Nickelodeon UK named kids 'Channel of the Year'

[BGonaSTICK]

Nickelodeon UK collected the Channel of the Year award, one of two new awards at this year's British Academy Children's Film and Television Awards, held last night.

The second new award, for Independent Production Company of the Year, was won by Darrall MacQueen, which produces Smile and Animal Spies for the BBC.

Five's Michaela's Wild Challenge took the best Factual programme beating Blue Peter - Book Awards, The Really Wild Show and Serious Amazon.

Holly Willoughby won in the presenter category for CITV's Holly & Stephen's Saturday Showdown. The Entertainment award was won by BBC adventure game show Raven and The Giblet Boys claimed the Drama award.

The International award was presented to Lazy Town, while the Interactive category was won by Level Up. The Amazing Adrenalini Brothers! collected an award for Animation and Peter Tabern won the Writers award for Johnny and the Bomb.

The Academy also presented a Special Award to Nigel Pickard for his outstanding contribution to children's television. Pickard was controller of ITV's children's and youth programmes, and oversaw the launch of CBBC and CBeebies during his 3 year stint as controller of children's TV at the BBC, before returning to ITV as director of programmes. He is now director of family and children's programming at RDF Television.

Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit won its second Bafta of the year, taking the Feature Film award, beating The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.

Harry Potter did scoop the Kids' Vote award, with nearly 100,000 children voting via the CiTV, CBBC, Nickelodeon and EA/BAFTA websites.

Held at the London Hilton Park Lane, the event was hosted by children's presenter Reggie Yates.

Source: Digital Spy