Celebrating the best in radio and audio

You have all probably seen the announcement that there will be no standalone commercial radio awards in 2017. We remember with great fondness the highs, the tears, the amazing shows, the dancing into the night and all the incredible winners over the years. But after over 20 years, maybe it’s time to move on and create some other equally exciting ways to celebrate the brilliant medium of radio.

Let’s seize the opportunity to look again at the best way of recognising excellence in the radio and audio industry. We will therefore be exploring with the Radio Academy ways to build on this year’s inaugural ARIA Awards. These first awards were a great starting point, but there is still much to be done in terms of broadening and improving them to create a celebration of both public service and commercial broadcasting.

Most people acknowledge that there was a paucity of commercial radio winners at this year’s ARIAs and there is undoubtedly a need to expand the range of categories to make sure that these new awards are truly representative of all radio and audio. Combining the best elements of the Arqivas with the newly minted ARIAs could ultimately give us the best of all possible worlds. This is a collaboration that has the potential to inject energy into our celebrations of excellence in our sector.

An annual award ceremony is only one of the ways in which we intend to examine further cross industry co-operation beyond commercial radio. This will include consideration of how Radiocentre’s Tuning In conference could complement and co-exist alongside the Radio Festival. In addition we are discussing with Radio Academy how we might come together to tackle a range of issues facing our sector: including diversity, training and taking on the legacy of Sound Women.

Beyond Tuning In, we must continue to acknowledge the role clients play in the success of commercial radio. With this in mind, we are exploring how we can celebrate the creativity and effectiveness of our great medium now we no longer have the Arqivas. Watch this space as we are looking at new ways of awarding agencies and clients and we will come up with a great solution.

Radiocentre will always have commercial radio’s interests at its heart, but we are more aware than ever that we are part of a much bigger radio and audio world. That is something we all need to recognise – and celebrate together.