Golden Mike Winners
The Radio and Television News Association of Southern California honored numerous broadcast stations in the area at their 66th Annual Golden Mike Awards held January 23rd at the Los Angeles Universal Hilton Hotel.
The Golden Mikes are presented annually by the RTNA, the non-profit group representing broadcast newsrooms in Los Angeles, San Diego, and all of the other markets from Fresno to the Mexican border. The group also coordinates pool coverage of major events and fights for broadcast coverage in courtrooms, and provides scholarships for the next generation of broadcast journalists.
The Golden Mike is Southern California’s most prestigious — and most coveted — broadcast journalism prize. What sets the Golden Mikes apart from other competitions is the Standard of Excellence: Unlike most awards contests in which winners are determined by selecting which entry is the “best” among all those submitted in each category, winners of the Golden Mike Awards must also meet the Standard … if the judges decide that no entry in a category meets this “Standard of Excellence”, then no award is given.
Awards are split by news department size, Division A being radio stations with six or more full-time news staff members and Division B consisting of stations with five or fewer full-time newspeople. Here are the 2016 winners, recognizing the accomplishments of 2015:
Best News Broadcast over 15 Minutes (Div. A): KNX (1070 AM) (B): No Award
Best News Broadcast Under 15 Minutes (A): KPCC (89.3 FM); (B): K-BEACH (88.1 FM HD3)
Best Sports Segment (A): KFWB (980 AM); (B): KVTA (1590 AM)
Best Traffic Report (A): KNX; (B): No Award
Best Sports Reporting (A): No Award; (B): KCLU (1340 AM, 88.3 FM)
Best Spot News Reporting (A): KFI (640 AM); (B): KCLU
Best Live Coverage of a News Story (A): KNX; (B) No Award
Best Documentary (One Division): KNX
Best News Public Affairs Program (A): KPCC; (B): K-BEACH (88.1 FM HD3)
Best News Reporting (A): KPCC; (B): KVPR/Fresno (89.3 FM)
Best News Reporting by a Radio Network or Content Syndicator (One Division): Westwood One
Best Hard News Reporting (One Division): KPCC
Best Feature News Series Reporting (One Division): KVPR
Best Investigative Reporting (A): KPCC; (B) No Award
Best Serious Feature Reporting less than one minute (One Division): KFI
Best Serious Feature Reporting one minute or longer (One Division): KPCC
Best Light Feature Reporting less than one minute (One Division): KFI
Best Light Feature Reporting one minute or longer (One Division): KPCC
Best News Special (A): KPCC; (B): No Award
Best Entertainment Reporting (A): KPCC; (B): KCLU
Best Business and Consumer Reporting (A): KNX; (B): KCLU
Best Government and Political Reporting (A): KPCC; (B): No Award
Best Medical and Science Reporting (A): No Award; (B): KCLU
Best Use of Sound (A): KPCC; (B): KCLU
Of note is K-BEACH, the student-run station out of Long Beach State, which broadcasts as a secondary HD channel on commercial public station KKJZ’s digital stream. That’s right … run by students under the direction of Danny Lemos, winning two Golden Mikes! Maybe there is a future in radio!
Holiday Ratings
The results are in: KOST (103.5 FM) owned the airwaves in Los Angeles during the December Holiday season which basically covered most of December. For the month, KOST was more than twice as popular as the second-highest station, with a 12.3 percent share of the audience compared to KBIG’s (104.3 FM) 4.7.
And you wonder why it starts to sound a little like Christmas earlier and earlier every year …
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