MUMBAI: The Radio and TV Advertising Practitioners Association of India (RAPA) has extended the deadline for submitting nominations for the 33rd All India Rapa Awards for Excellence 2007 to 5 April 2008.

A total of 63 awards are up for grabs this year, including nine awards in the radio category in each language, and six more for all languages combined. There are two awards in the Television advertising category in each language and nine awards in all languages combined. There are 11 awards in the Television Production category (serials/ music videos/ telefilms, documentaries, etc.) in each language and 18 awards in all languages combined. There are seven special Rapa awards for all round contribution to Radio/Television; outstanding voice performance; best performance on TV for male and female; campaign of the year on TV and on radio; and outstanding copywriter.

Rapa Awards committee Chairman Viresh Chaddha says, "The Rapa awards are one-of-a kind as they honour creative excellence in radio and television in all the Indian languages including Hindi and English. We have already got an enthusiastic response and have extended the deadline in order to accommodate more entries and entrants. The nomination formats have been strictly adhered to. On the judging panel, we shall have several eminent luminaries from the media and entertainment field, many of who are linguists. We are hopeful of getting quality entries that will raise the creative standards."

Any person or organization creativity involved with the production of work being sent in as entry for Radio / Television in the categories mentioned in the folder. One can participate if one has produced work in any of the following 17 Indian languages including Assamese, Bangla, Dogri, English, Gujrati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Telegu and Urdu. In case of bilingual work, one must specify the primary language. If a spot has English and Hindi in it, then to consider it in English it should have more than 70 per cent of English content.

The Rapa awards are mainly to honour outstanding creative work in the radio and television field.