AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

peabody.uga.edu

Athens, Ga. – Thirty-five recipients of the 67th Annual Peabody Awards were announced today by the University of Georgia`s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. The winners, chosen by the Peabody board as the best in electronic media for 2007, were named in a ceremony in the Peabody Gallery on the UGA campus.

The latest Peabody recipients reflect great diversity in content, genre and source of origination. Recipients included The Colbert Report, Comedy Central`s cable-news satire, and A Journey Across Afghanistan: Opium and Roses, a documentary from Bulgaria`s Balkan News Corporation (bTV). Whole Lotta Shakin, the Texas Heritage Music Foundation`s rollicking public-radio series chronicling the 1950s heyday of rockabilly music received the award, as did Univision`s Ya Es Hora, a public-service campaign that taught legal aliens how to apply for American citizenship.

Peabodys went to Wounds of War – The Long Road Home for Our Nation`s Veterans, a series of moving reports by ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff, himself a recovering Iraq War casualty, about the struggles of veterans dealing with severe war injuries and stress. CBS News Sunday Morning: The Way Home captured a Peabody for Kimberly Dozier`s powerful piece about two women veterans who lost limbs in Iraq. Like Woodruff, Dozier survived a near-fatal attack while on assignment in Iraq. Another CBS News series, 60 Minutes, was awarded a Peabody for The Killings in Haditha, a Scott Pelley report that questioned the conventional wisdom about the worst single killing of civilians by U.S. soldiers since Vietnam.

Discovery`s Planet Earth, a majestic use of HDTV technology showcasing natural wonders of the world, was honored, as was Independent Lens for Billy Strayhorn: Lush Life, an expansive portrait of Duke Ellington`s musical collaborator. NATURE: Silence of the Bees, an inquiry into the unsettling decline in the world`s honeybee population from Thirteen/WNET, and WGBH-Boston`s Design Squad, an engineering competition for young people, further indicate the variety of this year`s recipients.

The entertainment series selected included 30 Rock, Tina Fey`s hilarious send-up of TV sketch shows and her own network, NBC; and Project Runway, Bravo`s fashion-designer competition. Peabodys also went to Mad Men, AMC`s richly detailed and evocative drama set in the world of New York advertising in the early 1960s, and Dexter, Showtime`s dark, challenging drama about a serial killer who preys on other sociopaths. …more