The Sony Awards
The Sonys on Monday - Radio's big awards night of the year - is a largely enjoyable ritual. The evening at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London's Park Lane is long - but there is more goodwill around than in many of these sort of occasions. And it is the only time the industry can see itself in the round - or a semblance of the round.
Thus those assembled in the cavernous ballroom come from the BBC and Commercial Radio, from big stations and small stations and from those who are in music radio and those who focus on speech. In recent years alcohol consumption has fallen and the acceptance speeches have been shorn of most of their baroque ornamentation.
Radio 4 did fine - even if the predominant hue was silver rather than gold. The tally was 3 Gold awards, 10 Silver and 2 Bronzes. In some other years we have won more Golds and fewer Silvers - but it's still a decent haul and down to the skill of the programme-makers - both from within the BBC and the independent radio companies that provide us with many excellent programmes. Here are the details:
Radio 4's winners
The Drama Award.
Gold: Mr Larkin's Awkward Day
Silver: The Color Purple
Bronze: Goldfish Girl
The Interview Award
Gold: Fergal Keane interviews Lana Vandenberghe
The News and Current Affairs Award
Silver: Today
The News Special Award
Silver: Poetry From The Front Line
The News Journalist of the Year
Silver: Mike Thomson
Speech Radio Personality of the Year
Silver: Eddie Mair
The Speech Broadcaster of the Year
Silver: Evan Davis
The Comedy Award
Gold: Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show!
Bronze: The Now Show
The Feature Award
Silver: Anatomy Of a Car Crash
Bronze: Leonard and Marianne
The Breaking News Award
Silver: Attacks in Mumbai
The Themed Programming Award
Silver: 1968 - Myth or Reality?
The Multiplatform Radio Award
Silver: World On The Move
Radio 3 - happily - won the Station of the Year Award - for the first time. Here is the list of all the awards made on the night.
Of course every year there are some programmes - whether big programme strands or individual documentaries - you particularly wish had won the top bauble... but restraint is called for. It would not be right to single out in public any single programme.
The Radio 4 winners were all top notch. Count Arthur Strong, winner of the comedy award, is a very strong flavour - one very much to my taste. We know that there is a section of the audience that doesn't get it - but we also know that another section of the audience loves it with feeling. Steve Delaney - the comic genius behind the programme - picked up the award as himself. I had wondered whether he might make his acceptanace speech in character. There will be another series. Catch it.
The Drama award was won by Mr Larkin's Awkward Day - written by Chris Harrald. It provides a delicious insight into Philip Larkin's character - and has a tremendous sense of period. We will repeat it.
And Fergal Keane's interview with Lana Vandenberghe (from the programme strand 'Taking a Stand') - who when working at the Independent Police Complaints Commission in London leaked documents about the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. Fergal pressed her hard - but with careful politeness. A terrific piece. Listen to the programme here.
- The Sony Radio Academy Awards and the Radio Academy.
- The Guardian's Media Monkey went to the awards.
- The Telegraph's Anita Singh on the awards.
- Steve Delaney interviews Count Arthur Strong in The Guardian in 2004.
- Fergal Keane wrote a piece for the BBC News web site about Lana Vandenberghe.
Comment number 1.
At 08:48 14th May 2009, newlach wrote:Eddy Mair is certainly deserving of an award. Who knows, if all people invited on to IPM turned up it might have been gold!
Count Arthur Strong. I do not understand this. The Now Show is very, very good.
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Comment number 2.
At 08:58 14th May 2009, CaptMike wrote:I've just listened to the comments on road deaths on radio 4's Today program. If we wish to reduce the 3000 per annum death rate why, as in this case, does no one ever mention jay walking pedestrians, cyclists( of whom a significant proportion do not follow the highway code), and the fact that there are virtually no police out of their police cars to deal with these problems.
Try jay walking in the USA. You'll eventually be caught and dealt with
vigourously.
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Comment number 3.
At 09:15 19th May 2009, kleines c wrote:As a BBC Radio 3 listener, I would, reluctantly, and despite this month's Sony Radio Academy Awards, admit that Radio 4 probably still has the edge over 3, Mark, particularly in the sense of its breadth of coverage.
It remains, in my view, the intelligent voice of radio, which means that as I am a very selective listener to your station, there is still so very much for me to learn. This is what public service broadcasting should, at its best, still be doing.
So what is radio 4? Both Radio 3 and Radio 4 should still be trying to work out what it means to be human in the twenty-first century. Of course, R3 carries the weight of history, or at least the classical canon, at the proms, for example, but how can we know where we are going unless we appreciate from whence we come?
A good rough test of the efficacy of art (including music), in my opinion, is the extent to which it reconciles us with life. To the extent that R4 continues to do so for me, Mark, you have my gratitude. Thank you for trying so hard. Cheers (morning coffee)!
;)
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