Paul Golder writes for the Brentwood Gazette

I’ve been looking back on the station’s performance and been trawling though a ton of statistics, as many of us do this time of year.

During 2020 we featured 571 interviews with 409 local organisations, charities, schools, musicians, artists and performers.

The vast majority of these since March were on the phone – and one good thing from 2020 for broadcasters was that we all discovered Zoom this year, which allows us to have interviews with multiple guests in different locations with a much higher audio quality than a phone line.

Many of our interviews inevitably talked about the adjustments caused by Covid-19 – enabling us to keep a broadcast stream of regular information about the changing situation in all walks of life.

We produced just over 6,000 hours of original programming – either live or recorded exclusively for the station. Once again every single hour was produced locally – we don’t broadcast syndicated generic shows which appear on other stations up and down the country.

We had regular chats on air with many local charities including Saint Francis Hospice, Kids Inspire, Haven House, Hopefield Animal Sanctuary, Healthwatch Essex and SNAP.

Phoenix FM also set up a regular Friday morning chat with senior members of Brentwood Borough Council, with Leader Chris Hossack and Chief Executive Jonathan Stephenson regularly appearing on air updating listeners.

We also had more than a smattering of celebrities from the worlds of sport and entertainment including Rick Wakeman, David Gower, Nigel Planer, Matt Goss, Stuart Pearce, Dave Lee Travis, Trevor Brooking and Alexander O’Neal.

We have a big team of over 50 volunteers who help to make programmes all year round and support the station’s activities and I’d like to thank everyone who has helped to keep Phoenix FM alive and kicking in our community this year. Here’s to a better 2021!