Nominees Announced for International TV Audience Awards

PARIS, May 3: At a press conference in Paris, the 47th
Monte-Carlo TV Festival and Eurodata TV Worldwide announced the nominees for
the second annual International TV Audience Awards, with six of the nominated
programs hailing from the U.S.

The winners of the International Audience Awards will be
determined by the sum of their TV ratings across five continents. Awards will
be granted to the programs that delivered the highest ratings worldwide in 2006
from the following three categories: Drama TV Series, Comedy TV Series and
Telenovelas/Soap Operas. The nominees were pre-selected among the ten
best-performing imported fiction programs in 47 countries.

This year, U.S. series dominate the field. The Drama TV
series category is comprised of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CSI: Miami, and Lost. For Comedy TV
Series, two U.S. series were nominated: Desperate Housewives and Monk, along
with the U.K.’s Mr Bean. In the
Telenovelas/Soap Operas category, two programs from Colombia were nominated: El
Cuerpo del Deseo and Pasión de
Gavilanes, as well as the U.S. daytime
drama The Bold and The Beautiful.

The winners will be announced during the Festival’s Awards
Ceremony on June 14 at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco.