LBC leads the way at the Arqiva Awards

The stars of the 18th Arqiva Commercial Radio Awards are LBC with four gongs along with Metro Radio and Absolute Radio with three awards each.

Of the major groups, Global Radio won six, Bauer Radio got five and Real and Smooth took home two.

UKRD and UTV Media stations, including talkSPORT are not allowed to enter the awards after resigning from RadioCentre four years ago.

There’s also no winners from Celador Radio, Lincs FM Group, Adventure Radio, Town and Country Broadcasting, Quidem Media or Media Aspect Local.

LBC’s four gongs are for Station of the Year, Iain Dale for Presenter of the Year (both with a TSA over two million), station boss James Rea gets Programmer of the Year and Dan Freedman took home the Ali Booker Memorial Journalist of the Year Award.

More photos here.

Global’s other awards were for Radio Station Event of the Year for the Capital Summertime Ball and Station Imaging Award for Classic FM.

Metro Radio took three of Bauer Media’s five awards, for Station of the Year (500,000 – 2 million TSA), while Presenter of the Year and Breakfast Show of the Year (under 2 million TSA), each went to Metro’s Steve & Karen. Bauer’s other wards went to Kiss with Rickie, Melvin & Charlie for Breakfast Show of the Year (over 2 million TSA), and Rock FM for Feature of the Year with Lionel Glitzy/Hywel and Jamie’s Vegas Adventure.

Absolute Radio won Specialist Programme of the Year for The Ronnie Wood Show, (produced by Somethin’ Else); The Christian O’Connell Breakfast Show with Wickes scooped The Marketing Award and the National Sales Team Award went to Absolute for InStream.

Real & Smooth won Single Programme or Broadcast of the Year for Real Radio North West’s Ciaran’s Cause, and Local Sales Team of the Year for Smooth Radio London.

Newcomer of the Year went to Andrew Murray from 103.1 Central FM/Forth One & Forth 2 and News Coverage of the Year went to IRN, produced by Sky News Radio. Isle of Wight Radio picked up Station of the Year (under 500,000 TSA) and Orion’s Free Radio walked away with the Social Action Initiative Award for Walk for Harry.

The PPL Most Played UK Artist on Commercial Radio went to Coldplay, with Chris Martin collecting the award live. PPL Breakthrough UK Artist of the Year went to Emeli Sandé.

Advertiser of the Year went to British Sky Broadcasting, and Media Agency of the Year went to Mindshare.

The RadioCentre Chairman’s Award was presented to John Mottram, formerly from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, and now of PRS.

Andrew Harrison, Chief Executive of RadioCentre commented: “Congratulations go to all our winners this evening – it was fantastic to see entries of such a high standard, particularly as we received record entries this year. The awards demonstrate that, in our 40th year, commercial radio continues to innovate, producing compelling, quality content, curated by DJs and presenters which listeners trust.”

Ben Hart, Head of Commercial Radio at Arqiva told RadioToday: “Tonight was a great celebration of the best of commercial radio today as well as its 40 year history. Well done to all our worthy winners, not forgetting the many nominees that made the judges decisions even more challenging this year.”