DAN KELLY’S THREE-PEAT

APRIL 26, 2015, HOLLYWOOD, CA— Dan Kelly, Creative Services Director of WPLJ and NASH-FM New York, took home the title of World’s Best Imager as he continued his three-time winning streak at the 2015 Iron Imager Finals on Friday, April 24, at the All Access Worldwide Radio Summit at the Roosevelt Hotel Hollywood. Iron Imager is a head-to-head live audio imaging competition presented annually by Benztown, an international radio imaging, production library, programming, jingles and voice-over services company. Benztown was also honored at the All Access Industry Awards Luncheon Friday as the Radio Industry’s Voice-Over/Imaging/Production of the Year Award for their contributions to the radio industry. Kelly faced off on Thursday against challenger Sean Galbraith, Imaging Producer of Z1035 (CIDCFM – Toronto) and Energy 106 (CHWE – Winnipeg), competing for the coveted title of World’s Best Imager. Iron Imager is the first and only competition of its kind. Justin Case, Director of Programming and Imaging for Benztown, awarded the championship belt to Kelly at the Westwood One Awards Luncheon, hosted by Zach Sang of Zach Sang & the Gang.

Galbraith and Kelly demonstrated their world-class imaging skills by producing an original 60-second Station ID for a format unannounced until the day of the competition. This year’s format was Classic Hip-Hop. Kelly and Galbraith used elements from one of Benztown’s 20 production libraries and an original script created by the Benztown team. Legendary voiceover talent, Joe Cipriano, emceed the Iron Imager competition.

Benztown is donating an honorarium to each of the four Iron Imager judges’ charities of choice. Benztown added a new wrinkle to the judging this year: The “fifth” judge was the readers of Benztown’s imaging blog (http://blog.benztown.com/imaging/), who voted online.

Judges for 2015 Iron Imager were:

Dom Nero, Imaging Director/Hot 97 (Emmis)

Charity: Music box. musicboxcc.com

Steve Jones, VP of Programming, Newcap Media

Charity: Canadian Diabetes Association https://www.diabetes.ca/

Justin Chase, VP/Programming, Beasley Broadcast Group

Charity: Children’s Miracle Network http://childrensmiraclenetworkhospitals.org/

Name: Rob Cressman, SVP Programming, iHeartMedia/Indianapolis

Charity: Best Friends Animal Society. (org.)

Dave “Chachi” Denes, Benztown President, said: “The 2015 Iron Imager competition was truly one for the books! It was a thrill to see Dan Kelly walk away with this impressive three-peat, cementing his position as the World’s Best Imager. We are proud to highlight the talents of these two professional audio imagers, and Sean Galbraith was a formidable challenger. We were also incredibly honored to have four esteemed programming professionals as judges for this year’s finals round. We thank everyone for their participation and congratulate Dan and Sean for setting the bar for the highest quality imaging.”

Kelly said: “I’m really pumped about getting the third Iron Imager title in a row! It’s always fun and challenging, but this was by far the most challenging yet. We had a more freeform script and many music choices. We had to import all the elements, listen to the voiceover, decide what lines we’d use, pick songs, artist IDs, listeners… all in one hour, while giving it some style. It was HARD. But lots of fun! My challenger, Sean Galbraith, is a great producer and great guy. Glad I got a chance to meet him. Thanks to Chachi, Andy, Masa, Chris, Justin, Kevin, Bonnie, Syd, Shane and everybody at Benztown for the opportunity… and for letting us imaging guys have a little fun at the convention! We’ll see what next year holds. Till then, the belt goes back on top of my equipment rack at work to be on display!”