December, 2, 2022
A press conference was convened recently to brief the media on the 2022 Raigam Tele'es awards ceremony scheduled to be held in Colombo on March 25, 2023.
Raigam Tele’es - The Nation’s Tele Award
A wide range of cinema and television festivals are conducted at both domestic and international levels in order to uplift the quality and creativity of relevant products through appreciation of good work done by the artists, producers and institutions, annually. Further these festivals result in setting benchmarks for the industry. Sri Lankans experienced the first ever indigenous film festival, Sarasaviya Cinema Award Ceremony on 9th May 1964 and since then a few more award ceremonies have been introduced by the government as well as non-governmental bodies, of which some are not visible regularly while few other are not in existence today.
In 2005 Raigam Tele’es was launched by the famous local business conglomerate in FMCG industry, the Raigam Group of Companies to fill the gap that had been created in conducting a regular award ceremony for the television industry due to the unstable situation in the country. Today, Raigam Tele’es has become the most prominent television festival in Sri Lanka with the record of conducting such an event consecutively for eighteen years. The highest quality standards maintain in the judging process, innovative presentation and broad coverage through all most all the television channels and social media are the success factors of the festival. Raigam Tele’es has pioneered in introducing many features to the industry including announcement of nominations at a grand function prior to the main event. While the award winners are benefitted with cash awards, all the nominees are benefitted with a valuable insurance cover and testimonials.
Raigam Tele’es holds the record for conducting the festival for seventeen years without any interruption. The latest was conducted as a combined festival for 2020 and 2021 in order to cover up the delayed festival for 2020 due to the COVID Pandemic.
An independent non-commercial body under the name “Raigam Tele’es Secretariat” has been established for conducting the event under the guidance of an eminent panel of artists and academics.
The strong partnership of Sampath Bank, is the key pillar of sustainability of the festival.
Application and Selection Process
Selection process commences with calling applications for awards by a public announcement and also an invitation to all television channels to participate the festival with prospective entries. All entries for awards must be certified by the respective Channel Head that they were telecast on the channel during the relevant period. Repeat telecasts and programs telecast on paid channels are not eligible for awards.
Applications / Entries for Raigam Tele’es 2022 will be accepted up to 15th January 2023.
All the entries are carefully scrutinized by a competent and independent panel of judges.
Panel of Judges
The value and the recognition of any award ceremony is depend on the credibility of the selection process of award winners and therefore the Raigam Tele’es Secretariat has appointed a renowned and experienced panel of judges consisting well recognized academics, artists and critics in the field.
Mr. Buddadasa Galappatty – Chairman
Prof. Rohini Paranawithana
Mr. Ravindra Guruge
Dr. Hansamala Ritigahapola
Mr. Jayanath Gunawardhena
Mr. Aruna Gunarathna
Mr. Ranga Dassanayake
Mr. Saman Wickremarachchi
Mr. Chaminda Welagedara
Mr. B. H. Abdul Hameed
While the winners of most popular category are selected on the results of SMS poll, the Most Viewed Propgrammes (Janagatha) will be selected on an island wide research. Awardees for awards of appreciation (Pranaama) are decided by the advisory board.
What’s new ?
At the preceding festival, the Raigam Tele’es introduced a new category to recognize the most viewed television programmes (Tele-drama, Media programme and the News Bulletin). Usually the most popular programmes are decided on viewer preference declared on SMS poll, yet may not be the programmes most penetrated among television viewers. Therefore the new category has been introduced to recognize those based on the results of an island wide research conducted under the supervision Prof. Laxman Dissanayake. This new trend in award ceremony culture in Sri Lanka has been well accepted by the stakeholders of the industry.
Television channels are required to send their nominations for following titles before 15th February 2023.
Most Viewed Tele-drama
Most Viewed Television Programme
Most Viewed Television News Bulletin
Two Events and Seven Categories
Raigam Tele’es Award Ceremony consists of two grand ceremonies, namely the Nomination Evening and the Grand Awards Night.
Event 1 - Nomination Evening
Adding an Oscar touch, and an international flavour, Raigam Tele’es introduced the Nomination Evening to the Sri Lankan award ceremony culture, to declare the nominees for awards in advance to the final award ceremony. Judging of artistic values, creativity or acting talents are highly qualitative and sometimes the all three nominees are equally good. Traditionally only one nominee was appreciated as the winner limiting other nominees to mentioning their names.
Raigam Tele’s changed this tradition by introducing the Nomination Evening, where all the nominees are appreciated at a grand ceremony conducted in a star class hotel. Further all the nominees are gifted with a hospitalization and life insurance covers worth Rs. 100,000 and Rs. 1,000,000 respectively for one year. Apart from that all the nominees are presented with a credential certifying their talents.
The national mobile network, Mobitel (Pvt) limited has tied up with Raigam Tele’es to sponsor the Nomination Evening.
Insurance gift for all nominees is offered by Allianz Insurance Limited
Event 2 - Grand Award Ceremony
This is the most expected event of the industry where all key personnel including veterans, celebrities, channel heads and technical crews meet annually to great their own fellow artist’s for their talents and also for fellowship. Organizers always take every step to fill the event with excitement and entertainment. Usually the event runs for 3 to 4 hours and telecast on all most all the television channels and on social media. A wide coverage is given by the mass media for the event.
