Ten golds for UK at New York Awards

Entrants from the UK have picked up 10 Gold Awards at the New York Festivals Radio Awards.

Real Radio Yorkshire won two of the top prizes for its news specials about the Vice Trade, while Indies including Wise Buddah, Ten Alps and TBI Media are also among the winners.

Real Radio’s Yorkshire newsteam picked up gold awards for their Vice Trade strand in both the Best News Documentary/Special category as well as the one for Social Issues/Current Events. In the latter, there were three other gold winners from the UK – Radio 1’s Overexposed Online (produced by Wise Buddah), Radio 4’s Amnesty At 50 (produced by Ladbroke Productions) and JACK FM Oxfordshire’s JACK in Afghanistan.

Ten Alps took a Gold Award in the Best Editing category for their Radio 2 documentary John Lennon: The New York Years. Fresh from winning a Sony Gold this year, The John Bonham Story produced by TBI Media for BBC 6 Music and Radio 2 also took gold at the New Yorks in the Best Music Special category.

BBC Radio X-Trails/Fresh Air Production got a gold in Programs/Series Promotion category for the Red Nose Day 2011 promos, while there were two UK gold winners in the Religious Programs category – BBC World Service/Assignment’s The Schoolboy Beggars of Senegal, and a podcast series produced by Bristol-based Mary Colwell called The Boxing Vicar.

There were also 9 Silver Awards for UK entrants – two for BBC Radio 2/TBI Media’s To Kill A Mockingbird at 50 and two for Smooth Radio’s Fallen Heroes documentary. Other silvers went to Wise Buddah production Jagger’s Jukebox on Radio 2, Ten Alps’ John Lennon: The New York Years, BBC Coventry & Warwickshire’s The Coventry Blitz, Scottish independent producer Fiona Ritchie for her The Thistle & Shamrock programme which airs on NPR in the USA (Silver in Best Regularly Scheduled Music Program category) and Real Radio North West which got a silver in the Urban/Contemporary Format category.

And 12 Bronze Awards come back to this side of the Atlantic too – four for Radio 4-commissioned independent productions (Deep Cut, Composing New York, Britain On The Bottle and A Quiet Invasion); three for recently-named Indie of the Year Folded Wing (two for Jamie Cullum on Radio 2, the other for The Selector for The British Council); one for Bauer Media’s Radio City 96.7 (Top 40 Format category); one for GMG Radio’s Coronation Street At 50 documentary; one for Fiona Ritchie’s The Thistle & Shamrock celtic music show and one for the Flaps Podcast which is made by former BRMB duo Mark Newman and Elliott Webb.

UK-based members of the Grand Jury for this year’s New York Festival Radio Awards included Dave Bethell of Beds and Beats; Broadcast Advisor Martin Campbell; Fresh Air Productions’ Neil Cowling; Goldsmiths College’s Head of Radio Tim Crook; Radio Clyde’s John Dash; GTN UK’s Paul Hutton; Hugh Levinson from BBC Radio Current Affairs, Scottish consultant and former Radio Clyde man John MacCalman; BBC Radio Solent’s Kim Michaels; Des Shaw from Ten Alps; and David Wakefield from On The Sly.