CEETV and NATPE have announced the winning format of the third edition of PITCH & PLAY LIVE!, which took place on Wednesday during NATPE BUDAPEST INTERNATIONAL, as: IN THE DARK (LNK, Lithuania) - in which seven sighted people are selected to tackle an extreme challenge – to survive ten weeks in complete darkness.

The winning format was chosen from three finalists, which also included THE COMMUNITY (Pink, Serbia) - a format in which contestants deal with real issues and everyday situations; and TWINS (Pyatnitsa, Russia) – where each episode tells the story of one pair of twins who decide to change their look and become different.

IN THE DARK was announced as the winner after the three finalist formats were presented live by their creators in Budapest during the PITCH & PLAY LIVE! session on Wednesday, 27 June. The jury, consisting of Manuela Caputi, Head of International Sales, Mediaset; Marietta Temesvari, Development and Content Strategist, Sony Pictures Television, CE, and Kateryna Vyshnevska, Head of Development & Co-production, FILM.UA, then deliberated and selected the top format.

Also, RTV PINK received CEETV's Special Award for Most Elaborate Reality Production as the biggest scale reality format production taking part in PITCH & PLAY LIVE in the past three years. The award was presented to PINK's CEO and THE COMMUNITY Format Creator, Mr. Zeljko Mitrovic.

This year, PITCH & PLAY LIVE's three finalists were selected from among 14 formats from Lithuania, Serbia, Hungary, Russia and Turkey, following the vote of a selection committee which included Damien Porte, VP International Sales, Vivendi Entertainment; Nelly Feld, Head of Sales, Acquisitions and International Relations, Reshet TV; Andrew Sime, VP of Formats, Banijay Rights; Dann Novak, Content Executive, NATPE and Georgi R. Chakarov, President and CEO of TVBIZZ and CEETV.

Each format was evaluated based on three criteria: originality (how original is the idea for the format); universality (does the format idea show flexibility for changes and development) and internationality (does the format have the potential to be sold internationally). The selection committee members reviewed each of the 14 formats and voted in all three criteria with scores from 1 to 5. The final ranking was determined from the accumulated sum of all scores of the five selection committee members.

For more information about the Pitch & Play Live! event, please go to: http://ceetv.net/pitchplay/index