It’s been a busy 2 weeks since my last post so it’s time to fill you in.
To cut a long story short the majority of my SRA time has been needed to digitise the nominated entries for the Student Radio Awards 2008: as of Monday that’s completed, so I can focus on my main work for the next 2 weeks… and will allow the final judging rounds to take place.
While the exec are in the final throws of organising the Student Radio Awards 2008, my input (other than the entry digitising) has been fairly minimal: simply as my responsibilities don’t directly cover the organising of the awards night (essentially I spend time on the awards as and when it’s needed… so mainly the digitising of entries described above; the awards sorting and the redux)) . However, it’s not the only event we’ll have a presence at on November 6th…
…as we’ll be exhibiting everything Student Radio at SBES 2008, held at the NEC in Birmingham. Currently I’m organising our stand for the 2 days (5/6th November) so that’s my primary focus for the next fortnight. It’s free to attend though you do need to register in advance here. It’s the ideal event to find out more about radio, especially if you like your equipment.
Talking of fortnights, a fortnight ago we had the Nominations Parties across the UK in Stirling, Leeds, Salford, Leicester, Bath and London. I’m fairly pleased with the outcome of the day, particularly the training sessions in Salford and the announcements in Leeds. There are areas we need to work on for next year but knowing what they are should make a big difference… especially as I’ve got plenty of feedback from some of the regions.
I’ve also got plenty of recommendations for the exec, which I’ll be discussing with them in due course.
Now onto comments about the nominations… and we’ve had plenty of them!
The nominations announcements always bring out some interesting comments from the community; in particular because some people are annoyed/disappointed/aggrieved at not being nominated.
This year has seen some interesting emails/blog posts/forum posts based on the size of stations, levels of funding and the possibility of creating new awards based on the size of a station (like the Sony Radio Awards), along with the suggestion that we under-represent “small” stations.
The problem is how to define a small station. I’ve read many ideas from the community about this but no one specific definition: and it’s difficult to define station size, for the simple reason that the community is too diverse to accurately do so. Financial support? Turnover? Membership size? Number of Listeners? Age? University population? Number of awards won? Those that have radio courses?
Having considered this over the last 2 weeks, I’m inclined to think that comparing any 2 of the above would produce a significantly different definition of a “small” station… and listener numbers are subject to interpretation, especially for stations with FM/AM licenses as it’s nearly impossible to measure numbers (RAJAR can’t be used as you have to register a permanent address… something students don’t usually have when at university).
I feel though that I have to address some of the comments I’ve read in the last 2 weeks:
- Judging is simply based on the quality of the content submitted and any bias that a judge might have favouring their former station simply can’t happen: there are at least 2 judges for each round (the number of rounds varies on the category) and they have to agree on which are the better entries.
- Judges come across all parts of the industry, from BBC to Global to independents. Many are student radio alumni and judge simply because they respect and love the community. So the chances of one organisation favouring certain aspects of an entry will be minimal.
- The judges are usually able to eliminate a significant number of entries very quickly for the simple reason that the quality of the content isn’t good enough and they decide using the same guidelines that entrants have prior to entering.
- The SRA exec have absolutely no involvement with the judging of the awards, other than to sort them into categories for distribution to the judges and to process payments: the process is completely independent of the exec and we therefore have no influence over the results.
- Different stations approach the awards differently: there is very little the SRA itself can do to change this.
- The same applies for funding: we can’t realistically insist that entrants have to pay from their own pocket to entry, especially as cheating could be easily achieved without our knowledge.
- However there is always going to be some interpretation about what good/bad radio is and there always will be. But it’s the best people who judge, people at the very top of their game: which is as fair as we can get.
- And finally: there’s little correlation to the number of entries a station submits and the number of nominations gained. Obviously a station that submits 3 entries won’t get 10 nominations. Other stations have and will submit 40+ entries in a single year: some with one or 2 good enough to be nominated, some with more than 10. The difference is simply down to the main reason good radio succeeds: Content Is King.
Our members are always welcome to contact us with ANY queries they have. I can’t highlight the importance of this enough: we’re always happy to help with any request for information but it’s discouraging when very few are received. My job is predominately about helping members and improving the association: I can’t do that if people don’t directly contact me with their comments, opinions or suggestions.
I’ve also read that some of the information we have on our members is incorrect. We’re well aware of that but for accurate information we need member stations to regularly update the details… something that definitely doesn’t happen with the majority, even when we ask.
If you want to update your details, either request your log-on for our members database to edit it, or provide us with the details we need to make them accurate.
And why do we have the information? So we know how our members operate and to act in the best interests of as many as possible: which applies to all aspects of our work. Not having access to that data makes it far more difficult to do our work.
Finally, the exec have chosen the host of the 2009 Student Radio Conference, which we’ll be announcing very soon. I can’t say much more about if now… that’s for next time.