The Digital Spy Community Radio Awards 2010
RadioKnower
Posts: 2,272 Forum Member
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Hello there, this is your chance to nominate the stations which you feel are the best in this sector. Please don’t nominate yourselves, nominate someone you work with but not something you’re a part of (for example a show on you’re station but not a show you’re a presenter on).
These are the categories, I’ve come up with so far.
Feel free to add some more.
Best Website
Best at Serving Community
Most Polished
Best Community Radio Presenter (and Why?)
Best Community Radio Show (and Why?)
Best ILR Style Community Station
Best Local Sports Coverage
Best Local News
Best Innovation
These are the categories, I’ve come up with so far.
Feel free to add some more.
Best Website
Best at Serving Community
Most Polished
Best Community Radio Presenter (and Why?)
Best Community Radio Show (and Why?)
Best ILR Style Community Station
Best Local Sports Coverage
Best Local News
Best Innovation
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Comments
Best at Serving Community:
Most Polished
Best ILR Style Community Station
I'll nominate TCR FM in Tamworth for all 4 of the above
Best at Serving Community
Most Polished
Best ILR Style Community Station
Best Local News
Best Innovation
Sine FM in Doncaster for all of the above
Although not considered a 'community station', that's exactly what they are, if you listen to their stream you would have to agree Manx Radio excels at all of those catagories for it's listeners.
CR presenter/show - Stu Peters/Talking Heads, when I listen online I wish we had this sort of thing on our stations.
The best community radio I've heard - and I've only heard a few stations - is not 'polished' but often self depreciative, doesn't seek to emulate 'ILR', Heart or other mainstream radio, and plays a broad spectrum of music rather than 'pop'.
Aren't you sick of 'polished'?
Thats what some CR stations are doing
I would like to make the following nominations:-
RWSfm103.3 Community Radio for Bury St. Edmunds and beyond.
Also available on www.rwsfm.co.uk
Best Local Sports Coverage: Saturday Afternoon Sports programme with Roy Anson and Jamie Ellis. With Mike Edwards reporting live from Bury Town home matches.
They cover the whole gamut of sports, but give extensive coverage of what's on locally. Live reports of Bury Town's home matches.
Most Polished presenter. Brian Cave who presents the Wednesday morning show from 10:00 to 13:00hrs. With a broad range of Jazz, Blues and local acts live in the studio.
I would also like to create a category for Best Specialist Music Show, for which I would like to nominate our John Amos. His Tuesday and Thursday morning shows are a well-researched amalgam of Folk, Jazz and Blues presented by someone who rearly knows his stuff.
Listen on 103.3fm if in the Bury St Edmunds area or www.rwsfm.co.uk
Thanks.
S.
But of course "broad spectrum of music" can mean many different things to many different people. Heart claim to play a broad spectrum of music after all (although I guess whether they actually believe it themselves is somewhat debatable). Anyway there's nothing wrong with "pop"- which again can be a very broad church - per se, although the musical snobs on here would probably disagree. I accept that contemporary and classic hits shouldn't be all there is to hear on a community station though.
On the other hand that doesn't excuse some of the formless, nonsensical, self-indulgent, wilfully iconoclastic programming I've heard. (i.e Drivetime split between a jazz show, presented in a sober, sotto voce, Radio Three style, followed without warning by a hardcore Drum N'Bass show in a 1Xtra/pirate style, with only a short sweeper between the last modal jazz track of the former show and the first banging club tune of the latter). If people want to do that, then fine; do it on the internet or something. You don't need an FM licence and public money to serve the sort of miniscule audience such a station will probably attract.
Again that depends what you mean by "polished". Cheesy, 80s ILR Dave Doubledecks types, with a cliched, mannered style, are not something I enjoy on professional stations, However just because someone is presenting on Community/amateur radio it doesn't mean they have to be amateur-ish. Some of the stuff I've heard on Community Radio is quite frankly shocking and wouldn't be allowed even on the Hospital Radio stations I've had experience of.
To be honest, the self-deprecating thing can get old very quickly - it often sounds like any other radio cliche if you ask me. I suppose it depends what the presenter is being self-deprecating about though. If it's someone joking about how clueless they are every other link, show after show, then I'd probably opt for Dave Doubledecks as the best of a bad bunch - if only on the basis that listening to a professional cliche-merchant is marginally better than listening to an amateur one.
It's heartening to hear that Bury St.Edmunds has a decent local service again.
Many years ago West Suffolk had ILR Saxon Radio - Sister station to Radio Orwell. The former Radio Luxemburg DJ Mark Wesley hosted up the Brekkie show, I could just about get the station in Braintree in AM.Then came SGR when they took on Colchester. Soon after seperate programming for Bury took a dive and of course with the Heart era all signs of the station disappeared totally. Must have been quite galling for many listeners.
I'd like to nominate the very good Leisure FM for the Braintree area on 107.4 and live feeds at the website here: http://www.lfmradio.co.uk/
I somehow don't think the cluttered website would win any awards
On a seperate note Serge, I used to know someone with the very same name 'Serge Auckland' who had a hifi shop in Braintree in the 1980's. Any chance there's two people out there with same name? If you are the same person you might be pleased to hear the Mission speakers you flogged me are still going strong here at our home in Oz, they did get a re-cone ca 2000.:D
One small criticism of this thread, with it being community radio, there's nothing really stopping any community radio presenters either nominating themselves or the station they work for. I have noticed one, but then again, so probably have others.
One station I do like, I think it's called SaintFM, and is based in the south end of the country. Love their non league football coverage.