Student Radio Awards – lasting memories

With apologies for the lack of recent bloggery (working hard, new channel launch, consultancy in Kenya, getting ahead for Christmas etc.) here are those reflections on the Student Radio Awards, as promised…

This was a brilliantly organised event and the IndigO2 venue had just the right amount of modern showbiz appeal to give the evening an established, professional air without being stuffy. Well done to the Student Radio Association. They even managed to unite Andy Parfitt (suit) and Ashley Tabor (knitwear) in what looks like live karaoke, but wasn’t.

From the conversations I enjoyed with students, passion for radio remains as strong as ever with speech radio appearing to be particularly popular right now. Hardly surprising given current on-air trends towards greater dominance of personality and fewer formats promising little more than your iPod can offer. You could easily argue that Moyles is a speech-led show, especially if you only ever hear the podcasts.

To the main event, and the team from Nottingham’s URN collected a huge number of prizes including the overall station of the year award. Expect to see some of these faces (pictured) around a professional radio boardroom table before too long.

As one of the journalism judges I can tell you that URN was extremely strong in news, managing to cover a large number of well-targeted stories with consistently solid story telling, interesting writing, great use of audio and confident presentation. That’s the right mix for a win. Have a listen.

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As this is supposed to be a promotions and navigation blog I ought to mention URN’s neighbours Fly FM who picked up the Marketing/Branding award. I haven’t heard their audio so if you happen to have a copy please get in touch.

One mystery… what was Jason Donovan doing at the awards? He didn’t perform nor did he present anything and I didn’t see him on the judges list. But he was jolly nice to everybody in the upstairs bar. Top man. Let’s start playing his songs again.

And Panko Crusted Chicken? It looks like this (pictured). Yum.

James Cridland has written a more thoughtful, longer and generally better piece about the awards on his blog.

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