The Michigan Association of Broadcasters (MAB) is announcing the winners of their annual Broadcast Excellence Awards during Awards Week, this Monday through Friday, March 22 – 26, 2021.
Today, Wednesday, March 24th, Michigan Radio received notice that the station had won in the following categories:
Feature/Use of Medium – Michigan Radio received a Merit Award for Mosques Go Virtual During COVID-19 Ramadan, a story by Nargis Rahman about how Muslims were dealing with worship and religious traditions during Ramadan and the pandemic.
Marketing Materials & Promos – Michigan Radio received two awards, a Merit Award for Covering Change and a Best Award for Online Listening.
Membership Appeal – Michigan Radio won both awards in this category, a Merit Award for Fall Membership 2020 and a Best Award for Behind the Scenes: Winter 2020. These are promotional messages that air during membership drives appealing for listener support.
Use of New Media – Again, Michigan Radio won both awards in this category. The Stateside podcast, a daily podcast new in 2020 designed to feature the top stories from the daily Stateside talk show won a Merit Award, while Kids These Days, received a Best Award. Kids These Days is a podcast hosted by teens, about teens, giving an unfiltered look into teenage life and a collaborative effort between Michigan Radio and Community High School in Ann Arbor.
Earlier this week, Michigan Radio received awards in the following categories: Mini-Documentary or Series, Musical Programming and Hard News & Current Events Story. Details on these awards are available here.
Each weekday, the Best and Merit winners are being announced in several categories. At the end of the week, the final awards and Station of the Year will be unveiled. In years past, the winners of all categories and Station of the Year were announced at the annual banquet; however, due to the pandemic, the MAB created Awards Week with all awards being presented virtually. Cynthia Canty, the former host of Michigan Radio’s Stateside show, is hosting the Broadcast Excellence Award Week announcements.
The Broadcast Excellence Awards program recognizes outstanding achievement in broadcasting by commercial and public television and radio stations in Michigan each year. All 2020 entries aired between January 1 and December 31, 2020. Michigan Radio competes in Group 2 of the Public Radio Broadcast Excellence Award Divisions, which is for stations with more than $2 million budget.
