Charlotte Green, who read her final news bulletin on BBC Radio 4 last month, has been shortlisted in the radio section of this year’s Broadcasting Press Guild Awards. The former newsreader and announcer is famous for her occasional giggles, as well as reading the Shipping Forecast and taking part in the News Quiz. She has been nominated as Radio Broadcaster of the Year, in recognition of her 25-year career at Radio 4. The judges said she would be much missed.
Charlotte will be up against Martha Kearney, who has presented Radio 4’s lunchtime news programme, The World At One, since 2007 and is a previous presenter of Woman’s Hour. The judges said she had been “consistently great”.
The third nominee for Radio Broadcaster of the Year is the Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker, whose shows – Wireless Nights on Radio 4 and Jarvis Cocker’s Sunday Service on BBC Radio 6 Music – were among the judges’ favourites.
The nominations for Radio Programme of the Year include Radio 4’s dramatisation of James Joyce’s Ulysses, marking Bloomsday, the day when the book’s events take place; the Radio 4 comedy series Cabin Pressure, which features Roger Allam and Benedict Cumberbatch (both shortlisted in the best actor category in this year’s BPG TV Awards); and Soul Music, the Radio 4 series about pieces of music.with a powerful emotional impact.
The fourth nomination is BBC Radio 3’s Words and Music, a sequence of classical music interspersed with well-loved – and less familiar – poems and prose read by leading actors. The judges described it as an “overlooked jewel” in the BBC’s crown.
The BPG awards are highly prized by programme-makers because they are selected independently, by journalists who write about TV and radio – correspondents, critics and previewers. Previous winners of the Radio Broadcaster award include Alistair Cook, Sir Terry Wogan, Eddie Mair, Sue Lawley, Jonathan Ross, Evan Davis, Simon Mayo, Sean Rafferty, Kirsty Young, and Graham Seed (Nigel Pargetter).
The winners will be announced next month at the BPG Awards lunch at One Whitehall Place on Thursday March 14th, 2013. The BPG television awards, the Innovation Award and the Harvey Lee Award for outstanding contribution to broadcasting will also be presented at the lunch. Winners are informed in advance and places at the lunch are by invitation only – but media organisations are invited to cover the ‘red carpet’ arrivals.
The BPG awards are sponsored by Discovery Channel, which champions intelligent entertainment. Discovery Networks UK has 12 channel brands in the UK covering factual, lifestyle and entertainment programming.
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The awards lunch will be attended by the winners, BPG members and leading broadcasting executives.
Nominations for the BPG television awards were announced last week and can be seen on the BPG website here:
The Broadcasting Press Guild was founded in 1974 and has more than 120 members – journalists who specialise in covering television, radio and the media. They include critics, previewers, media correspondents and feature writers from national newspapers, broadcasters and leading trade journals and websites
Further information from Torin Douglas, BPG, 07860 422992
