ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - AVA Media’s prime news hour has won the Shorty Impact Award, an award ceremony held in California and celebrating mission-driven work across several sectors.

The award was given to the 7:00 pm primetime news hour hosted by renowned Kurdish anchor Hawraz Gulpi, and specifically a segment of the hour where he addresses people’s concerns sent to the channel on a daily basis.

According to the channel, citizens submit issues through an online platform or directly through community outreach, after which their teams follow up on the cases to investigate and verify, and later prepare the cases for broadcast.

Speaking to The New Region, Gulpi said that the key part that has made the segment of the show, named Fayli Xelk (People’s File), have such impact “is the fact that our team works on the issues and deliver them to the relevant authorities.”

“Through that we build a bridge between citizens and officials,” Gulpi said. “No other outlet has done this before, often times only issues are highlighted without any concrete attempts to resolve said issues.”

The channel says over 130,000 citizens have directly benefited from the cases resolved and over 500 million dollars worth of financial issues have been resolved through the show.

While Gulpi’s newshour won the Shorty Impact Award in the News and Media category, AVA Media’s Khori AVA show won a bronze honor in the local campaign category.

The show, aired during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan and hosted by Hazhan Hersh, aimed to provide lifelines to families in need.

The show provided homes to 10 families in need and raised over 49 million Iraqi dinars in aid.

Both shows by the channel have reached millions of viewers during their broadcast.

AVA Media joins a long list of globally-renowned news and media platforms that have received the Shorty Award in the past, including most recently Al Jazeera and NBC Universal in 2024.

Just over a year old, AVA Media has become the most viewed television station that labels itself as a combination of news and entertainment channel.

In a poll in August, the channel was found the most watched TV channel in the Kurdistan Region over the previous broadcasting season.

The polling, conducted by the Kurdistan Region-based Rama Agency, was conducted across the Region’s four provinces, distributing over 5,000 surveys manually in public spaces across the provinces.

The channel, launched in September 2024, has made great impact in such a short time.

Gulpi’s newshour has set records time and again of being the most viewed.

Earlier in April, the New York based NYX Awards named Rizgar Kochar and Chenar Abdulqadir, both working with AVA Media, as recipients of its golden award.

The first NYX Golden Award went to Kochar, a renowned Kurdish reporter with over two decades of experience in investigative journalism.

The second NYX Golden Award went to Chenar Abdulqadir, a widely popular and respected sports pundit in the Kurdistan Region.

Despite achieving so much in such short time, the team at AVA Media believes that there is still a lot more they can do.

“Our aim is to serve people and deliver not only news to them, but stories. Not only highlight their issues, but find ways to solve them,” Gulpi said.