Life wins

11-19-2008

By the end of the night, I had earrings and a plastic princess necklace on, a jar of pickled onions, a huge boxes of jellybeans, chocolate milk duds, Cadbury cream eggs, and a hard bodies calendar. I was smiling ear to ear and was sticky with champagne. Couldn’t have asked for a better night in London. Again, l’m trying the Tarentino thing.

About a month and a half ago, I spent a week at work going through the stations achieves. I was to compile a 30-minute audio sample of the stations best from the past year. This audio sample, along with a on-air schedule, 5-page write up, and an hour of on-air material from a randomly selected hour of their choosing, was sent to the National Radio Academy for a competition. It was a long monotonous week. But a week ago something came of it.

The National Radio Academy called my boss Gabriella and asked her if someone representing Life FM was going to be at their panel discussion and awards ceremony tonight. She assured them there would be, although until that phone call, there wasn’t going to be.

So tonight, Gabriella and I, after looking for the place for about 45 minutes, sat in on the panel discussion the Radio Academy arranged on radio station imaging. It was extremely informative. I love hearing people talk about radio sound and the psychology behind it, because it’s totally what I’m into. So it’s great to hear people who are as nerdily into it as I am. However, these people weren’t nerds. They were hip, professional audio producers who came from all sorts of backgrounds and worked in all different angles of radio. Before the discussion tonight, they were all given an assignment in another panel members job, and the results were extremely interesting.

After the panel discussion came the announcement of the winner of the Radio Academy’s Nations and Regions Award. I have to admit, as they were describing the eligibility requirements of the award, my heart started pumping a little faster. Finally, it came:

“And the winner of the 2008 Nations and Regions Award is, Life FM.”

Gabriella, in a not-so-quiet whisper said, “Oh my God!” and draws the attention of the entire room. The presenter continues, “I believe we have a representative from LifeFM here tonight.”

The award presenter described the station and why we were chosen:

The judges described Life FM as a community radio station which seems entirely at ease with itself because, first and foremost, it knows and understands its target audience.

Like all entrants to these awards, Life FM was required to submit an hour of continuous output (specified at random by the Academy), along with a highlights compilation and supporting written submission.

The judges felt that the output they heard demonstrated that it is possible to achieve high level of local awareness without sounding parochial - citing, as the best example of this, a feature called ‘Battle of the Brands’, which pitted local businesses against each other for a chance to win some free advertising: the judges felt that this was an excellent mechanic for building listener loyalty, and very well executed.

The judges were also impressed by the standard of the on air presentation, the station sound, and by the written submission that accompanied the Life FM entry. Significant time had clearly been spent compiling this entry - and it was time well spent. Congratulations!

Gabriella went up to say a few words. She thanked me for gathering the audio and gave props to everyone at the station. We were both ecstatic. Afterward, virtually the entire room of audio producers went to a little pub two doors down and I was able to catch up with some of the panel, as congratulations were being thrown our way from all around the bar. Gabriella even had a few of her friends come out and join us. After socializing and exchanging contact info for a while (in hopes of a possible job lead), that pubs started to feel a little tiny, since it was. So Gabriella, her friends and I headed to a pretty crazy basement club, which turned out to be a haven for homosexual men.

Meh, I was in a good mood and had enough alcohol in me to not care about getting hit on, so I hit the dance floor. Before too long though, came the competition portion of the evening.

After listening to a big black drag queen sing, she (he?) took onto the little stage two girls and two guys, one of which was me. We passed a wrapped gift down the line in a musical chairs kind of fashion. When the music stopped, whoever was holding it got to unwrap the first layer of paper and keep whatever they unveiled. I just to happen to be the last one. However, I didn’t get off so easy. In order to earn my prize I had to eat a pickled onion out of the person’s mouth who had the present before me. Luckily, this was an attractive woman, so I had no qualms.

Needless to say, I won. That pickled onion taste is still in my mouth, but I won. On top of the prizes mentioned at the beginning of this post, I also got a bottle of champagne which I shook up and opened in a festive manner all over the dance floor which I then shared with my fellow contestants.

I stumbled home down an empty Regent’s street. It was sweet because they were doing some construction / cleaning I was able to walk right down the middle and take pictures of the stars above.

And I saw a designer clothing store for pregnant women, where you can spend a couple hundred pounds on an outfit that you’ll where for 7 months tops!

Upon arriving home, I awoke my roommates and told them of my night, and it was a night indeed. I had to get some sleep for the next day I had a 9 hour journey to Edinburgh, Scotland.