Irish radio show scoops international award
Millionaire, an episode of the weekly documentary series Flux on RTÉ Radio 1,won the Best Documentary Award at the Third Coast International Audio Festivalin Chicago.
The documentary, produced by Ronan Kelly, tells the story of Dublin man Roger Dowds’ struggle to enter the television quiz show Who Wants To Be AMillionaire. After overcoming his shyness, Dowds went on to win IR£250,000 (€317,000).
Ana Leddy, head of RTÉ Radio 1, said: “Millionaire reflected how a skilful radio producer such as Ronan Kelly can take an apparently ordinary story and unravel it to give radio listeners a rare insight into the thoughts, feelings and motivations of a very shy quiz contestant.”
The chair of the judging panel described the documentary as utterly compelling as Kelly was given his award at the ceremony in Chicago last Friday.
Kelly, who is a producer with RTÉ Radio 1 where he has worked for 16 years,studied communications before going on to begin his career as a commercial videoproducer.
He worked as an intern for Channel 13 in New York and for CNN in Atlanta before coming back to Ireland to resume his career.
More than 258 works from 12 different countries were submitted to the competition.
The 24-judge panel gathered in Chicago in August to select the winningprogrammes for the Best Documentary, Best New Artist and Radio Impact awards.
