[cma-l] Your views on the Sonys please

[Ed Baxter]

Dear Phil,
I did not attend the meeting in Bristol last year where everyone was
told How To Win A Sony, so maybe my thoughts are immaterial. But this
year, in a volte-face, Resonance is going to enter every possible
category to see what can be done practically.

I think the first stumbling block is that the award fro the smallest
category Radio Station of the Year is not controlled by the Sonys at
all but is in the hands of the Radio Academy (I think), i.e. it
appears an anomaly and appears undemocratic as well.

Money is the second stumbling block of course, but it would be absurd
to think that Zafer or whoever determines the entry level would
exhibit the generosity and sense of hospitality central to community
radio.

Which is the third stumbling block: over the whole process hangs the
dead hand of a fusty establishment. The Awards make no effort to court
community radio: they are stuck in that ratings-led, money-led world
beloved of Media Guardian.

I know I am a tiny bit cynical, and that one is not allowed these
post-political days to appear really critical of anything, but I was
not convinced by the award to the Brixton prison station. The politics
of awarding a community station that can only be heard by people
locked inside the jail for better or worse spoke volumes about the
prevailing mindset at the Sonys. Here, they were saying, is the best
community radio station in the country: one which is trapped within
its own closed world and which everyone here can happily legitimately
ignore! I guess I was alone in viewing the award as a classic piece of
Sony footwork.

Until content is valued above ratings or column inches, the Awards
will continue to appear like a Gentleman's Club: out of touch,
predictable and dull. Accidentally, wanting to check the results, my
google search led me to the 2008 pages. It was half an hour before I
realised my mistake - and in fact 2009 was more or less
indistinguishable from every other years.

I don't ask for revolution or novelty, just the faintest whiff of
fresh air. The Sonys claim to be powerful, representative, trendy. So,
like Jack Palance in "Shane" I say to them: prove it. Fifty quid says
instead that Adam & Joe get an award just for being able to Twitter
from Glastonbury.

Yours
Ed

2009/7/16 Phil Korbel <phil.korbel at googlemail.com>:
> Dear all
>
> I'm having a chat with a colleague on the Sony Awards organising committee
> on Tuesday - with a major theme being 'how can the awards better encourage
> entries from the community radio sector'?

-- 
As featured in the Independent on Sunday's Happy List:-
Ed Baxter
programming director
Resonance104.4fm
144 Borough High Street
London SE1 1LB
020 7407 1210

http://www.resonancefm.com
Resonance is affiliated to Radia http://www.radia.fm