The truth is, there is no mystery!  The Awards were started as a commercial venture by Alan Zafer in 1983 and ZAFER Associates produce and direct the direct the Sony Radio Academy Awards with the continuing support of Sony UK.

The Awards are funded by entry fees, ticket sales and Sony’s sponsorship and organised by an industry-wide Committee whose key responsibilities include the review and introduction of the categories and the appointment of the judging panels.

Since 1998, the Chairman of the Committee has been chosen by the Radio Academy, in conjunction with ZAFER Associates and together they choose each year’s Committee.  Committee members are chosen not as representatives of their own employers, but because of their personal standing within the industry.

The 2010 Committee includes an independent producer, a senior executive from the RadioCentre, a Community Radio director, seven senior programmers from commercial radio and seven senior programmers from the BBC.  As well as its Chief Executive, the Committee also includes five Radio Academy Trustees.

Never fear!  We know how busy you all are, particularly at this time of year. That’s why we’ve released details of the 2010 Award Categories and Conditions of Entry a full week earlier than last year.

We’ve also extended the entry deadline by a further week to Wednesday 27th January 2010, which gives you almost 12 weeks to get your submissions together.

You’ll also notice that for those categories requiring a compilation of audio extracts from across the year, we’ve reduced the duration from 60 to 30 minutes. We hope this will make the entry process quicker and easier for you and help our judges to manage their listening time.

Please note that the broadcast date for Station of the Year categories is Wednesday 4th November 2009.  Make sure you save your output from this date if you are planning to enter one of Station of the Year Awards.

This year, you’ll notice that there are TWO Breakfast Show Awards – one for stations with a TSA of under 10 million and the other for Stations with a TSA of 10 million and above.  Both are open to weekday or weekend breakfast shows, irrespective of format.

We’ve also revised the submission requirements for these two categories and you’ll now need to supply us with TWO SETS of AUDIO of up to 30 minutes each – the first, an example of output from WEDNESDAY 4th NOVEMBER 2009 and the second, a ‘best of’ compilation of 4 to 6 extracts from any dates of your choice.