Prime TV Awards reset high standards for broadcast practitioners

HONTIVEROS, Monsod and Lazaro, with their beautiful Ramon Orlina-designed Prime TV Awards trophies. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

New TV awards for “excellence” are  “sampu-sampera” these days, but last Saturday’s rites for the first Prime TV Awards handed out by the Pete Roa Integrated Media (Prime) Foundation elicited unusual scrutiny and respect from viewers and TV industry players alike.

Held at the Ateneo de Manila University’s Escaler Hall and cohosted by Boots Anson-Roa and Sev Sarmenta, the simple but impressive ceremonies were witnessed by many communications students from 11 different colleges and universities in the metro.

They were very impressed with the three lifetime achievement awardees singled out by the respected board members of Prime Foundation—Cheche Lazaro, Pia Hontiveros and Winnie Monsod.

As each honoree shared the fruits of her vast experience with the students in the audience, the youths realized with mounting excitement that they were very lucky to be gaining important insights from not just one but three acclaimed practitioners of broadcast news and public affairs—the very same sphere of work and influence that some of them were planning to choose for themselves.

Acceptance speech

Initially, it was announced that Winnie Monsod was under the weather and thus would not be able to grace the awards rites, so her daughter, Toby Melissa Monsod, read her acceptance speech for her. —But, Winnie did eventually catch up with the proceedings, her similarly well-regarded husband, Christian Monsod, beamingly in tow!

Finally all present and accounted for, the first ever Prime TV awardees then accepted their beautiful Ramon Orlina-designed trophies from Boots and other Prime Foundation trustees.

The awardees and their shimmering trophies cum works of art made a big impression on onlookers, prompting an audience member to exclaim that the Prime TV Awards were of “a higher and better level.”

True enough, Pia, Cheche and Winnie’s credentials and long experience were unimpeachable, setting high standards for other TV practitioners to aspire to!

Another unique quality that all three honorees share is the courage, not just of their convictions but also of their actuations and decisions. This was made vividly clear by the challenging on-the-job rigors they recalled, like being caught in a  deadly crossfire while on assignment, or daring to tackle the most controversial topics, even if it put their jobs and shows at risk.

The insights gained from all those shared experiences and challenges weren’t lost on the students in attendance, who realized that broadcasting is not the glamorous line of work some people think it is, but can in fact be unusually rigorous and even dangerous, bringing out the very best in its most committed workers.

That insight was a big eye-opener for the students, and placed their desire to become broadcasters themselves in the right context!

All told, therefore, Prime’s first TV awards succeeded in their intention to reestablish suitably high performance and ethical standards for TV work, which have been drastically diluted of late by the proliferation of dubious “awards” for “excellence” in television, and other undeserved telecasting “honors.”