mark occomore
Joined: 07 Dec 2006 Posts: 9955 Location: UK
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Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 5:29 pm Post subject: GMG Commissioning Documentrys |
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Village People: a programme on Smooth Radio will mark the group's 30th anniversary
Guardian Media Group Radio has commissioned 10 programmes as the first in a wave of productions financed by its £1m programming fund.
The shows include a six-part documentary Rolling River of Rock exploring the musical heritage along the route of the Mississippi for Smooth Radio, made by the independent company Smooth Operations, which has no links to the station.
Smooth Operations will also make a two-part audio portrait of the realities of war in the 21st century as told by serving soldiers in Afghanistan titled Blogs from the Bunkers. This will be broadcast across GMG Radio's network of 13 stations to mark Remembrance Sunday.
Another commission is the six-part Heroes Heroes to be made by the independent firm Wise Buddah. It features well-known entertainers sharing their personal admiration for each other's work in one-to-one conversational-style programmes. The hour-long shows will be broadcast on Smooth Radio in the autumn.
Independent UBC Media will make a series of three programmes marking the 30th anniversaries of three of the biggest pop phenomena of the 1970s.
Grease at 30, Can't Stop the Music - The Village People Story and When Saturday Night Fever Ruled the World will be broadcast on Smooth Radio in June and across the Real and Century networks later in the year.
The group programme director, John Simons, and his commissioning panel, which included former BBC Radio 2 controller Jim Moir, selected the 10 programmes after 300 submissions from independent production companies.
"This first raft of programmes will give listeners a feel for things to come and prove that creative and diverse programming can be just as at home on commercial radio as it is on the BBC," said the GMG Radio chief executive, John Myers.
"GMG is committed to providing listeners with new and compelling programming and, thanks to the support of the Scott Trust, we have chosen a fantastic array of programmes that we know will be enjoyed by our audience. This is only phase one of our commissioning process and we look forward to ordering more early in the summer."
The commissions, which will begin broadcast in June 2008, are beneficiaries of the £1m fund which is aimed at boosting creativity among independent producers and internet programme providers for GMG's range of Smooth, Real, Century and Rock Radio networks.
The cash injection, understood to be the biggest single investment in commercial radio programming, is also a shot across the bows of Radio 2, GMG's main market rival and the UK's market leader. The BBC station has the nation's largest audience of 12.8 million listeners.
GMG also owns the guardian.co.uk network of websites, which includes MediaGuardian.co.uk.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/apr/29/commercialradio.radio |
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