Winners of the each award are granted a sizable cash award “Sampath Mudal Thilina” with the generous partnership of Sampath Bank and “Allianz Rakshana Thilina”, the insurance gift sponsored by Allianz Insurance Limited, apart from the Raigam Tele’es trophy and credentials.
Seven Categories
Raigam Tele’es covers all the aspects of television performance and awards have been distributed as follows;
| Segment | Award Category | Description |
| 01 | Jury Awards | Special talents identified during the judging process |
| 02 | Television Media Programmes | Selected by Panel of Judges |
| 03 | Tele-drama Category | Selected by Panel of Judges |
| 04 | Most Popular Category | Selected on television subscriber SMS votes |
| 05 | Most Viewed Category | Selected based on a public research. |
| 06 | Awards of Appreciation | One life time and two other appreciation awards for veterans |
| 07 | Media Channels Category | Tele-drama Channel, Media Channel, & Most Awarded Channel |
Tele-drama Excellence Awards
Although the over-view of the Raigam Tele’es has been broadened, the Raigam Tele’es Secretariat has decided to keep the number of awards allocated for the tele-drama sector unchanged. Accordingly, this year too there will be number of awards for year’s best creating, acting, singing and technical talents of multi-episode tele-drama and single-episode tele-drama.
Today the most popular TV program is tele-drama, but most of the air time is occupied by other, different programs. The main responsibility of the TV media should be to telecast these programs targeting the education and entertainment needs of the audience with high quality material and updating viewers on various areas of interest. Therefore, with the hope of encouraging production of creative and high value programs to sharpen the minds and tastes of the general public a number of awards will be presented to best efforts in this category including news reading, news reporting, current affairs, educational, children’s, musical, reality, and political Programs. Awards for the best news reader and best presenter will be granted separately for each language Sinhala, English and Tamil.
An opportunity has been allowed for thousands of television viewers to indicate their most preferred tele-drama, actor and the actress under this category through an SMS poll. Raigam pioneered the use of SMS to select the winners of popular awards. This time too, the general public will get the chance to use SMS to elect their choice of the most popular Actor, Actress, and Tele-drama.
In order to facilitate easy voting and updating viewer with latest news, a mobile app has been launched for Raigam Tele’es. This can be downloaded from Google play store. SMS voting will be opened from 24th February to 24th March 2023. Telephone Nos. for SMS Poll will be published soon.
Most Viewed Television Programmes
Introducing a new category, Raigam Tele’es this time will honour the most viewed television programmes during the year 2022. Awards have been allocated for the most viewed tele-drama, most viewed television media programme and the most viewed news bulletin under this category. The winners will be selected on an island wide public research to be conducted in February / March 2023.
Honouring the pioneers and artists who had worked hard for the development of the television sector is one of the special events of the Raigam Tele’es. During the past Raigam Tele’es has honoured many senior artists, technicians and selected personalities who were instrumental in introducing television media in our country.
In 2007, ‘PRATHIBHA PRABHA’ life time awards scheme was introduced to honour and appreciate the contribution and achievement of most prominent personalities who contributed to build and develop the industry. The veteran actress - Mrs. Suwineetha Weerasinghe was honoured under this title at the last ceremony.
Appreciation TV Channels
Raigam Tele’es is the only event in Sri Lanka which uses a clear-cut and a transparent scheme to appreciate the contribution of TV Channels.
The TV Channel which secures most number of awards under the Tele-drama Excellence category will be honoured as the “Tele-drama Channel of the Year” whilst the TV Channel which secures most number of awards under the Television Media Excellence category will be honoured as the “Television Media Channel of the Year”.
The TV Channel which secures the most number of awards in total at the ceremony will be honoured as the “TV Channel of the Year”.
Rewards and Benefits
Raigam Telees granted an annual life insurance coverage of Rs. 1,000,000/- and a hospitalization insurance cover of Rs. 100,000/- for all the artists honoured at the event including nominees. This is the only experience in Sri Lanka with such a benefit granted for all the nominees in a film or tele festival.
Apart from that this year too, the winners of the Raigam Tele'es will receive cash prizes in exceeding of Rs. 3.0 million.
We appreciate the tremendous support of Sampath Bank as the Partner of Raigam Tele’es for the past 10 years and also grateful to the Mobitel (Pvt) Limited, for their generous sponsorship for the Nomination Evening. Further Allianz Insurance’s unmatched insurance gift for our valuable artists and the technical support of Imagine Entertainment are highly appreciated.
Entries for 2022
Creations eligible for evaluation for awards at the Raigam Tele’es 2022 are as follows.
Entries for Raigam Tele’es 2022 are now accepted by the Raigam Tele’es Secretariat and will be closed on 15th January 2023. Those who are expecting to apply for the awards are kindly requested to contact Raigam Tele’es Secretariat on 0707 061602/ 0707 061508 immediately.
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