BANGALORE: 92.7 BIG FM Bangalore has announced the Big Kannada Entertainment Awards will premiere on ETV Kannada, and the title sponsor of the event is Cocoraj.

Reliance Broadcast Network Limited (RBNL) says it wants to create a platform which honors entertainment across genres viz., movies, music, television, dance, theatre and sports  It has already announced similar awards at Mumbai for the state of Maharashtra last week and plans to announce the Telugu Entertainment Awards shortly, say sources at Big FM.

There will be two categories of awards – four popular awards for which the common man can vote and which cover films alone, and the jury awards that cover the other genres.

The four popular awards are Big Movie of the Year (four nominations), Best Hero Of The Year, Big Music Director of the Year and Big Song Of The Year – all with five nominations each.

Amongst the jury awards are:

Films: Best Entertainer Of The Year - Character Artiste - Male; Best Entertainer Of The Year - Character Artiste- Female; Best Entertainer Of The Year – Actress and Best Entertaining Villian Of The Year.

Dance and Theatre: Best Entertaining Playback Singer - Male And Female; Best Entertainer Of The Year - Music Director, Best Entertainer Of The Year - Classical Music, Best Entertainer Of The Year - Classical Dance, Best Entertainer Of The Year - Instrumentalist, and Best Entertainer Of The Year - Theatre.

Television: Best Entertaining Television Host Of The Year; Best Entertaining Talk Show Of The Year; Best Entertaining Television Actor Of The Year; Best Entertaining Television Actress Of The Year, and Best Entertainer Of The Year- Reality Show.

Sports: The award will be presented to the Best Entertaining Sports Person Of The Year.

To attract eyeballs, RBNL says it will reach out across the state through a multi-media campaign. Promos of the awards show that is likely to be held on Ugadi Day (The Kannada New Year) will start airing on ETV soon.

To have the common man's participation for voting for the popular awards, Big FM will run radio jingles in three stations in Karnataka that it operates in – Bangalore, Mangalore and Mysore. Also, in Bangalore, the station with have a vandrive across the city for collecting of the ballots.