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Leopold Blooms!

The winners of the 2008 New Zealand Radio Awards were announced at a function in Auckland on Saturday May 3, and our own Leopold Bloom (World of Leopold Bloom - fortnightly on Monday evenings) took out the prize for the Best Ethnic and Access Music Programme for his series 'Sounds of the Planet: Womad NZ 2007'.

Leopold has been a dedicated programme maker on community radio in Nelson for more than 15 years, and this is the first time he has submitted an entry for the annual awards. It's a well deserved accollade for his efforts. We're very proud of his achievement. For Leopold's acceptance speech click here. And to hear a sample of his award entry click here (it may take a couple of minutes to load, depending on your connection speed).

Access stations did very well in this year's awards. John Joyce of Coast Access Radio won Best Documentary or Feature Programme for Top 70 Jazz Hits; Luis Urzua & Mauricio Castro of Community Radio Hamilton won Best Non-English Ethic Programme for Candela; and Joanna Cobley from Plains FM took out Best Ethnic and Access Spoken Programme with The Museum Detective.

Quality radio is alive and well in this country - and being produced by people just like you, at community access stations like Fresh FM!

Mike Williams – Station Manager

NZ Radio Awards 2008

The Conference Centre theatre at Skycity in Auckland was the venue for this year's awards show and it was a slick and entertaining event from start to finish. As winners were announced in each category, a huge central graphics display ensured we all knew exactly who they were and where they came from!

Then as the recipients took centre stage, they were captured by video camera and shown in black & white (it was the 30th annual awards night) on two large side screens.

Leopold was, as you would expect from the big guy, very modest about his award. He says he was delighted just to have reached the finals and had no expectations of winning. What he hopes, he says, is that his experience will encourage other Fresh FM programme makers to realise that they too can (and should) take pride in what they do and enter the awards.