Bumper production year for Athena Media
Monday, December 15th, 2008 TweetIt has been a busy year, with lots of TV and radio shows flowing from Athena Media and as the year draws to a close, and we say thank you to all our clients and contributors, we’re taking a moment to catch our breath and re-cap. The first quarter of the year was dominated by the editing of our 8 x 30′ documentary series, Winning Women, on young women sports stars and athletes, which went out on Setanta Ireland from April and which is being repeated this week 15/16/17 December. The series began filming in mid 2007 but we spent the first 3 months of the year tied up in studio with the series with 8 weeks of offline editing - then online at Highwire post production. The series received great profile and reviews and we’re delighted to see that the star of one of the episodes, Katie Taylor, has gone from strength to strength and is the only woman athlete nominated for Sportsperson of the Year 2008. Katie’s edition, which explored her battle to gain acceptance for women’s boxing and her dream of winning the first Irish gold medal for boxing may be aired again soon on Setanta following its recent repeat on December 3rd to mark her world title win.
In February BBC Radio 4 broadcast our documentary ‘White Girl Running’ in its primetime 11am slot and the documentary was later picked up by RTE Digital Radio and broadcast on RTE Choice in early December.
By May, our radio documentary ‘The last Wake’ hits the airwaves on Newstalk 106 and was repeated again in July. The documentary traces the changing tradition of death and waking the dead in Ireland and crosses the country in a weave of audio story-telling. ‘The Last Wake’ was short listed for a PPI radio award in October.
From February onwards we were also busy making features for RTE’s Capital D series on RTE One Television. This year we tackled topics from the mushrooming of hair extension salons in Dublin, the Handel Festival, and a day of the life of Dublin airport, as well as a focus on recycling in the city, the use of pet dogs as volunteers in care centres and the resurgent interest in libraries in the city. Our producer-director Sarah Mulkerrins, now full-time with Setanta Sports, was the creative force behind much of our Capital D work in 2008.
On radio we also produced a six part arts series for RTE Lyric FM called ‘Women and Words’ on outstanding women writers from Anne Enright to Jennifer Johnston. This arts documentary series has been entered for the Celtic Film Festival radio awards next year. ‘Women and Words’ was presented by kay Sheehy and was broadcast from the end of August, across September and into October on RTE Lyric FM.
The second half of the year was dominated by our latest TV series - an RTE TV commission - for young people - called ‘Is It Just Me?’ . This 10 series began work in May and we filmed across July-October and completed post production in late November at Lotus Films in Sandymount. The series is now scheduled for January in RTE 2 (final dates to be confirmed). This series tells first person stories from young people who have come through hard times in their teenage years;from bullying to depression, eating disorders to coming out gay.
Athena Media has also completed another radio series for Newstalk 106 on urban development called ‘Urban Beauty, Urban Blight,’ . This 4 part series begins editing in January for broadcast in March/April on Newstalk. The company is now engaged in two new radio projects;
‘Tower Songs’ - a story about Ballymun and an arts/music project around regeneration - which will be broadcast in mid February on RTE Lyric FM, and a further series for Newstalk 106, with a sports theme, called ‘Field of Dreams’ which has just begun pre production.
With so much content and programming to show for the year its not hard for us to say this has clearly been our best year yet but we hope to match it in 2009 with lots of new ideas, shows and programmes.
If you have a story which you’d like us to tell - let us know on info@athenamedia.ie -
Thanks - and a Happy Christmas to everyone who has worked with us during the year and a big thank you to everyone who has helped us make the shows by sharing their stories and lives with us.
Hope you enjoyed watching and listening - and remember Winning Women goes out all this week on Setanta and keep an eye for ‘is it just me?’ on RTE 2 TTV coming up soon.
Helen at Athena Media dot ie