The prestigious awards are now in their seventh year. April Chamberlain, Scotland Chair said, “the awards continue to celebrate all the talented programming and content that Scotland has to offer”.  Chamberlin was delighted to announce the presenter for the forthcoming  awards, Scottish comedienne and actor Karen Dunbar. Dunbar described her career as an “unscripted journey”, promising the awards would feature similar spontaneity.

A number of 2019 Scotland Award winners attended the event and were introduced by Committee member and University of West of Scotland broadcast lecturer Paul Tucker. These included key talent from STV Productions, Hello Halo and Sorbier Productions, BBC Social and The Woven Thread.
 

Robyn Scott, production coordinator on the Daytime winner, ‘Antiques Roadtrip’ said, “It is a pretty big beast filming and we’ve just finished our 20th season. But we’ve got a well-oiled machine and you definitely now get a chance to help other people out with your experience.”

Allanah Langstaff and Kevin Anderson, from Hello Halo, won the Documentary and Specialist Factual award for ‘Fashion's Dirty Secrets - Stacey Dooley Investigates’. Allanah said the programme had caused an international stir. “It was such an all-encompassing subject and the whole team was really excited by the stuff we found. And that’s what you want to do, you want to make a massive noise” she said.

Berny McGurk, winner of the Professional Excellence award for Editing for his work on the BBC’s ‘Rupert Everett: Born to be Wilde’, was asked what it had been like working on the project and receiving such a warm reception, “I’ve been in editing for a while, and pretty much knew everyone in the room, so it was definitively really humbling. But I think the team and I managed to bring together a good theme and narrative.”

The comedy and children’s categories were won by The Woven Thread and Sorbier Productions respectively. Patsi Mackenzie, one of the team that produced ‘Buidheagain’ (Children’s winner), said she appreciated the recognition the RTS awards gave to all the people in the TV industry. “What I loved about it was that it felt very much for the practitioners. The red carpet stuff is great and we all love that, but this felt it was for the people at the coalface”.

Chair of Judges, Lisa Hazlehurst brought the evening to an end by reminding those present how to apply for next year’s awards. The 2019 awards received a record 230 entries for the 24 categories and with the new BBC Scotland channel and Channel 4 Glasgow Hub, a high number of submissions are anticipated for the 2020 awards.

The online awards portal will be open from 2 December to 31 January 2020. The Awards ceremony will be held on 3 June at the Old Fruitmarket in Glasgow.

If you have previously entered any RTS awards or if you are a new entrant just login here to make your submission. Good Luck!

Entry guidelines and category & criteria documents can be found below.