BBC Awards and Album Of The Year update

After seven years BBC Radio 3 are no longer running the BBC Awards For World Music. This means that the fRoots Critics Poll Album Of The Year - established in 1986 and incorporated into the BBC Awards from 2001 - will take on much more significance this year.

fRoots (who developed the BBC Awards originally), and the other partners in the BBC Awards - Songlines, Serious, Womex, Rough Guides and others - have been discussing a replacement scheme, but it was already too far into this year to be able to develop anything major to reflect 2008. So with its huge, established international nominating panel, and support committed from all the past partners (including the BBC), this year at least the fRoots Album Of The Year will be the standard bearer for the whole scene. It's particularly good that everybody is pulling behind it in these difficult times.

Polling will run from November 4th to 14th, and the top placings and winners will be exclusively discussed and announced by Charlie Gillett and others on BBC Radio 3's World On 3 on Friday 5th December, prior to being the major focus of fRoots' Jan/Feb double issue published shortly afterwards.

Discussions are well progressed with major UK on-line and traditional retailers to give the top nominees the biggest bang possible. More news as it evolves.

See all the past winners since 1986 at www.frootsmag.com/pollwinners

• article submitted by: Ian Anderson, fRoots Magazine