FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, in collaboration with FIDE Journalist Commission, has decided to establish a special FIDE award to recognize outstanding contributions for the popularisation of chess by journalists, who have successfully created and made TV Chess programmes.
Recognizing its contribution in the promotion of chess for many years, one award goes to chess journalists Sergey Makarichev and Marina Makaricheva, who have successfully made chess programmes on the Russian channel NTV Plus since 1996.
In nearly 20 years, they have made almost three and a half thousand chess programmes, ten documentaries and more than a hundred TV lessons.
The other award goes to NRK TV Channel, which has succeeded in popularizing chess for the Norwegian audience and built broadcasts around the live feed from chess tournaments, with experts in the studio in Oslo using one or more chess boards, and live reports from scene.
NRK has introduced new ways of bringing interest to chess by utilizing engine analysis and has designed an arrow that moves back and forth according to the Stockfish evaluation, this regularly makes the studio experts yell out “Look at the arrow!” when the evaluation changes.
The television broadcasts on NRK had an average of almost 200.000 viewers during the World Championship Match in Sochi. 2,4 million people have watched at least one minute of this Match.
The award comes together with a prize of $ 25,000 for each winner.
