Kirsty Young and Desert Island Discs, which she presents on Radio 4, have both been nominated for prizes in the radio section of this year’s Broadcasting Press Guild Awards.
In the radio broadcaster category, Kirsty will compete with Eddie Mair (PM, Radio 4) and Ed Stourton (Today, Iconoclasts, A River Runs Through It, The World At One, The World This Weekend, all Radio 4).
In the radio programme category, Desert Island Discs is up against A History of Private Life (Radio 4), The Jeremy Vine Show (Radio 2) and Night Waves (Radio 3)
The highly-prized BPG awards are selected by journalists who write about TV and radio – correspondents, critics and previewers. Previous winners of the Radio Broadcaster award include Sue Lawley, Alistair Cook, Sir Terry Wogan, Jonathan Ross, Evan Davis, Simon Mayo, Sean Rafferty, Sandi Toksvig, Michael Buerk and Ray Moore.
The winners will be announced at the BPG Awards lunch at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane on Friday March 26th, 2010, together with the television awards, the Innovation Award and the Harvey Lee Award for outstanding contribution to broadcasting. Winners will be informed in advance and places at the lunch are by invitation only.
The BPG Awards lunch has a new sponsor this year – Dave, the “home of witty banter”, one of ten channels broadcast by leading multi-channel operator UKTV: http://www.joindave.co.uk <http://www.joindave.co.uk/> . The invitation-only event will be attended by the winners and leading broadcasting executives.
Nominations for the BPG television awards were announced on Thursday February 18th and can be seen on the BPG website.
The Broadcasting Press Guild was founded in 1974 and has more than a hundred 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. Details of previous BPG Awards winners can be found at http://www.broadcastingpressguild.org/awards.
Further information from Torin Douglas, BPG, 020 8624 9052
