Jonathan "Jonty" Usborne (born 17 July 1990) is a producer and

broadcast engineer Broadcast engineering or radio engineering is the field of electrical engineering, and now to some extent computer engineering and information technology, which deals with radio and television broadcasting. Audio engineering and RF engineering a ...

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...

, and writer for ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

'', noted for having won awards such as the Student Radio Award for Best Technical Achievement and the Radio Academy Award for Best Technical Innovation. He is the first university student to have won in a technical category at the Radio Academy Awards. , he is a

software engineer Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining software applications. It involves applying engineering principles and computer programming expertise to develop ...

for the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

and the chair of the

Student Radio Association The Student Radio Association (SRA) is a representative body which supports and acts on behalf of the UK student radio community, comprising radio stations that are associated with or linked to a place of education. It is a not-for-profit organ ...

. He also sits on the trustee board of the

Radio Academy The Radio Academy is a registered charity dedicated to "the encouragement, recognition and promotion of excellence in UK broadcasting and audio production". It was formed in 1983 and is run via a board of trustees, with a chair and a deputy chai ...

Life and career

Jonty Usborne at 2015 Radiodays Conference

Born in

Brussels Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) is a Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium#Regions, region of Belgium comprising #Municipalit ...

, raised in

Old Greenwich, Connecticut Old Greenwich is a coastal village in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 6,611. The town of Greenwich is one political and taxing body, but consists of several distinct sections or neig ...

, and educated at Haileybury & Imperial Service College, Usborne became involved in

student radio Campus radio (also known as college radio, university radio or student radio) is a type of radio station that is run by the students of a college, university or other educational institution. Programming may be exclusively created or produced ...

in 2009, after commencing studying

economics Economics () is a behavioral science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interac ...

at the

University of Bath The University of Bath is a public research university in Bath, England. Bath received its royal charter in 1966 as Bath University of Technology, along with a number of other institutions following the Robbins Report. Like the University ...

. After being elected in 2011 to the position of head of online media at University Radio Bath—the university's student radio station—he developed FRANCESCA, a station management system and console for the UK'
Radioplayer
application. Usborne submitted his system for consideration in the Best Technical Innovation category at the 2013 Student Radio Awards, and was awarded gold that November. The judges described his application as "a real innovation". The following year, Usborne developed Responsive Radio, a "new approach to broadcasting", which incorporated ReQuester, an application he had developed that provided feedback to radio presenters about the musical preferences of their listeners. He submitted Responsive Radio with the United Station Management application for consideration in the 2014 Radio Academy Awards. In May that year, Usborne became the first university student to win in a technical category at the Radio Academy Awards, when he received bronze in the Best Technical Innovation category, beating out competition from both

Global Radio Global Media & Entertainment Limited, trading as Global, is a British media company formed in 2007. It is the owner of the largest commercial radio company in Europe having expanded through a number of historical acquisitions, including Chrysal ...

and the

. The judges described the entry as "a great example of technical innovation creating listener benefit", saying that it was "particularly impressive" that it had been created by "a student station with presumably little resource". Responsive Radio and Unified Station Management were also nominated for the Arqiva TechCon Technical Excellence Award in September 2014. In November, Usborne won gold for Responsive Radio in the Best Technical Achievement category at the 2014 Student Radio Awards. In April 2014, Usborne was elected to the positions of station manager of University Radio Bath and deputy events officer of the Student Radio Association; the following month, he set up and ran the first fully- visualised edition of the Student Radio Chart Show. In October, Usborne was named as one of the Radio Academy's "30 Under 30" of the year. In March 2015, he spoke at that year's Radiodays Europe conference in Milan on the future of radio, and in May was elected to the position of chair of the Student Radio Association. In July he was elected to the trustee board of the Radio Academy, and in November was awarded gold for Best Technical Achievement for a third time at the 2015 Student Radio Awards. After graduating from Bath in June 2016, Usborne joined the media playout department at the BBC as a graduate software engineer, and began developing their online web media player.

Awards and accolades

References

External links

Jonty Usborne
at the

Jonty Usborne
at ''

'' * {{DEFAULTSORT:Usborne, Jonty Living people 1990 births Alumni of the University of Bath BBC people British software engineers English audio engineers The Independent people People educated at Haileybury and Imperial Service College People from Old Greenwich, Connecticut