Rose d’Or Reveals Jury, Speaker Lineup

LUCERNE,
April 23: The 48th edition of the Rose d’Or Festival has unveiled the names of
the 20 jury members responsible for viewing and voting on the 75 programs
nominated for this year’s Rose d’Or Awards, as well as the speakers slated to
participate in five conference seminars.

The
75 nominated programs are from 55 companies representing 19 countries. The Rose d’Or Award will be given to winners in the
following eight categories: Arts Documentary, Comedy, Drama, Sitcom,
Entertainment, Game Show, Performing Arts and Reality. An award for Best Entertainer and Best
of 2008 will be presented to the most outstanding performer and outstanding
program, respectively, across all genres of programming. As previously announced,
Ben Silverman, the co-chairman of NBC Entertainment and Universal Media
Studios, will receive this year’s Honorary Rose and will be in Lucerne to
accept this award. The winners of the
competition will be announced the evening of May 6 at the gala closing night
award ceremony. Kiera Chaplin, the granddaughter of actor Charlie Chaplin, will be in
Lucerne to present the award for Best Entertainer.

For the Game Show,
Entertainment and Reality categories, the jury members include Larry Bass from Ireland’s Screentime ShinAwil,
Martin Bloch from Swiss Television, Park Hyogyu from Korea’s KBS, Georges Leclere
from LGMA (U.S./France), Maria Ligues
from Spain’s Europroducciones, Sarit Shalev from Israel’s
Reshet-TV–Channel 2 and Nathalie Wogue from IMG World (France).

In the Comedy, Sitcom and
Drama categories, the jury members include Anne Davis from South Africa’s SABC,
Mark
Fennessy from FremantleMedia Australia, Ping
Huang from Star China, Michel Rodrigue from Canada’s Distraction, David Semel
of David Semel Productions in the U.S., Roland Willaert from Germany’s Film- und
Fernsehgestaltung and Dewi Wyn
Williams from S4C in the U.K.

For the Arts Documentary
and Performing Arts categories, the members are Toshio Asaoka from
Japan’s NHK Enterprises, Henk van der Meulen from NPS in the Netherlands, Gunilla
Jensen Peyron from Sweden’s SVT, Vitezslav
Sykora from Czech Television, Jorge Vaillant from
Argentina’s Perspectives21 and Sandro Vakhtangov of Sandro Vakhtangov Production
in Georgia.

Additionally, the Festival will be hosting five conference seminars
covering topics from developing shows for prime-time television to what’s next
in new media. Speakers confirmed for these panels include David Liddiment
(All3Media/BBC), Alan Boyd (FremantleMedia), Colman Hutchinson (Prime
Suspects, Who Wants to be a Millionaire) and Michel
Rodrigue (Distraction), among others.

—By
Irene Lew