Awards
TO PEOPLE IN PUBLIC MEDIA
RALPH LOWELL AWARD
Gates received CPB's top award in public
TV. He's flanked by CPB Chair Chris Boskin
and President Patricia Harrison. (Photo: CPB.)
Professor and PBS star Henry Louis Gates is the latest recipient of CPB’s Ralph Lowell Award.
Gates was presented with the honor, pubTV's most prestigious, May 13 at the PBS Showcase in Baltimore.
His body of work for PBS includes Wonders of the African World, America Beyond the Color Line and Looking for Lincoln. He also hosted and executive produced African American Lives and African American Lives 2, popular series produced by New York’s WNET that trace the lineage of notable African-Americans.
Gates’s next project was previewed at PBS Showcase: Faces of America will follow the ancestry of two Jewish-Americans, two Arab-Americans, two Latino-Americans, two Asian-Americans, two West Indian-Americans, two Irish-Americans and an Italian-American.
Gates' contributions on and off the air “have made him one of America's greatest teachers,” said CPB Board Chair Chris Boskin, who presented the award.
“His knowledge, creativity and enthusiasm bring history alive for people of all ages and backgrounds."
The award is named for the philanthropist, banker and founder of the WGBH Educational Foundation. It honors an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to public television.
News release from CPB.
DAYTIME NATIONAL EMMYS
PBS’s Sesame Street, From the Top are nominated multiple times for Daytime Emmys.
PBS led all broadcast networks in the Daytime Emmy Award nominations announced May 14 by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. PBS has 56; ABC, 50; syndicated programming, 49; CBS, 30; and NBC, 20.
PubTV shows scoring the most nods were Sesame Street with 15 and From the Top at Carnegie Hall, five.
Sesame Street scored four out of five nominations for best performer in a children’s series, for Chris Knowings (who plays Chris Robinson), Kevin Clash (Elmo), Martin Robinson (Telly Monster) and Leslie Carrara-Rudolph (Abby Cadabby). Also, three of five tunes nominated for outstanding original song–children’s and animation were Sesame’s “Elmo’s Ducks,” “I Don’t Wanna be a Prince” and “The Addition Expedition.”
All the nominees in the new approaches–daytime children’s category were PBS shows: Artopia, Cyberchase and Sesame Street.
PBS also has three of the five shows recognized for writing in a children’s series: Sesame Street, Between the Lions and Fetch! With Ruff Ruffman.
Two technical categories were also strong for public TV. Three programs— Biz Kid$, Dragonfly TV and Gourmet’s Diary of a Foodie—were nominated for achievements in single camera editing. Nominees for achievements in single camera photography (film or electronic) are DragonflyTV, Equitrekking and This Old House.
Three of the programs receiving Daytime Emmy nods—Gourmet’s Diary of a Foodie, Simply Ming and Biz Kid$—are distributed by American Public Television, but the Academy counted the nominations in PBS’s total.
Sesame Street also will receive a previously announced special Lifetime Achievement Award for its 40 years of educational broadcasting. The award will be given at the ceremonies Aug. 30 at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles.
For a complete list of nominees, go here.
APRE NATIONAL ENGINEERING ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Dan Danko of Cincinnati Public Radio was cited with the National Engineering Achievement Award from the Association of Public Radio Engineers.
Danko, v.p. of engineering for the Cincinnati licensee, was honored by APRE at its April conference in Las Vegas. He oversees analog and digital services of WGUC and WVXU in Cincinnati and WMUB in Miami, Ohio. “Don has met every technical challenge we’ve thrown his way,” said CPR President Richard Eiswerth. He helped make WGUC the first HD Radio operator in the state and in 2006 the first surround-sound station in the country.
NFCB BADER AWARD
Community radio saluted attorney John Crigler for “unstinting advocacy” for the cause.
The board of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters gave the Washington-based communications lawyer its 2009 Bader Award during its Community Radio Conference April 2 in Portland, Ore. “John Crigler has made such vital contributions to community radio, and his level of commitment is truly unbelievable,” said NFCB Chair Janis Lane-Ewart. Crigler is a partner in the firm of Garvey Schubert Barer and author of NFCB’s Public Radio Legal Handbook.
The award is named for the late Michael Bader, a major legal advocate for community radio and a partner in the law firm of Haley, Bader & Potts, where Crigler also practiced. The firm has been combined with Garvey Schubert Barer.
NFCB VOLUNTEER OF THE YEAR
Candace McKenna was named NFCB’s Volunteer of the Year.
McKenna, a volunteer and former board president at KSER in Everett, Wash., for nine years, was applauded at the Community Radio Conference April 2. Fundraising, partnership-making and strategic planning led by McKenna helped KSER grow its services enormously and reach its potential, said Station Manager Bruce Wirth in a release. Past winners of the volunteer award include Bruce Silverman of KBOO in Portland and Sue Gerber of KRCL in Salt Lake City.
PTPA PROGRAMMER OF THE YEAR
Scott Dwyer was named Programmer of the Year by the Public Television Programmers Association at its annual meeting in Baltimore May 11.
Dwyer has been programmer at San Francisco’s KQED for 12 years, working on its digital channels and more recently KTEH 54.
He’s been in the public television system since 1981 and
with KQED since 1985. He also produces the popular short-film series ImageMakers on KQED.
PRRO AWARD
The public radio regional organizations honored NPR’s Ellen McDonnell with their 2009 PRRO Award.
Presented annually to “unrecognized and unsung heroes” of public radio, the award is for those who have “toiled ceaselessly to make our industry better, and who deserve recognition,” said Cleve Callison, president of Public Radio in Mid America, one of the four regional organizations representing public radio stations.
McDonnell, who was recently put in charge of all NPR news programs, was present at the creation of NPR’s Morning Edition in 1979 and has been a “guiding force behind the show” as it became public radio’s “most successful program,” Callison said. As its executive producer from 1998 to 2007, McDonnell oversaw its expansion to 24-hour staffing and the controversial 2004 change to a new format with two co-hosts anchoring from two coasts. Before her promotion this month, McDonnell was director of NPR programs.
“Stations are especially grateful that she has been an unflagging advocate for the Morning Edition Grad School Project, seeing it as an opportunity for both stations and her own staff to make the program better,” Callison said. McDonnell also was a strong advocate for a producer/editor residency project created through NPR’s Local News Initiative.
This year’s award was a 1948 Stromberg-Carlson radio featuring machine-age design and a built-in antenna.
The public radio regional organizations co-presenting the award also included California Public Radio, Eastern Region Public Media and Eastern States Public Radio.
EDITOR & PUBLISHER / MEDIAWEEK EPpy AWARD
American RadioWorks, the documentary series from American Public Media, won the 2009 EPpy Award for best radio-affiliated website.
Presented by Editor & Publisher and Mediaweek, the EPpy Awards recognize websites affiliated with print and electronic media. Judges evaluate entries on criteria such as design, ease of use, comprehensiveness and timeliness, and give special attention to the unique attributes of interactivity in each entry.
Compiled by Karen Everhart, Dru Sefton and colleagues. Send award announcements (complete lists, please, not a single winner) to
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Web page posted May 29, 2009
Copyright 2009 by Current LLC
