Awards for radio

Press, 29 March 1979, Page 4

Awards for radio

PA Wellington| The veteran broadcaster, 1 John Gordon, who will be 81 on April 9, was given a spe-; cial award for outstandingl contribution to radio in the Radio New Zealand award presentations yesterday. The award presentation was broadcast over 47 stations. Peter Latham, formerly of the National Programme’s “All Things Considered,” was named broadcasting personality of the year. Awards went to Merv Smith of IZB, in the metropolitan section and to Phil Langdon, of 2ZA Palmerston North in the provincial section, as disc jockeys of the year. Colin Lehmann, now based in Wellington, won the best commercial newscaster

award, and the award for outstanding journalism went to the Invercargill newsroom for its coverage of the Southland floods last year.

The Dave Inglis Memorial Trophy was given to an Auckland journalist, Lesley Deverall.

I Peter Don, of Christ- ' church, and Chris Muirhead , of Tauranga, were awarded the best commercial pro-; .gramme director awards for ; metropolitan and provincial : areas. Radio New Zealand’s Wa-; nganui station, 2ZW, won a community project award or its “Good Health ’7B” promotion. The award for best factual spoken programme broadcast on the commercial network went to Pam Carson, of the continuing education unit, for the “On the Way to Reading” series. Earlier this year the top commercial award went to a Hamilton copywriter, Adrienne Sampson. Three National Programme

features won awards: “Festival Fare,” produced by Tony English and written and presented by Bill Leathwick,

was judged “best New Zea-land-produced musical programme”; the producer of

I “Spectrum,” Jack Perkins won the “best factual spo[ken programme — 30 min;utes and under” for noncommercial broadcast award i with “Julie’s Story”; and the best entertainment programme award went to '“Summer Pops ’7B” with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, produced by Kevin 01 iff. Gordon Dryland’s play, “Think of Africa,” which was produced by Gilbert Goldie, was judged to be best drama of 1978. The Concert Programme feature to mark women’s suffrage, “A Woman’s Place is Everywhere,” produced

and written by Lynn Alexander, was awarded the best factual spoken programme award in the non-commercial category for programmes of an hour or more. A commentator, John Howson, won the prize for best sports broadcast for his commentary on the New Zealand v. Scotland rugby match in Britain last year. Michael Grafton-Green won the best technical production award with a colleague, Robert Hagen, for “Makarokosmos for Piano.”

The final judging in all categories was done by people from outside Radio New Zealand.