Beat 102-103 chief executive Gabrielle Cummins has been honoured with an outstanding achievement award by Imro at its annual radio awards show. The salute to Cummins was primarily for her Choose Radio marketing initiative aimed at getting all radio sales houses – independent and RTÉ – to work together in raising the profile of radio advertising.
Newstalk won several golds, not least the top full service station of the year category. The Communicorp station also won golds for both its Hard Shoulder evening drivetime show presented by Ivan Yates in the current affairs, while Yates himself was voted best speech broadcaster. Lunchtime Live won gold in the interactive speech programme category.
Newstalk’s Off the Ball won gold as the top sports show, while the programme’s Nathan Murphy was named top sports presenter. Tom Dunne was voted the best specialist music broadcaster. Other gold winners on the night included RTÉ Radio 1, Today FM, FM104, 98FM, BBC Radio Foyle, WLR, Radio Kerry, LMFM, Cork’s 96FM and Red FM.
Ronan Collins, Sean Moncrieff, Paul Byrne and Seamus McKee were hall of fame inductees.
The awards are sponsored by Imro and the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI). This year, 652 entries were received. Following a revamp of the judging, head judge Peter McPartlin drafted in over 105 judges from both within and outside the industry to listen to hundreds of hours of radio content. The entries were whittled down to a shortlist of 185.
