talkSPORT wins big at the Sony Radio Academy Awards
talkSPORT took home the UK Station of the Year award at last night’s Sony Radio Academy Awards event in Mayfair’s Grosvenor Hotel.
The station enjoyed its most successful ever night at the awards ceremony in London, scooping three Gold Awards for Station Programmer of the Year (Moz Dee), Best Promotional Campaign (for the Fifa World Cup 2010) and Station of the Year.
“It’s been a long time coming but tonight has been a break through for commercial speech radio,” Dee said.
The awards come after talkSPORT’s last RAJAR, which saw the station break the 3 million listeners mark for the first time after a 4.3% QoQ jump and a massive 23% YoY increase.
Sporting rivals BBC Radio Five live also won a total of six golds – with Nicky Campbell and Shelagh Fogarty carrying off the Breakfast Show of the Year prize (10 million plus).
Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine was a double gold winner, claiming Speech Broadcaster of the Year and Best Interview of the Year (with the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown).
Rolling Stone’s Ronnie Wood won Music Radio Personality of the Year and Frank Skinner beat Moyles and Westwood to Best Entertainment Programme.
Other winners of the night, which was hosted by Chris Evans, were Absolute Radio’s Annabel Port (Best On-Air Contributor); Kiss 100 (Best Station Imaging); and Classic FM (Best Use of Branded Content).
Tim Blackmore, chairman of the Sony Radio Academy Awards, said: “In spite of the continuing emergence of new platforms and of video ubiquity, the creative use of sound continues to attract massive and regular support from the vast majority of the British public. This is entirely down to the skills and talents of radio professionals in all sectors of the audio business and it is these awards that continue to highlight their ever impressive levels of achievement.”