It seems as though we have been waiting a long time for voting to start in the People’s Choice category, “Best Coverage of Climate Change”. We launched the 2010 AIBs, international media excellence awards, on 12th April 2010 and were excited to announce our two new categories – one for “Best Children’s Factual Programme/Series” and the other the People’s Choice.

The People’s Choice is a radical departure for the AIB, since it will be the first time that an award has been judged by online viewers rather than a panel of distinguished broadcasters. We had lots of questions to consider before launching it: “Would broadcasters want to submit their work to be judged by online viewers?”, “Would we have enough entries?”, “Would we attract a big enough online audience?”. But we felt that with the increasing convergence of broadcast and online media it was important to reflect this with an award that involved the online community and the new ways that broadcasters need to engage with their audience and obtain direct feedback. We also felt that the chosen subject for 2010, climate change, attracts such wide interest and even controversy, that viewers will be drawn to watch the short list and make their own choice.

The first set of questions, about broadcasters’ involvement, has been satisfactorily answered with a high quality field of entries from which it was difficult to chose the short list. The resulting short list contains strong entries from major broadcasters such as the BBC, CNN and Sky, as well as important contributions from China (Phoenix Satellite TV) and the United Nations – not forgetting the Belgian entry from VRT.

Now we are excited that a small selected group are trying out our system in a “Premiere” viewing of the entries and that general voting will begin next Monday. We will be building up the campaign to involve the largest possible number of viewers from all over the world during the next month.

If you are not part of the Premiere viewing that is currently going on, why not instead have a look at some of the interesting entries that did not quite make the short list? Click here to view them.