{"id":4049,"date":"2014-11-10T21:08:54","date_gmt":"2014-11-10T21:08:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/?p=4049"},"modified":"2014-11-10T21:08:54","modified_gmt":"2014-11-10T21:08:54","slug":"the-future-of-the-radio-academy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/2014\/11\/the-future-of-the-radio-academy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Future of The Radio Academy"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Friday, The Radio Academy released an unusual press release<\/a> that detailed how next year\u2019s Radio Academy Awards were being cancelled, as was the Radio Festival. Furthermore, buried at the end, was news that the \u201cExecutive Unit\u201d was being closed down. A new, unspecified London-based event, would replace both the Awards and Festival in due course. <\/p>\n

What did all this mean? <\/p>\n

First of all, I have no specific knowledge of what the underlying problem might be, but let\u2019s go through some of them in turn. <\/p>\n

Ending the Radio Academy Awards, aka The Sony Awards is very sad indeed. Sony themselves, ended their very long sponsorship run in 2013, and this year the awards didn\u2019t have a headline sponsor, instead having a number of category sponsors. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always been a big fan of the Sony Awards (I even compiled a complete list<\/a> of every Sony\/Radio Academy Award ever), because they were the one place where both BBC and commercial radio competed together for excellence in UK radio. There were always fights and divisions over whether the BBC did unfairly well because the award categories were biased towards them, but in recent years newer categories meant that for the most part commercial radio could compete (and if it wasn\u2019t winning awards, might that be because a lot of their radio wasn\u2019t good enough?). Anyway, while I\u2019m not privy to discussions surrounding it, I don\u2019t tend to hear ITV moaning that the BBC has won too many BAFTA Awards. <\/p>\n

And let\u2019s be clear, the cancellation of the Sony\u2019s is the equivalent of BAFTA deciding not to bother with the television awards. A Sony win always<\/em> ends up on the CV of anybody lucky enough to get one, and it certainly did anything but good for someone\u2019s future. For many, the Sony\u2019s were the truest recognition of radio excellence among their peers. Commercial Radio has its Arqivas, and BBC Local Radio has its Gillards, but the Sony\u2019s were the one thing that everyone fought for.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, last time I checked, Award ceremonies usually made money. Although the details aren\u2019t clear from the Charity Commission\u2019s website for the Radio Academy<\/A>, even allowing for the cost of feeding the radio industry with luke warm chicken in a Park Lane hotel, the entry fees and attendance costs for the night itself, should<\/em> mean a profitable enterprise. Indeed many awards ceremonies outlive anything that they were previously tied to because they\u2019re profitable in their own right.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the Radio Festival. For the last few years, this had settled into a new home in Salford \u2013 attempting to replicate the Edinburgh TV Festival model of making a permanent home. Previously it had floated around for a few years. Salford was never perfect, with a decent chunk of the industry having to come up from the south, but the area is hardly out of reach, being a couple of hours away on the train. <\/p>\n

This year\u2019s Festival was the first for ages that I\u2019d missed, but I heard very good things about it, and having subsequently spoken to a number of attendees, many thought that it was the best Festival in years. <\/p>\n

I confess that I am slightly biased having sat for the last couple of years on the TechCon committee, the technical sub-conference that takes place annually, also under the auspices of the Radio Academy. But that too was a useful place for a discrete group of radio “techies” to get together and discuss what they’re doing and what the future holds.<\/p>\n

I suspect that the finances of the Radio Festival are harder to calculate. It\u2019s never cheap hiring out somewhere like the Lowry theatre for several days (this being a working theatre that usually accommodates week-long touring productions), as well as attendant costs surrounding staffing, technology, and so on. Some of this is probably mitigated by sponsorship, but I suspect that the overall event is break-even at best.<\/p>\n

Radio does need<\/em> its own conference. However uncertain our industry is at the moment, with new technologies delivering audio and fighting for our \u201cears\u201d \u2013 we still need somewhere to talk about things honestly, hear best practices and celebrate our medium. And make no mistake, it wouldn’t be that hard for someone else to fill in the void – particularly if a conference was to be broadened out to include other streaming and audio services. “RadioDays UK” anyone?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s hope that a new event that encompasses the Awards and the Festival does really achieve that. I would, however, point out that attendees of the Sony Awards and Radio Festival were not the same people. Yes the very senior-most probably get to go to both. But the Sony\u2019s were primarily there for those who actually make<\/em> radio. So presenters, producers and those who help craft the audio were those we truly celebrated. It\u2019s not for nothing that I only ever got to go to the Sony\u2019s once \u2013 and then at short notice when someone dropped out. On the other hand, at the Festival, it was more the \u201csuits\u201d \u2013 the executives who delivered new strategies or ways of thinking and doing business. Certainly the art of radio was also discussed, but for the most part, the only \u201ctalent\u201d attending the Festival were there to speak rather than to sit in the audience.<\/p>\n

So whatever this new event is to be, it\u2019s important to remember that there are different constituencies that the Awards and Festival used to serve. <\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the closure of the \u201cExecutive Unit\u201d \u2013 the four fulltime staff who sit in the Academy\u2019s small London office, neighbours of DRUK, RadioCentre and RAJAR. These are the people who actually put these events on, and administer the things that the Radio Academy has been doing. I\u2019m not at all clear how this new event (or the others that continue under the Academy’s auspices) will take place without a staff to administer it. Certainly you can outsource your events management, and I assume that\u2019s what the Trustees have decided is better value. But that comes at the cost of knowledge. <\/p>\n

And I\u2019m not at all clear what this means for the regional events side of the Academy, and the Masterclasses that they organised to help people learn how to get into the industry. All those meetings where you could sit and learn about what we do as a medium. Will those continue? Who will organise them? Indeed with only a part-time CEO<\/A> left, I\u2019m not sure what the Radio Academy is going to be able to do for itself. While many of these events have local volunteer committees, it’s the guiding hand of an overall Academy that helps them achieve their aims.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the more I think about it, the more misleading the release<\/a> we had on Friday really is. This isn\u2019t just an amendment to a couple of events; this is a fundamental change, and arguably, is the dismantling of the Radio Academy. It’s particularly vague to say that the Academy has “an ambition” to create a new event. We all have “ambitions” don’t we? Whether we get close to achieving them is something altogether different.<\/p>\n

Now I\u2019m not going to argue that the Academy was perfect. Over the summer, the Radio Academy\u2019s Chairman, Ben Cooper, asked \u201cwhat does it mean to you<\/a>\u201d? <\/p>\n

And here is what I wrote back: <\/p>\n

Dear Ben,<\/p>\n

What does the Radio Academy mean to me?<\/p>\n

To put my thoughts into context, I\u2019ll begin by saying a little about me. I worked at Absolute Radio (and Virgin Radio) for 17 years until earlier this year latterly as Head of Strategy & Planning. I have sat on the TechCon committee for the last three years, I was very briefly on the London committee, and I regularly attended both London Radio Academy events and the Radio Festival for the last few years. <\/p>\n

At the moment, I am on a six month contract in News Strategy at the BBC \u2013 so indirectly with radio since the World Service is one of the areas I\u2019m looking at.<\/p>\n

From a practical perspective, the Radio Academy to me is – or should be – made up of several areas:
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