This evening the nominations were announced for the 2009 Sony Radio Academy Awards. This was held in the same nightclub in the West End that it’s always held in – although each year it curiously changes name.
Anyway, it’s always an entertaining event with a partisan audience cheering on their favourites, and being deathly silent when Radio 1 is nominated (I don’t know where their team was).
Johnny Vaughan and Lisa Snowdon were masters of ceremonies, taking over from Chris Evans who it was confirmed, will be the main presenter of this year’s awards. Johnny was on form even if he perhaps took one too many swipes at the BBC.
As ever, the BBC dominated, but many categories will always mean it does. Drama isn’t a commercial radio strong suit, and scripted comedy certainly isn’t.
I’m very pleased to report that Absolute Radio took 7 nominations – which I think is actually a record for a single year for the station, beating our Virgin Radio days.
So congratulations to the team behind Absolute Coldplay (for the Music Special award and the live event coverage award), the Discover Real Music production (the Promo award), Iain Lee’s team (in the Listener Participation award), and particularly Geoff Lloyd, Christian O’Connell and Tim Shaw who all compete against one another in the same category for The Entertainment Award. That’s almost certainly the first time that three DJs from the same commercial station have competed in the same category. They face tough competition with Chris Evans and Adam & Joe also being nominated. Still, as someone pointed out, Absolute Radio is guaranteed a bronze!
Elsewhere, some standout radio deservedly nominated includes Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone on 6 Music, Jon Ronson, Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode, and Danny Baker, who’s 606 is actually listed in the comedy category, where Radio 4 hasn’t got a great showing this year surprisingly.
Only one BBC nominee in the competition award – but even that’s a bit high in a year when the BBC basically wasn’t running any competitions.
The internet programme award is interesting because nearly anyone is able to enter this. The Guardian has an episode of Media Talk nominated (probably a bit too incestuous to win, good and irritating in equal measures though it is). The other nominees I was totally unfamiliar with, and I might check out the RSPB one. Most curious of all was the Clifton Diocese podcast – Let Us Pod.
Multimedia will be tough. Global’s Capital Radio iPhone application has done very well and was ahead of the rest of the game, but the BBC has some great resource to do amazingly clever things at events like the Radio 1 Big Weekend or Wimbledon on Five Live.
However I’m really not at all sure how Stephen Nolan is so popular. It’s really not my idea of good phone-in radio.
The main Station of the Year competition will be fought out between Radio 1, Radio 3 and Classic FM; a very interesting “fight”.
I must admit that I’ve not heard any of the drama nominees, although I believe that there may be an opportunity to hear some of the nominees online. While I’m sure that the BBC will be repeating its dramas, it’d be good if the mooted online streaming of all nominated award entries was followed up. There’s obviously a great deal of exceptional radio out there, and much of it will have passed many of us by – particularly if it was only broadcast in a particular region.
The full list of nominees is here, and the awards will be presented on May 11.