Absolute Radio has been nominated for a record 11 Arqiva Commercial Radio awards including the big prize – Radio Station of the Year. It’s the biggest haul we’ve had and the most for a single station, including two apiece for Christian O’Connell and Ronnie Wood. The OC is up for best breakfast show and presenter, while our very own Rolling Stone is up for best specialist programme and best feature for his ‘Ronnie Wood – The Guests’ shows.
The Frank Skinner show gets a nomination with Alun Cochrane getting a nod in the best newcomer category. Last year’s Absolute Radio Live has two nominations for our festival coverage and our launch featuring Elbow – Live at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Well done to our friends at Swiftcover and Ikea who join us in our two Branded Content nominations.
Congratulations to our salesteam – nominated for national salesteam of the year. We have to say we’re chuffed to bits at being nominated for ‘Radio Station of the Year’ because it’s a nomination for the whole team – from Martin and Kerry on Reception to Dwaine and Jane in finance. It’s for everyone at One Golden Square.
A quick note of well done to our friends at Jack FM in Oxfordshire who got 4 nominations. We’ll find out the results in the ceremony on Wednesday 4th July – and you can watch the nominations announcement here.
Here’s the full list of our nominations:
- Marketing Award: Faces for Radio & #nowplaying
- National Sales Team
- Radio Station Event: Absolute Radio Live
- Breakfast Show of the Year (over 1 million TSA)
- Feature(s) of the Year: Ronnie Wood – The Guests
- Specialist Porgramme: The Ronnie Wood Show
- Presenter of the Year (over 1 million TSA): Christian O’Connell
- Newcomer of the Year: Alun Cochrane
- Best Branded Content: Absolute Radio Live with Swiftcover.com
- Most Effective Campaign: Ikea ‘Happy to Bed’ with Absolute Radio
- Station of the Year (over 1 million TSA)
You can read more about what others are saying here.
We are joining forces with Britain’s biggest band once again as Coldplay perform the first London date of their Mylo Xyloto tour.
Absolute Radio will take you there as Geoff Lloyd packs up his headphones and heads backstage at the Emirates for this not-to-be-missed one-off Coldplay Hometime Show Special.
Geoff has been given exclusive access to the band and will be chatting to them just moments before they step on stage, after which we will broadcast the entire set live and uninterrupted.
This is the latest in a long line of spectacular live music events we have hosted and comes just weeks after Kasabian performed a now legendary set for us at a secret location in Soho.
Geoff Lloyd’s backstage Coldplay Hometime Special will be broadcast live on Absolute Radio from 5pm on Friday June 1st.
Coldplay’s set – completely live and interrupted from the Emirates Stadium will follow at 9pm.
At 11pm there will be an Absolute Radio 00s special hosted by Pete Donaldson featuring some of Coldplay’s classic tracks.
Highlights from the set will also be broadcast the following week when Geoff Lloyd fills in for Christian O’Connell on the Breakfast Show and Geoff’s interview will also be available to watch in full on absoluteradio.co.uk.
Read what others are saying about this here.
When I started in radio in 1990 there were only two sets of numbers that most of us tracked, the quarterly Rajar results and the monthly sales figures. Those of us who were at bigger stations also had regular music research and the occasional bespoke perceptual study to pour over. Since then, we’ve all built websites, most of us have started broadcasting on digital platforms and a lot of us have built mobile apps. Each development has generated a ton more information, much of it very useful if analysed properly.
Each week we compile over 900 different data points from dozens of sources for our various KPI reports and, as you’d imagine, doing it all manually is rather time-consuming. Fortunately, we have a very talented team of developers on the second floor here in Absolute Towers who have built a system called Kipper that gathers and stores a fair amount of the data. It saves hours by delving into the various APIs and scraping a variety of sites. We now have all our weekly site stats compiled in one place together with our online streaming stats, our Twitter and Facebook stats, our app installs and usage stats plus a smattering of other useful numbers such as the amount of calls and texts we received in the studio and how many tracks we played last week.
Analysing the data helps evaluate the effects or progress of new activity and spot any problems early on. It also gives us a far better understanding of our listeners and how they engage with us. It tells us which sites they’re visiting, which apps they’re using, which podcasts they’re downloading and which videos they’re watching. Part of our business plan is to build these areas of our business and as the old saying goes “if you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”
The playlist is out now.
Coldplay – Princess Of China
The fourth single from the ‘Xylo Myloto’ album – ‘Princess of China’ features Rihanna. The Coldplay World Tour hits the UK this summer with huge stadium dates at Coventry Ricoh Arena (May 29th), London Emirates (June 1st, 2nd & 4th) and Sunderland Stadium of Light (June 9th & 10th).
The Black Keys – Dead And Gone
Third single from the band’s brilliant ‘El Camino’ album – their most successful yet. Following their Alexandra Palace shows earlier in the year, The Black Keys are back in the UK for Reading and Leeds festivals in August.
Kaiser Chiefs – On The Run
One of two new tracks on ‘Souvenir: The Singles 2004-2012’. The career-spanning collection, released 4th June, contains all the hits that made Kaiser Chiefs one of the biggest Singles bands in the UK in the last 10 years. They play T-In-The-Park in July and Reading/Leeds in August.
Temper Trap’s ‘Need Your Love’ moves up to B-list.
We’re very proud to announce that we’ve been nominated for three awards at the second annual Radio Ink Digital Awards, which will be presented in Santa Clara, California, next month. The Awards come at the end of the 2012 Convergence Conference, which is described not as a radio conference, but as “an internet conference for radio”.
Our Instream Targeted Advertising is up for ‘Best Client-Focused Digital Solution’, the 80s Remixer App is in the running for ‘Best Radio App’, and Live Scores Football Data is nominated for Most Original Database/Digital Marketing Campaign. Congratulations to everyone involved in the entries!
The judges had this to say about Absolute Radio’s work in the last year:
“Your innovative approach in the use of digital platforms demonstrate the vision and creativity radio needs to continue to grow, and we applaud your efforts.”
See the full list of nominees and find out more about the awards here.
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