The shortlist for the national radio awards has been announced and Beat 102-103 is delighted to have received five nominations.
Every time the market-leading radio station enters “On Air Competition/Promotion” category, it gets shortlisted! This year that trend continues as the station’s 2017 national radio bronze award-winning Halloween promotion was further tweaked for 2018 and the latest version “Coffin Lock In: The Return” is once again up for a top award.
One of the most competitive categories of the national awards is the “Radio DJ” category. Head of Station Sound Niall Power says “it’s such an achievement to have two of our presenters shortlisted in the competitive category. Darren Rice has been recognised with a nomination almost every year for his specialist programming. It’s nice to see a nod for his talented work on mid-mornings where he has hosted Beat at Work for the last 8 years. David Hammond is a relative newcomer to Beat and the industry but has impressed listeners and now judges with his creative approach to radio presenting each evening on the Takeover on Beat. Good luck to both of them!”
Beat prides itself on fostering the radio industry’s future talent. The regional station has previously received a number of nominations for “Best Newcomer” and this year it’s the turn of multiplatform broadcast journalist Debbie Ridgard. News and Sports Editor with Beat, Kevin O’Mahony says “Debbie has been with Beat for just over a year and in that time she has demonstrated so much versatility, enthusiasm and professionalism. I would like to wish her the very best of luck for the overall awards”.
While there are many music-focused radio stations in Ireland, Beat has always differentiated itself significantly by continuously investing in a standalone news and sports department. The station’s small but talented news and sports team consistently produces engaging news and sports content that’s relevant to its 15-34 target market across the five counties of the South East. Throughout the referendum to repeal the 8th, Beat was focused on delivering the most up to date information on this controversial issue to its target.
CEO and Programme Director Gabrielle Cummins has said she’s thrilled that the news team’s coverage of the Referendum’s count day has been acknowledged with a nod in the “Best News Programme” category. The Beat boss added that “the national radio awards encourages all of us to strive to produce the best content that we can so I am absolutely thrilled that Beat is being recognised at national level by being shortlisted across five categories. The very best of luck to all nominees!”
The national IMRO Radio Awards 2018 will take place on Friday, October 5th at the Lyrath Estate, Kilkenny where over 600 guests of the Irish radio industry will find out who from the shortlist takes home the gongs.
- A team of 90 were on the judging panel from across the industry and listened to 275 hours of entries.
- 217 shortlisted nominations have been announced in 37 hotly contested categories.
- Local stations received 134 nominations while national stations received 84 nominations.
The awards recognise the high levels of talent both on and off air that Ireland has to offer. Tasked with whittling the 550+ entries down, an independent team of 90 judges chose the best of the best to be in with a chance of taking a golden mic home in October.
The Awards cover a diverse range of programming including music, speech, news, sport and individuals. Entries for the all-Ireland Awards come from an array of stations from RTÉ, BBC and independent commercial radio stations.
A spokesperson for the Radio Awards Committee said today “Heartiest well done to all the nominees, we applaud the quality of the entries this year. Radio in Ireland is thriving once again and we are delighted to see such a varying range of programming being submitted.”
