Lots happens in the radio industry each week so here’s a summary of the week we just enjoyed.
Here’s what happened
Last night was the night that brings the whole radio industry to one big party, that’s right, last night was the IMRO Radio Awards.
I launched Radio Land on the night of the 2020 IMRO’s, so the site is now Two years old. Time flies when your having fun.
Anyway, enough about Radio Land. Who won stuff this year?
- WLR have won local station of the year once again, making it their……wait for it….. 4th year in a row🎉 if your winning one of the biggest awards every year then your clearly doing something right. Well done WLR.
- Red FM are the music station of the year this year. They have also won this award previously. people clearly still love music on Air, so well done to Red FM.
- Finally in the big three category’s, Today FM won full service station of the year. Today FM have had a schedule shakeup recently so they’ll be delighted with this endorsement. Congratulations to all involved.
Well done to everyone who has played a part in making radio great over the last year. You can read a full list of winners in all categories by clicking the link below.
Notable Twitter Moments
We unfortunately weren’t at the event, so we were left to join the fun at home from Twitter. But as usual Twitter didn’t disappoint. Here are some of the key points from Twitter over the course of the night.
- Newstalk need to give their social media team a raise. We teased them a bit, but they had tweets of their wins up before the IMRO Awards account at times. They even included fancy graphics. So the gold for fastest social media team goes to Newstalk🏆
- Everything was so civilised that someone had to get salty. Lord Bill Badbody tweeted “Disgusted at #IMR022 for not awarding my radio showÉireann Your Views again this year. Obvious bias against radio hosts who tell it like it is. They’ll pay for this. Every single one of those bastards.”. Thankfully it was only an account from Waterford wispers having a bit of fun. So to Lord Bill Badbody, congratulations on winning gold for best salty tweet🏆
- The gold for looking for a pay raise has to go to Ross Broun of Corks 96FM, he reminded his employer that he hadn’t yet signed his new contract, he pointed out that he could go national, and encouraged stations to get in touch. Ross might indeed get a raise though as he then went on to actually win a real gold award. Congratulations Ross🏆
It really was a fun night on Twitter, and I hope everyone at the event had a blast too.
Again, well done to everyone and thanks for making radio such an awesome little industry. I guess we’ll see you all again next year🎉
Read the full winners list here
The BAI have rejected a number of complaints surrounding the Russia/Ukraine conflict. They also rejected complaints from the owner of a public sector news magazine.
Let’s start with the Russia and Ukraine stuff. Complaints were lodged against Prime Time, Brendon O Connor, and the Pat Kenny show. The exact details of the respective complaints differed, but all felt there was bias within the broadcasts.
The BAI rejected all of these complaints saying.
- In relation to Prime Time “there was no evidence of the Prime Time presenter attempting to “nudge” guests into stating that NATO should become involved in the conflict”
- Regarding Pat Kenny, “There was no evidence of any contempt in the presenter’s voice and the broadcast content did not support the complainant’s view that the broadcast could be described as racist,” the BAI also pointed out here that use of terms such as “the Russians” were common terms in the shows context
- The complaint about Brendan O Connor took issue with some of the Russian talking points being argued on the show. The BAI rejected this too however. They said ‘discussion in general was managed appropriately by the presenter, who put forward suggestions and counter arguments to elicit responses from the panel and that the audience was not misled on the subject under discussion”.
The other set of complaints made related to a public sector news magazine. The Magazine was heavily criticised on LiveLine, leading to the owner lodging a complaint with the BAI about the broadcasts.
The problem here was that the complainant, John Hogan, claimed that joe Duffy shared his own views in the show as he “rang gongs like a game show host”. There’s quite a lot to this actually so I’d recommend reading the article linked below for the full details.
While the BAI did ultimately reject the complaints, they did agree that the show was very negative towards the magazine. They pointed out that this was often the case with shows where conversations are caller driven, and they also noted RTEs attempts to get someone from the magazine on the show.
As I said there’s a lot to this story, so if you want more details you can check out the linked article. That article also covers some other complaints that we didn’t discuss here.
Finally this week, a deal between the GAA and the IBI has resulted in a community station in Kilkenny no longer being allowed broadcast GAA matches.
Community Radio Kilkenny City (CRKC) had always carried extensive GAA coverage, but they have been told to curtail this with immediate effect. The reason for this is that the deal with the IBI (independant broadcasters of ireland) has resulted in commercial broadcaster KCLR having exclusive GAA rights.
This has a number of repercussions for CRKC, as not only will they risk losing loyalGAA listeners, but they will also lose those commercial sponsorships that might cover a lot of costs.
Understandably, the station is not too impressed with this new deal.
On behalf of itself and its listenership, Community Radio Kilkenny City is extremely disappointed by the position it is placed in by the GAA/IBI agreement. Community Radio Kilkenny City will continue to provide extensive reports of Kilkenny GAA games on Sunday and Monday evenings, and we will also continue to provide extensive sports coverage on our other weekend sport (and music) programmes. The same level of restrictive coverage will also apply to Community Radio Kilkenny City in relation to Kilkenny intercounty games at all levels. Since Community Radio Kilkenny City commenced full time broadcasting five years ago, the station has given unrivalled coverage to club games at all levels in Kilkenny. The same applied to the inter-county scene plus schools and colleges games. It is worth noting that Community Radio Kilkenny City was often the only Kilkenny broadcast media outlet at many of those games. Community Radio Kilkenny City is proud of what it has achieved to date, and more especially as all the Sports Team work as volunteers. Community Radio Kilkenny City is fortunate also to be able to call on numerous other volunteers around Kilkenny who provide match reports on a regular basis.
Statement from CRKC, source Kilkenny People
There are literally so many possable reactions to this story. Is this the IBI screwing over community stations? Is the GAA being perfectly reasonable by following the audience and the money, should exclusivity deals for a national sport like GAA be banned? There are so many possable ways to look at this. Go vote on our Instagram story now and tell us what you think.
Quick Bits
The IBI have called for the broadcast levy to be scrapped
2FM breakfast presenter Doireann Garrihy is taking over hosting Dancing With The Stars
Radio Nova’s PJ Gallagher and Jim McCabe are doing a charity random cycle
Spin has a new weekend schedual
A number of broadcast contract renewals are being fast tracked
Lyric FM is celebrating Black History Month
And that’s the summary for this week. Come back to radio land next week for more radio news📻 and be sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram for extra stories.