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| Wednesday, March 31, 1999 WRITER: Sharron Hannon, UGA News Service, 706/542-1024, shannon@uga.edu CONTACTS: Barry Sherman, Peabody Awards director, 706/542-3787, bsherman@uga.edu 58th ANNUAL PEABODY AWARDS ANNOUNCED FOR BROADCAST AND CABLE EXCELLENCE ATHENS, Ga. -- Two prime-time series from David E. Kelley Productions -- FOX’s "Ally McBeal" and ABC’s "The Practice" -- along with a host of documentaries on subjects ranging from the Cold War to race relations, and international news reports from veteran correspondents Christiane Amanpour and Charlayne Hunter-Gault are among the winners of the 58th annual George Foster Peabody Awards, considered the broadcast and cable industry’s most prestigious prize. Thirty-three awards, chosen from nearly 1,300 entries, were announced today by the University of Georgia’s Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, which has administered the Peabody Awards program since its inception in 1940. The awards will be presented at a May 17 ceremony at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. Personal Peabody Awards will be presented this year to Linda Ellerbee for her work on Nickelodeon’s "Nick News," to Jac Venza, the driving force behind the "Great Performances" series from Thirteen/WNET-TV in New York, and to Robert Halmi Sr., chairman of Hallmark Entertainment. Episodes of two long-running series also received awards: the "Raging Bulls" episode of ABC’s "NYPD Blue," which highlighted racial tensions between two of the show’s main characters, and the final episode of HBO’s "The Larry Sanders Show," a send-up of all TV finales. Both series have won previous Peabody Awards: "NYPD Blue" in 1996 and "The Larry Sanders Show" in 1993. Perennial Peabody winner WGBH-TV in Boston collected six awards this year: for "Africans in America: America’s Journey Through Slavery," for two shows in "The American Experience" series ("Riding the Rails" and "America 1900"), for the Mobil Masterpiece Theatre production of "King Lear" and for a FRONTLINE documentary with Bill Moyers on the 1996 campaign finance scandals. The station also shared an award with the BBC for a documentary on genocide in Rwanda. National Public Radio collected three of the four radio awards given this year: for a documentary on Paul Robeson, for the "Performance Today" series and for Charlayne Hunter-Gault’s reporting from Africa. Hunter-Gault won a 1985 Peabody for her series "Apartheid’s People" when she was a correspondent with the "MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour." The other radio award went to WHAS in Louisville, Ky., for a documentary on a local organization that ministers to AIDS and HIV-infected women and their families. Three local commercial TV stations won awards this year: KTVX-TV in Salt Lake City for investigative work by reporter Chris Vanocur that uncovered the Olympic bribery scandal; KRON-TV in San Francisco for a multi-part series, "About Race"; and WANE-TV in Fort Wayne, Ind., for a rare glimpse into the realities of pediatric organ donation, which follows the family of an 11-year-old boy killed while riding his bike. Peabody Awards went to three international entries: "The Human Body" and "When Good Men Do Nothing," about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, both from the BBC; and "The Bear," a whimsical animated feature from Channel 4, London. CNN’s 24-episode documentary "The Cold War" is the first Peabody winner to make extensive use of an Internet site. CNN.com/ColdWar includes interactive and archival material available only online and has been accessed by people around the world. "Once again the Peabody Award winners demonstrate the diversity, richness and sheer excellence of radio and television, and prove that despite its well-publicized problems, our system -- which combines the elements of free speech and free enterprise -- is the best in the world," said Peabody Awards Director Barry Sherman. The Peabodys differ from other industry awards because they are given solely on the basis of merit, rather than within designated categories. Judges are under no restrictions on the number of annual winners. Judging is done by the 15-person Peabody National Advisory Board that meets at the University of Georgia annually for intensive deliberations. Board members include TV critics, broadcast and cable industry executives, and experts in culture and fine arts. All entries become a permanent part of the Peabody Archive in the University of Georgia Libraries. The collection is one of the nation’s oldest, largest and most respected moving-image archives. ## NOTE: A complete list of award winners, with citations from the judges, follows. Digital images of the Peabody Award are available from University Communications by calling 706/542-8085 or can be accessed directly at ftp://ftp.alumni.uga.edu/pub/Photo/File/. The file name is peabody.jpg. Additional material is available on the Peabody Web site at www.peabody.uga.edu.
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