By Kim Cretors
kcretors@uga.edu
Razor-sharp coverage of the 2000 presidential campaign from an unlikely source, a freshman comedy focusing on a loving but quirky American family, and an invaluable public service effort on colon cancer are among the 34 winners of the 60th annual Peabody Awards. Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with John Stewart: Indecision 2000 joined Fox’s Malcolm in the Middle and “Confronting Colon Cancer” reported by NBC Today co-anchor Katie Couric--along with repeat winners The West Wing and The Sopranos--on the list of this year’s Peabody recipients.
The award winners, chosen from nearly 1,100 entries, were announced last week by the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, which has administered the awards program since its inception in 1940. The awards will be presented at a May 21 luncheon at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. Christiane Amanpour, chief international correspondent for CNN and contributing correspondent for CBS’s 60 Minutes, will host this year’s awards ceremony.
The Peabody Board also recognized award-winning television news director H. Martin Haag. “Marty is an industry icon, who’s helped establish high ethical standards and quality reporting at both local and network news levels,” said Louise Benjamin, interim director of the Peabody Awards. She added that two of last year’s winners, The Sopranos and The West Wing, were again awarded Peabodys. “The only other program to win two years in a row was Northern Exposure in the early 1990s,” she said.
In addition to the darkly humorous family drama The Sopranos--which has received a Peabody in both its seasons on the air--other HBO programs honored this year include the documentary King Gimp; “Ali-Frazier 1: One Nation . . . Divisible,” produced by HBO Sports; “Cancer: Evolution to Revolution”; and the six-hour miniseries The Corner, based on the non-fiction book of the same name.
The West Wing, after winning in its first season, also picked up a Peabody Award in its sophomore season. The CBS drama Sharing the Secret was an important piece of storytelling based on the complexities of bulimia, and A&E dramatized in an engaging fashion George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware in The Crossing.
News reporting by networks and local stations occupy several places on the winners list. KHOU-TV/Houston’s investigative report, “Treading on Danger?” broke the story of Firestone tires and tread separation; on CBS, “60 Minutes II: Death by Denial” examined the AIDS pandemic in Africa and 48 Hours documented the story of the deaths of six firefighters in “Heroes Under Fire”; and a 15-month investigation of denied medical claims was the focus of the Dateline NBC report “The Paper Chase.”
Programs airing on public television and public radio are many of this year’s winners. The Public Broadcasting System presented four winning programs produced by WGBH-TV in Boston: the documentary Building Big; the children’s show Arthur; Frontline: Drug Wars; and Exxon/Mobile Masterpiece Theatre’s re-telling of the Dickens classic David Copperfield. Thirteen/WNET’s take on reality television, 1900 House; P.O.V.’s meditation on war in Regret to Inform; the biography Napoleon, produced by David Grubin Productions; School Sleuth: The Case of an Excellent School; and Hearts and Minds, a program produced by Idaho Public Television on teens and mental illness, make up the rest of the PBS honorees.
Witness to an Execution, produced by Sound Portraits Productions (the independent company’s third Peabody Award); “The NPR 100,” which highlighted the 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century; and Minnesota Public Radio’s long-running financial news program Marketplace make up the Peabody radio winners, all of which aired on public radio.
Documentary winners included CNN’s look at the Sierra Leone civil war, WJXT-TV/Jacksonville’s report on domestic violence, and the Discovery Channel’s Walking with Dinosaurs.
The Peabodys are given solely on the basis of merit, rather than within designated categories. Judging is done by a 15-person national advisory board consisting of TV critics, broadcast and cable industry executives, scholars and experts in culture and fine arts. Judges are under no restrictions on the number of annual winners that may be selected.
All entries become a permanent part of the Peabody Archive in the UGA Libraries. The collection is one of the nation’s oldest, largest and most respected moving-image archives. |
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