Flemish Belgian Member VRT has won the 2016 Gunnar Høidahl Award for excellence in the Eurovision News Exchange.

Geerjte Bal, from VRT's Eurovision News Desk, accepted the prize at the 11th News Assembly in Copenhagen. The award was given to VRT for its incredible response after the March 22 attacks in Brussels. 

Giving the award, Head of the Eurovision News Exchanges Justyna Kurczabinska praised the winner:

"The Gunnar Høidahl award is a way to say thank you too all those Members who go the extra mile to share their valuable content with other Members. Both RTBF and VRT excelled when covering the dramatic terrorist attacks in Brussels this year, however the Geneva newsroom decided that VRT’s overall performance and dedication deserved the 2016 Award.”

Collecting the prize, Geerjte Bal stressed the importance that the award has to the entire VRT newsroom as a recognition of their hard work. She added that she hopes it will inspire other Members to excel in the Eurovision News Exchange.

The Eurovision News Exchange delivers over 100 edited news items and roughly 7 hours of live coverage every single day. This is possible thanks to a unique network of EBU members sharing their distinctive content non-stop via the Eurovision News Exchange.

2016 NOMINEES

The Gunnar Høidahl prize is awarded annually at the News Assembly. Nominees are put forward by the EBU's Geneva news editors and the winner is selected by the entire News Exchange team. 

The three 2016 finalists were:

Belgium VRT and RTBF for their performance in breaking news situations (notably March terrorist attacks) and foreign coverage as well as excellent scripts.

Romania TVR for its efforts to continue providing coverage despite temporarily having no access to EVN content while solutions were found to pay back outstanding debt to the EBU.

The work of all three nominees can be seen in the video above.