Station of the Year for Classic FM

The Arqiva Commercial Radio Awards 2011 have taken place in London with numerous awards given to Absolute Radio, GMG Radio, Jack FM Oxfordshire amongst many more.

Global Radio’s Classic FM took home the Station of the Year for 1m, Smooth Radio’s David Kid Jensen was awarded Lifetime Achievement Award and Bauer Media’s Dee Ford was given the Arqiva Gold.

The Awards were hosted by Absolute Radio’s Christian O’Connell, with guest presenters including David Baddiel, Pete Waterman, Toby Anstis, John Suchet, Neil Fox and Mark Goodier.

There were live performances from platinum selling artists Beverly Knight and Pixie Lott, as well as from The Sound of Arrows and girl-band Wonderland.

Absolute scooped four awards with Christian O’Connell picking up Breakfast Show of the year; Baddiel & Skinner winning Feature of the Year and The Ronnie Wood Show awarded Specialist Programme of the Year, with Ronnie Wood also picking up the Newcomer Award.

106 JACKfm Oxfordshire picked up three awards, with Station of the Year (300,000 to 1 million TSA); Presenter of the Year (300,000 – 1 million TSA) for Trevor Marshall; and ‘JACK in Afghanistan’ winning the Social Action Award.

The Ali Booker Memorial Journalist of the Year Award, presented by Tony Cowell on behalf of the Against Breast Cancer charity, went to the news team at Real Radio North East. The award, sponsored by JACKfm and RCS with a donation to the charity, remembers journalist Ali Booker who died of breast cancer in 2010. Ali spent the last three years of her life working as a journalist at JACKfm and Glide fm in Oxfordshire.

GMG’s Real Radio Northeast also picked up the Station Imaging Award, for their sports team, whilst Local Sales Team of the Year went to the Real Radio Northwest team. Presenter of the Year (1 million + TSA) went to Real Radio Yorkshire’s Dixie & Gayle.

Bauer’s Key 103’s Gary Stein, was named Programmer of the Year with Bauer also winning the Best Branded Content Award with the Blackberry Partnership for the Kiss Breakfast Show.

Global picked up two awards, winning Large Station of the Year for Classic FM and Marketing Campaign of the Year, for its Capital FM Network Launch.

Tommo at 97.1 Radio Carmarthenshire won Presenter of the Year (small territory); 96.2 Touch FM was awarded Small Station of the Year and Planet Rock picked up Digital Station of the Year.

GTN won National Sales Team of the Year. Best Creative Campaign went to Bartle Bogle Hegarty for its Tango Praiserama campaign, and the Most Effective Campaign was won by Walker Media for Barclays Business Take One Small Step competition. The Advertiser of the Year went to British Gas and the Media Agency of the Year was won by Mindshare.

For the fourth year running Take That was named as PPL Most Played UK Artist, with The Wanted picking up PPL’s new award, Best Breakthrough act. The Schools Radio Award went to ISCA College, Exeter.

The Lifetime Achievement Award went to David Jensen, with Radioplayer’s Michael Hill picking up the Chairman’s Award. The Special Award went to PPL’s Fran Nevrkla and Dee Ford from Bauer Radio picked up the Gold Award.

Andrew Harrison, Chief Executive of RadioCentre commented: “Congratulations to all our winners this evening – we had some outstanding entries this year demonstrating the breadth and strength of commercial radio.”

There were a total of 30 categories at this year’s awards, including the new category PPL Best Breakthrough UK Artist of the Year, and five new categories for radio advertising, in what is the biggest annual celebration of UK commercial radio.

The Arqiva Commercial Radio Awards, now in their 16th year, are organised by RadioCentre, the industry body for commercial radio, and recognise excellence and achievement across the whole spectrum of commercial radio output, from presenters and programming to advertising, marketing and technical innovation.

For the full list of winners, click here.