Sunday, 17th April 2005: Pioneer is delighted to announce that Channel 4's Green Wing is the winner of the first-ever Pioneer Award at this year's British Academy Television Awards sponsored by Pioneer.

The Pioneer Award was voted for by members of the public and is the only Award to have been selected in this way.

Presented by Gordon Ramsay and Mr. Kotani (MD of Pioneer Europe), the Pioneer Award sets out to honour programme-makers whose novel and bold approach has brought both critical praise and commercial success. A committee of national newspaper TV critics short-listed four programmes as nominees in this category; alongside Green Wing were Shameless (Channel 4), This World: One Day Of War (BBC2) and Who Do You Think You Are? (BBC2). The public was invited to vote via a variety of methods - online, by SMS text and instore at selected retail outlets.

Says Heidi Johnson-Cash, Marketing Manager, Pioneer GB Limited: "We're absolutely delighted that Green Wing has won the first Pioneer Award. Our main inspiration was to introduce an award for programmes that reflect the "pioneering" spirit of the Pioneer brand - to recognise inventive, cutting edge television and ultimately, for the future, to create an award that other programmes aspire to win. Green Wing has certainly achieved this and we'd like to congratulate the entire cast and production team.”

To reflect this new award, Pioneer invited submissions from design students at Brunel University. The winner, Natalie Vanns, had her design produced in glass, chrome and aluminium - the design is based on Sound Vision Soul, the core values of Pioneer. “Sound” is represented by an aluminium curve running through the middle of the design, “Soul” is represented by glass, which forms the structure of the award and the chrome ball illustrates “Vision”.