Bloomberg Pushes Silicon Alley’s Merits At New York City TV and Film Awards

Every year for the past five years New York City has hosted an awards ceremony honoring television and film produced in the city  in Charles Shurz Park, the backyard to Gracie Mansion (the mayor’s mansion should he choose to live there).  This year the Made in NY event took place on the first day of Internet Week NY, a weeklong set of conferences all around the city dealing with the Internet.

To start the short award ceremony, Mayor Bloomberg honored the ending of two long-running New York based and filmed shows.  The first being Law & Order, whose ubiquitous bom-bong sound was played several times before Bloomberg spoke and served as Dick Wolf’s “message” for those in attendance.  The second show was “As The World Turns,” which will be wrapping up after 54 years this coming September.

The awards themselves were given out quickly, with some explanation as to who the recipients were.  The awards were presented to long-time Broadway actress Angela Lansbury (who will always be Jessica Fletcher to some), the production company HSI Productions, Saturday Night Live (whose award was accepted by actor/head writer Seth Meyers), filmmaker Lee Daniels for Precious and WFT Productions for it’s work on the Made in NY discount iPhone app.

But it’s the message that Mayor Bloomberg has been pushing most recently – that New York is ready to compete with California for web tech cred, that ended the event. Perhaps appropriate for an event celebrating two other industries commonly associated with the Golden State. After the awards he plugged Internet Week NY and talk about “One City One Click,” an event in Times Square this Thursday where a QR code will be displayed on the Reuters building so that anyone with a QR reader on their phones can participate in the event.  Bloomberg also took time to remind/inform attendees that the city is looking for a Chief Digital Officer to overlook the city’s use of social media and the web.