Kiwi documentary wins Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union Award

Kiwi documentary wins Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union Award

A New Zealand documentary celebrating disability has won the TV Perspective Award at the annual Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU) 2014 Awards in Macau overnight.

Warding off competition from Asian broadcasting giants including Japan’s NHK, the Tokyo Broadcasting System Television and China’s CCTV, the Auckland-based digital disability content specialist The Attitude Group emerged the winner in the ABU Prizes 2014 perspective category for its documentary ‘The Attitude Awards.’

This win is the third documentary award for the company in just 12 months. Its latest winner, ‘The Attitude Awards’, is about the annual celebratory event established by The Attitude Group six years ago to recognise the achievements of New Zealanders living with a disability.

The Attitude Group was also a finalist and commended by the judges in the sports category at this year’s ABU Prizes for its documentary about defending Paralympic Gold Medalist and Para-skier Adam Hall.

The company won the Special Jury Prize in last year’s ABU Awards for another documentary about New Zealand’s Paralympic cycling team. This year it also took out the 2014 Asia Image Apollo Awards Prize for Editing for its documentary about a young man living with autism.

In addition to these international accolades, The Attitude Group has been selected from broadcasters and companies across the Asia-Pacific region to participate in the 1 Asia co-production initiative, funded by the Japanese Government.

Robyn Scott-Vincent, who founded Attitude Pictures back in 1992, is hopeful that the recognition of the high standards that have been delivered by the entire Attitude team, from the camera crew to directors and editors, will be seen as a boost for everyone involved in television production in New Zealand.

“Changing viewing patterns mean we all need to increasingly look offshore for funding and co-production partners and it is exciting to know we have that high level of respect,” Scott-Vincent says.

The Group’s flagship documentary programme ‘Attitude’ screens on TV One on Sunday mornings and since its inception in 2005 has showcased the lives of more than 1000 people with a disability. While its core audience is in New Zealand, the international accolades and the group’s web platform AttitudeLive.com is helping grow its offshore audience.

AttitudeLive.com was launched in September 2013 and since then has grown its audience to 160,000 users, with over half a million page views.

In 2014, The Attitude Group became the first independent production company to secure broadcast rights for both the Sochi 2014 Paralympic Winter Games and the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games. The Sochi games were livestreamed to a receptive audience in New Zealand via AttitudeLive.com, almost doubling the viewing audience from the Vancouver 2010 Paralympic Winter Games.

About The Attitude Group
• The Attitude Group has been delivering disability content to New Zealand audiences for 10 years, producing more than 400 programmes
• In September 2013 The Attitude Group launched attitudelive.com – the world’s first fully accessible web platform focused solely on disability, health and wellbeing
• AttitudeLive.com focuses on accessible web design, including closed captioning for mobile, tablet and desktop devices, audio descriptions for most of the latest documentaries and a dyslexic-friendly font option
• The Attitude Group has developed a strong reputation offshore as one of the world’s leading production companies specialising in disability and chronic health
• Six years ago The Attitude Group established The Attitude Awards, an annual, national celebration of achievements of people who live with disability. The 2014 Awards will again be a black tie event at The Viaducts Event Centre in Auckland on December 3 – World Disability Day

ENDS

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