By creating the Festival in 1961, His Serene Highness Prince Rainier III of Monaco, wished to “encourage a new art form, in the service of peace and understanding between men”. Monaco’s international status ideally suited the Prince’s ambition : to recognise television as an exceptional means of bringing cultures together and enhancing their respective knowledge.
This project immediately generated worldwide interest and over the years, many distinguished celebrities have sat on the successive juries, bringing international recognition to the best of television programming.
Since 1988, the President of the Festival has been H.S.H. Prince Albert II of Monaco.
A new era began for the Festival in 2002 when the organisers decided to reschedule the event for the beginning of summer and introduce a new programme designed to cover new trends and developments in the TV industry: news competition categories (24 hour news, TV Series etc..), international premiere screenings, a video library - all in the presence of a number of celebrities making TV news…
For 47 years now, the best of worldwide television programming has been rewarded with gold statuettes, copies of the “Salmacis” Nymph by the Monegasque sculptor François-Joseph Bosio (1768-1845), the original of which is on show at the Louvre Museum in Paris.
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