CRN Awards 2013

As the song goes: Oh What a Night!

As we struggle with our hangovers after the 20th Channel Awards, I truly feel proud of the event that I have watched evolve over my 14 years working on CRN.

Last night around 1,650 people packed into the Battersea Events Arena to celebrate our industry's achievements, and it truly was a night to remember.

We had comedian Omid Djalili as our compere for the evening and he certainly sailed quite close to the wind in his comedy, but certainly seemed to go down a storm on the night.

We even had the official voice of Siri as our voice of God for the evening - now that is exciting!

With 24 Awards to give out, the ceremony went as smoothly as can be expected and I'd like to say a huge congratulations to all our winners.

Contrary to belief, the judging process is extremely strict and all our judges take their duties very seriously, reading through each and every entry in their assigned category and scoring each entry on quality.

I will reiterate again that it is entry quality that wins these awards. NOT who is the bigger player or as some might believe - who spends advertising money with CRN.

That belief is frankly an insult to the whole judging panel and is a personal slight to me because I put a lot of work into ensuring the two-tier judging process is fair and impartial.

It certainly beats the old 'voting' method, where anyone could vote for a company multiple times, and bribe random people to vote for them with the promise of winning a shiny prize. To win a Channel Award, it has to be earned.

I genuinely think people are beginning to apreciate the system more now and not one person complained to me on the night - something that has never happened before and I'm very happy about that.

So I'd like to say a huge thank you on behalf of CRN - to all of you who came along on the night.

Thank you for entering, thank you for cheering even if you didn't win and thank you for your continuing support.

It means a lot to us and we do appreciate it.

I look forward to seeing all the entries next year. The slate is once again wiped clean and the 2014 Channel Awards could be won by anyone.

Until then though, well done to our winners.

To see the list of winners, click here.

And to see some of the pictures from the night - go to our Facebook page. Don't forget to like it!