The Community Radio Awards have been setup to celebrate community radio and all the hard work and time that the volunteers involved in community radio put into their stations, shows and communities.
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The awards are a judge led process, with judges drawn from the community radio sector, academics, other radio/associated areas and the 3rd sector.
The awards are run not for profit completely independent of any organisation or association.
It’s being run by a team of volunteers with experience of radio in all forms and sectors from Student, Community to the BBC and Commercial.
Last year, the award ceremony was held only online, but this year was held in Coventry on the 23rd October at the Coventry Transport Museum.
Award Nomination
Local community radio station Susy Radio was shortlisted in the annual national Community Radio Awards 2021.
Susy has received one award previously which was last year, winning Bronze for ‘Outside Broadcast/Live Event’ of the year. This year, five submissions were made by Susy for different categories resulting in one shortlisted entry.
This has been whittled down from more than 430 entries from stations from every corner of the UK.
The station had picked up a nomination in the name of Geoff Rogers in the ‘Volunteer of the Year’ category for his work in helping establish community radio for the East Surrey and North Sussex community beginning in 1994, and his continued active involvement in the service ever since.
The winners were revealed in a ceremony at the Coventry Transport Museum, in partnership with Coventry UK City of Culture.
Alan French, Station Chairman, said: “We are delighted to have been recognised among a large number of other stations doing great work across the UK.”
Martin Steers, awards chair, said: “As face to face events resumes, it’s great to get together and celebrate the hard work of the last 18 months. Many stations have further cemented their essential community role in this time, and it is great to reflect.”
“It is clear to see from this, that passionate presenters, volunteers, and staff are really there for their audiences.”
Website: https://communityradioawards.org.uk/
Profile of Geoff Rogers
Geoff Rogers was part of the team which launched Susy Radio on FM on 15th July 2012 as a fully licensed community radio station. He has remained a presenter and Director ever since.
For the wider East Surrey and North Sussex community, his work contributed to providing a radio service for the local area where there had previously been a gap. He was not only a key player in the initial set up but has maintained the service overseeing the licence renewal.
In June 2019, following a year of discussion and applications submitted, Susy Radio was granted a transmitter power increase by Ofcom resulting from Geoff’s application which he made in liaison with Susy Radio’s engineers. As a result of the successful application, Susy Radio is now transmitting at 100 Watts representing a doubling of transmitted power, or 3 Decibel lift.
Geoff has recently updated the Susy Radio playout system using his knowledge in IT to upgrade the PCs in both studios and to train the presenters on the updated system. Some were unsure of change but Geoff has helped train them with training videos and held Zoom training sessions during a time when the pandemic restrictions made face to face training difficult.
Geoff is the Programme Director at Susy which also includes continual maintenance of the presenter rota. This has been increasingly challenging over the last 18 months as he has been instrumental in devising a Covid-safe schedule for the presenters.
He has enabled many presenters to broadcast from home in order to comply with social distancing requirements and continue to maintain a ‘live’ programming sevice. He has spent many hours supporting presenters and talking them through the process of setting themselves up to broadcast remotely.
Geoff also looks after the station’s finances, does a lot of the sales negotiations and advertising and arranges the on air adverts.
Although now a delegated task, Geoff also used to spend many hours over many years training new presenters and the news team until they were ready to present unaided. His foundation has enabled others to take on the training using Geoff’s standards.
Although there is now a website manager at Susy Radio, Geoff has previously set up and maintained the station’s website. Geoff’s IT background also means he maintains the PCs and the IT side for Susy.
Assisted by his deputies, Geoff programmes the music to create the station sound for regular programmes and adjusts the programming according to current news events. This became evident following the death of the Duke of Edinburgh.
Finally, Geoff has also been known to present the occasional programme!
Some words from his colleagues:
“……Geoff Rogers goes beyond that giving more than 100% of his time, energy and belief without necessarily thinking of reward or recognition.
Outside of Susy Radio, Geoff has a busy life but has always been someone who cares about the people who operate on the station and will give up his time to help and assist any of them who need encouragement, help or support.” Alan French, Chairman Susy Radio
“Geoff is always just a phone call away and that is a wonderful safety net that I value as a presenter. Thanks Geoff.” Shan Robins, Volunteer Presenter
“I am in no doubt the role he plays is often a thankless one. Impeding on his life in so many ways. Geoff loves radio, and it shows. He is the one person bringing all the volunteers together and ensuring that for Sussex and Surrey Community radio lives on.” Si Clarke, Volunteer Presenter
Video credit: Neil Munday