Top award for Radio Falmer
UNIVERSITY Radio Falmer has won the prestigious BBC Radio 1 Student Radio Award for best radio station in the UK and best music presenter.
URF was shortlisted for five awards, including best entertainment feature, best contemporary music programme and best factual programme. The awards were presented at Oxford Brookes University last Saturday.
(Four of the team from l-r: Steve Austins, Quentin North, Alison Hulme and Gavin Kingsley. Photo: Brighton and Hove Leader.)
As well as attaining the prestige of being the best in the UK, URF will produce an hour long programme on Radio 1 with the help of the station's production team and an estimated audience of one million. Best music presenter Alison Hulme will be co-hosting either an Evening Session with Steve Lamacq or one of Mary Ann Hobbs' evening shows.
Station manager Dipesh Mesuria said that winning proved that URF is a force to be reckoned with. "Our programmer (Steve Austins) has been reshaping the schedules to improve quality for our listeners. We won because students run the station and we appeal to our student roots by excluding playlists and commercials."
The Radio Falmer team hope to fit a satellite dish in the near future which will broadcast URF at other universities as a sustaining service. These broadcasts will be transmitted on other university radio frequencies at off-peak times.
University Radio Falmer broadcasts on 999 AM from 8am to 2am every day.