(30 July 2010 8:30 pm)

BANGALORE: Reliance Broadcast Network’s (RBNL) radio arm Big FM will host the ‘Big Kannada Music Awards’ that will be telecast on Star’s Kannada channel Suvarana .

An initial curtain raiser episode will be broadcast on the channel which will be followed by the main awards function covering an airtime of four hours a few days later. Deccan Herald’s Kannada paper Prajavani and herbal soap brand Medimix are the event's associate sponsors.

Said 92.7 Big FM cluster head - Karnataka and Kerala Sunil Kumaran, "The title sponsor for television, radio and on-ground will be the same – Bharati Cement Corporation Limited, but the associate sponsors will be independent for radio and television.”

"Both Suravarna and Big will sell some spots, the ratio of which is yet to be decided," informs a source.

The awards will be split into two main categories – the Popular awards and the Jury awards. The popular categories are based on the way the masses categorise songs – love songs; feeling songs; josh songs; vichitra songs and tapang songs. The jury awards categories will be the conventional categories like best male and female singers, the best lyricists and best music director.

"In all, there will be 14 categories across the popular and jury awards. The results for the popular categories will be driven by votes by the masses who will be able to vote across various mediums,” informed Kumaran.

The jury will comprise stalwarts from Kannada music like Hamsalekha, Vijay Prakash and Raghavandra Rajkumar.

The property, conceptualised and marketed by RBNL’s experiential marketing arm Big Live, will see all its media verticals coming into play to ensure that the music award permeates into consumers’ lives through multiple touch points across Karnataka.

Starting 3 August, the music awards will see a month-long extensive promotion through TV, radio, print, outdoor, online, SMS, microsite and activations at malls, RWA’s and other key touch points across Karnataka. While refusing to reveal the planned spends for promotion of the event, Kumaran said, ”This is a big event for us and the spends will be substantial.”

“Suvrana will be promoting the awards on air, but since the broadcast date is almost a month away, and the Music Awards is a Big property, Big will be promoting the event on other mediums,” says the source.