The summer is drawing to a close and it’s been an exciting one for us here at the Tellys! July saw the rollout of the first of many new initiatives revitalizing the awards for the multi-screen era, including the launch of this new site. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to check out our new feature articles page to stay up to date on how our peers are creating, distributing and monetizing video and television. Our latest piece features eko COO Jim Spare, discussing all things interactive video and engagement.

We also spent the summer programming events, panels and dinners that brought you together to meet, exchange ideas and in some cases, collaborate. We are thrilled to count leading  voices from Vox Media, Hearst Digital Media and Great Big Story amongst those we were able to spend time with. If you will be in NYC on October 19th, please do join us for our panel at NAB NYC with experts from Mashable, The New York Times T Brand Studio and Content Agency, Juniper Jones.

Over these past months I also continued to meet a number of you and ask you how we could better support your work and enable you to promote your work with a bigger impact. The result is a slew of new Telly categories, partners, jurors, and events that we will announce shortly, as well as two key updates to the competition we are excited to share with you ahead of our season opening in October:

Gold Telly Award: That our highest marker for excellence has been represented by silver for 39 years is a quirk that’s entrenched in our nearly four-decade history. However, from meeting a number of you and understanding that an absence of Gold is a confusing signal to the market, we are excited to introduce a Gold Telly which will exclusively be awarded to the top 3% of winning entries.

Winners Announcement: All Telly entries are judged against their own merits which has historically allowed us to notify you of your standing once your work was seen by our Judging Council. After discussions with many of you, we’ve realized that not having one single announcement date hinders your ability to effectively promote your recognition. With that feedback in mind, we are moving to one Winners Announcement date.

 As always, I am here for all feedback, suggestions or simply a hello at sabrina@tellyawards.com and be sure to sign up to our newsletter to stay in touch – we have a number of exciting new announcements to come over the next weeks!