CNN-IBN, NDTV bag best news channel awards

New Delhi, July 19: Leading news channels NDTV India and CNN-IBN bagged the best Indian Hindi and English news channels of the year award respectively at the News Television (NT) awards 2007 held here last night.

While NDTV founder and President Prannoy L Roy was honoured with the NT Lifetime Achievement award for his outstanding contribution in changing the face of Indian broadcast media, CNN-IBN Editor-in- chief Rajdeep Sardesai was awarded the Newsmaker of the year at the glittering awards function attended by media personalities.

Accepting the award on behalf of the NDTV team, NDTV India Managing Director Debang said, '' This award shows that even without crime and horror shows based in superstition and just by giving pure news a news channel can win an award and we have done so.'' NDTV's Barkha Dutt and Vinod Dua, a short man with a tall profile who sparks the screen with his quick wit, won the awards for the Best English and Hindi news anchors respectively.

NDTV 24x7's 'We the People' was awarded the best English news talk show while 'Hum Log' of NDTV India won the honour in the Hindi category.

While NDTV emerged as a clear winner with the jury giving it 16 NT awards, CNN-IBN was not far behind sweeping nine awards, including the best news channel website (Ibnlive.com), Best English Sports reporting, Best Business English New Programme (Axe the Tax), Best English News Documentary Programme, Best English Investigating Reporting (I an M K Subba), Best English Daily Newscast (India at 9 ).

Upendra Rai of Star News bagged the best news reporter in Hindi while NDTV's Shaila Chopra was adjudged as the best English news reporter.

CNBC TV 18 was adjudged as the best business channel and Udayan Mukherjee of the news channel was honoured with the best business English news anchor award. 'Story Board' and'Young Turks from the same channel won the Best Business News Programme and Best English Business talk show awards respectively.

Aaj Tak's Pranjal Sharma also won the best business news anchor award in the Hindi category.

The only economic crime show in the entire category 'Pardafash' of CNBC Awwaz won the Best Hindi crime show award while 'Action City' of Times Now was selected for the honour in the English category.

In the Sports category the award for the Best News Show Presenter in Hindi was bagged by Darayan Shahidi of IBN 7 while Meha Bharadwaj of CNN-IBN was selected for the English category.

Special NT awards were given to Aaj Tak and Times Now for their highest popularity and ratings in the past one year while Zee News' 'Badi Khabar' won the award for the Best Daily Newscast in Hindi.

The award function was organised by Indiantelevision.com.

NT awards in its first year received around 5000 entries from 16 news channels and were judged by a jury comprising 28 senior members of the media. The entries were judged with regard to the other entries on the basis of their content, duration and packaging.

UNI