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| You have to admit... that's quite a lot of awards... |
Come on, don't pretend you don't care about them. You're obsessed with the Radio Awards. You know you are. You can't wait to hear who won Best Community Access Programme, or who the Programmer of the Year is.
This is the stuff that has a direct, measurable impact on our everyday lives.
Yes, that IS me being sarcastic. I don't mean to sound like an ungracious winner, but I've always considered the New Zealand Radio Awards a monumental waste of everybody's time and resources. Every year, hosts, producers and managers spend hours trying to compress an entire year's worth of on-air performance into a 10 minute file and a few pages of skiting. This is all then judged by a panel of people who may or may not have heard the actual show being entered in its original context and the winners are eventually announced online.
Oh sure, there USED to be a glitzy awards ceremony with actual hosts and even dinner, but the Global Credit Crunch killed that sort of exorbitant carry-on - just ask the New Zealand television industry. (Admittedly, it's taken them until this year to realise nobody was watching their awards, but they got there in the end)
When I describe myself as a winner, I'm not of course. I've got my name on a few certificates, but only because you have to put something down in the box that says, "Technical Director." Paul Holmes won many times and Hosking has won every year since he's taken over the breakfast show. He should win again this year obviously but here's the thing that bugs me, he might not.
It should be a simple formula; audience + revenue = result. Sadly, in my experience there are far too many other factors in play. Year after year, Newstalk ZB pulls in a massive number of listeners and makes a veritable shitload of money by commanding a premium for its advertising space, yet almost NEVER wins Station of the Year. This makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever.
I've been to other awards nights in other industries and it's pretty much all about profit, improvement, turnover and customer service. I've hardly ever heard other companies giving out prizes because one of their shops ran a stupid competition or told a series of dirty jokes accompanied by inappropriate sound effects. Generally the people who make the money win the trophies.
I'm not entirely sure how it works with the Oscars but presumably the members of the Academy actually WATCH the whole movie when they judge it, not just a 10 minute highlights package. Even then, they usually get it wrong. Surely the best movie is the one that attracts the most viewers. Unfortunately when you're talking Academy Award winning movies, it often works the other way round - who went and saw Hurt Locker BEFORE it won at the Oscars? Honestly?
Back to radio. Sometimes the competitions and jokes can attract listeners and ultimately advertisers, but over the course of a whole year, a station develops a relationship with its audience that simply can't be edited into a 10 minute soundbite. Unfortunately squealing competition winners and jokes CAN, which means all too often the best ENTRY sways the judges instead of the best show. Maybe they should just change the name to the New Zealand Radio Award ENTRY Awards.
I don't want to take anything away from those in our industry who are into these things - good luck to you, I totally concede it's important to recognise success amongst your peers. My beef is how you measure that success. It shouldn't be about paying an outside agency to put together a really slick award entry that looks and sounds better than everyone else's.
Here's the kicker, for the last two years I've actually been a judge! So I have a little advice for the other judges out there. Make it easy on yourselves guys, use the formula; audience + revenue = result. End of story.
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| At least she HAD an awards ceremony to fall over at |
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