
Petersfield’s Shine Radio has been named as one of the top digital radio services in the UK in the Community Radio Awards.
The volunteer-run station collected the Silver prize at the national award ceremony on Saturday night in Coventry.
It’s a significant achievement for a radio station that only began broadcasting 24 hours a day last year after making its name through a series of local podcasts.
Community radio stations are not-for-profit organisations that focus on providing local services not available from commercial or national radio.
Petersfield’s Shine Radio is centred on the voices and stories of Petersfield people. It also supports the local creative community and provides a trusted source of local information.
Shine Radio producer and presenter Lucy Davies travelled from Petersfield to attend the awards ceremony and said:
“We were judged on identification and engagement of our audience and their needs, good quality programming, the benefits we bring to the community both on and off air and how we support and develop volunteers. I’m delighted we met these criteria and the prize is a great honour.”
Volunteering opportunities
The win comes as Petersfield’s Shine Radio is recruiting new volunteers to its local team.
The station has identified roles both on-air and behind the scenes. Training is provided by the project co-founders who include ITV news correspondent Richard Gaisford and the BBC’s Stephen Martin.
Anyone interested in joining this award-winning team can email team@shineradio.uk or call 01730 555 500.
What the judges said
I felt drawn into your community listening to your entry. Really talented and very professional sounding presenters. I especially loved the P pod being recorded from a different venue each week, an excellent way of getting out and meeting your community.
Loved all the idents, very professional and upbeat which also involved the voices of some of your community.
The dogs with jobs feature also stood out and the sound quality of your recordings and OB’s we’re excellent and Kate had great storytelling. I was hooked.
Really good to hear you’re creating your own news specific to Petersfield. Loved the news headlines with ‘Batman the Cat’ very entertaining, bit different and made me laugh. This news package was well put together with attention to detail with the sound effects.
Your audio entry was very well put together and I got a very good feel of your overall station. A very good mixture of entertainment, news and information at the heart of your community. Very Well Done.
Good local radio playing Petersfield back to Petersfield in an entertaining and engaging way. Jingle package appears to be self-generated and has great positivity to it.
The bookshop story went national and is related well here, the sheepdog piece also makes the most of outdoor recording.
Overall a good entry and thanks for letting me listen to it. Clearly a well-targeted and programmed offer. I wonder whether it’s a bit measured and over-produced .. there weren’t many moments of ‘live surprise’ in the compilation. But ultimately the attention-to-detail and production care going on here gives this underserved town – and the ‘Petersphere’ – a station to be proud of.
Definitely the strongest entry in terms of variety of programming and audio links. They’ve captured a strong, cross-selection of their output. Brilliant to see the devotion to create a truly localised service. Petersfield’s Shine Radio is a truly local radio station which serves the Petersfield community wonderfully well. PSR is exactly what community radio should be, a station at the heart of a small community, otherwise overlooked by larger stations. Petersphere is a great concept and the range of shows is an excellent example to all small stations.
PSR’s output is very professional and the audio submission is an enjoyable listen. Well done all.