Phil Edgar-Jones

Winners announced for RTS Student Television Awards 2016

Anna Senkara (Credit: Richard Kendal)

The awards recognise outstanding work produced by undergraduate and postgraduate students during the 2014/15 academic year.

Comedian Mark Dolan hosted the event which welcomed over 250 students from around the country.

The Student Television Awards 2016 were chaired by Sky Arts Director Phil Edgar-Jones and celebrate the best in student television.

The Undergraduate and Postgraduate Awards are judged in six categories – Animation, Comedy & Entertainment, Drama, Factual, News and Open.

Sky Arts' Portrait Artist of the Year turns 10

Over the past decade Sky Arts’ Portrait Artist of the Year has emerged as one of the channel’s flagship shows – and one in which skill triumphs over exhibitionism. As Sky Arts’ supremo, Phil Edgar-Jones, said: “The show is not all about loud, mad characters but people doing something well.”

He was speaking at an RTS London event, “Portrait Artist of the Year at 10”, where he was joined by members of the production team at independent producer Storyvault Films, and which was chaired by the company’s founder Stuart Prebble, also an executive producer on the show.

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For many of us, starved of enjoying a real performance in a theatre or a concert hall these past months, watching Sky Arts in lockdown was a revelation. Most of us knew about its flagship shows Urban Myths and Portrait Artist of the Year. We were less familiar with the service’s sheer eclecticism, which encompasses everything from ballet to the blues and Bono.

Phil Edgar-Jones: "We didn't want some Euro-porridge that didn't work."

Just over 10 years ago, Sky took control of the struggling Artsworld channel and subsequently re-branded it Sky Arts. A decade on, it is the home of The South Bank Show and is renowned for its star-studded programmes. These shows have included Jon Hamm and Daniel Radcliffe in A Young Doctor’s Notebook, and Joseph Fiennes as Michael Jackson in the forthcoming one-off, half-hour comedy drama Elizabeth, Michael & Marlon.

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