in-chief of Mir TV company, Boris Navasardyan, president of the Yerevan Press Club, John Hughes, editor-in-chief of Armenia Now online publication, Albert Yavuryan, manager of the department of film and television at the faculty of culture of the Armenian Pedagogical Institute.
The panel decided to establish a number of special and incentive awards. Internews defined the amount of money to be granted to the award-winners: special prize – 250 dollars, incentive prize – 150 dollars, in dram.

The main prizes ($700 each) were awarded to Victoria Abrahamayan,
Ayb-Feh news agency (category – Packages about Elections), and to
Hakob Badalyan, AR TV company, for a report on Barekamavan village
(category – Stories on Social Issues).

Special prizes ($250 each) were awarded to:
Hrachya Papinyan, Ankyun+3 TV company (Alaverdi) – for remaining loyal
to the subject;
Reporter Nelly Rafaelyan, directors Aram Shakhbazyan and Karen Adamyan,
cameramen Mkrtich Malkhasyan and Armen Ananyan, Shoghakat TV company –
for the expressiveness of Khoren Muradbekyan and People of the
Town films;
Reporter Diana Markosyan and cameraman Robert Kharazyan, Ayb-Feh news
agency – for urgency and professional courage;
Azdarar program of Tsayg TV company (Gyumri) – for the best regional
newscast;
ALT-TV company (Armavir) – for the public importance of the works
submitted to the competition.
An incentive prize ($150) was awarded to Zangak TV company (Martuni) – for the pieces Why Does the River Not Make Noise? and The Broken Dream,
for “being sympathetic to the problems that viewers are concerned about.”
Apart from that, Internews Russia awarded a special prize to Shoghakat TV company for the historic investigation Khoren Muradbekyan.