The Sony Radio Academy Awards 2007 are in full swing here at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel, with the first eight awards already having been handed out. The BBC have taken 6 of them, with one for Wise Buddah and one for Emap.
The first award of the night was The Community Award, which was won by BBC Radio Berkshire’s allotment project “The Plot”. Second, Five Live took the Sports Programme Award for “Sportsweek”, with Gary Richardson accepting the award from Tennis star Greg Rudeski.
The third category – a new one for this year – was the Internet Programme Award. It was won by the Firin’ Squad Unsigned Podcast, produced by Mark Goodier’s Wise Buddah.
The fourth and fifth prizes both went to BBC Radio 2 – the station won the Feature Award for “Radio Ballads 2006 – The Song of Steel” (Produced by Nick Barraclough’s Smooth Operations production company); then followed it up with Gold for “Malcolm McLaren’s Musical Map of London” (produced by Just Radio).
Next came the award for the Live Event Coverage – this was won by Emap’s Magic 1152 for “The Alan Shearer Testimonial”. GMTV’s Andrew Castle handed over the Gold Award to News and Sport Editor Justin Lockwood, who has since left Metro/Magic for GMG’s Real Radio Yorkshire.
Gold in the Breaking News category went to BBC London 94.4 for their coverage of The London Tornado; and finally for now the News Journalist of the Year award was won by the main anchor of Radio 4’s Today Programme, John Humphrys.
In his acceptance speech, John Humphrys paid tribute to the hard work of BBC journalists working in war zones, and asked the gathered industry representatives to take a moment’s silence to remember missing BBC reporter Alan Johnston.
That’s the first section of the night’s awards done – host Paul Gambaccini has just handed over the baton to Sir Terry Wogan… back soon with details of the winners from the next 7 awards.