Athens, Ga. – The George Foster Peabody Awards will screen the video of this year’s New York Peabody Awards presentation ceremony on Wednesday, Sept. 5, at 7 p.m. in Room 102 of the Student Learning Center. The presentation was taped June 4 in the grand ballroom of the Waldorf=Astoria Hotel, with nearly 1,000 recipients and guests in attendance and HBO/NBC sportscaster Bob Costas serving as emcee.
The screening is free and open to all, on campus and off, but students and faculty who served as preliminary judges of this year’s Peabody entries are especially encouraged to attend.
The video includes the opening “Tribute to Winners” montage, remarks by UGA President Michael F. Adams, Peabody Board Chair Meryl Marshall-Daniels, Peabody Director Horace Newcomb, and the individual citing of this year’s Peabody honorees. Those accepting Peabody medallions for work that debuted in the calendar year 2006 include Spike Lee, producer /director of When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, a documentary about Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans; Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence and star Zack Braff; and cartoonist Aaron McGruder, creator of The Boondocks. Other winning programs range from the entertainment series Friday Night Lights and Ugly Betty to the documentary Why We Fight, about the current state of what President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously dubbed America’s “military-industrial complex,” to The Three Amigos, animated public-service announcements aimed at stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS.
The Peabody Awards, established in 1940 and administered by UGA’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, are the oldest honor in television and radio. Today the Peabody recognizes distinguished achievement and meritorious public service by TV and radio stations, networks, producing organizations, individuals and the World Wide Web.
The Peabody competition is unique in that there are no categories for entry or nominations. After an initial round of evaluation and recommendation by committees composed of two faculty members and one student, the entries are judged by the 15-member Peabody Board, which includes television critics, media professionals, scholars 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. For more information about the Peabody Archive or the Peabody Awards, visit www.peabody.uga.edu.