Christian Gamboa, a Filipino industrial engineering graduate, has bagged the award in a region-wide search for a new television show concept that could be developed into a globally competitive franchise.

Christian Gamboa's entry, titled Witness, was top among over 300 entries to the SMART Alliance Pitch. He won US$15,000 plus the chance for the concept to be produced into TV program. 

SMART Alliance Pitch was  organised by four major broadcast networks, members of the SMART Alliance, ABS–CBN (Philippines), Media Nusantra Citra (Indonesia), Media Prima (Malaysia), and MediaCorp (Singapore) .  

The object ive of the Pitch is to search for original concept for a variety or game show that could compete with global franchises.

Mr Lucas Chow, MediaCorp CEO and Chairman of SMART Alliance Steering Committee, said "I believe that a variety show format is the easiest one to enter into this market because as you can see, today's winner actually crossed boundaries, crossed cultures, crossed the languages, that is why we went into it.”

Mr. Chow added "I hope from this point onwards, we can create something very uniquely Asian not only for the Asian market, but eventually be able to export overseas to other regions as well."

Mr Gambao, who admitted he knew little about television production, said he pitched to the judges what he wanted to see in a television show.

" I am very excited right now. And I am happy that the Smart Alliance Pitch happened and I hope there will be a lot of Smart Alliance Pitch for the coming years to give people the opportunity."