The winners of the 2009 Peabody Awards, announced Wednesday (3/31), include the ABC sitcom “Modern Family,” Fox network’s “Glee,” CBS’ “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson” and HBO’s “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.” Complete list of 2009 Peabody Award winners for broadcasting excellence in news and entertainment: “Modern Family” (ABC), Twentieth Century Fox Television in association with Levitan Lloyd Productions “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson: An Evening with Archbishop Desmond Tutu” (CBS), Worldwide Pants, Inc. “Noodle Road: Connecting Asia’s Kitchens” (KBS1 TV), Korean Broadcasting System “A Hidden America: Children of the Mountains” (ABC), ABC News SesameStreet.org, Sesame Workshop “BBC World News America: Unique Broadcast, Unique Perspective” (BBC America), BBC World News America, BBC America “The Cost of Dying” (CBS), CBS News 60 Minutes “Independent Lens: Between the Folds” (PBS), Green Fuse Films, ITVS “Glee” (FOX), Twentieth Century Fox Television “The OxyContin Express” (Current TV), Vanguard on Current TV npr.org, National Public Radio (www.npr.org) Diane Rehm, Personal Award, talk show now available to National Public Radio listeners after decades on Washington’s WAMU-FM “The Day that Lehman Died” (BBC World Service), a Goldhawk Essential Production/BBC World Service Production “In Treatment” (HBO), Leverage, Closest to the Hole Productions and Sheleg in association with HBO Entertainment “Inventing LA: The Chandlers and Their Times” (PBS), Peter Jones Productions “No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” (HBO), Mirage Enterprises and Cinechicks in association with The Weinstein Company, BBC and HBO Entertainment “Sabotaging the System” (CBS), CBS News 60 Minutes “Brick City” (Sundance Channel), Sundance Channel, Brick City TV LLC “Thrilla in Manila” (HBO), Darlow Smithson Production, HBO Sports, HBO Documentary Films “FRONTLINE: The Madoff Affair” (PBS), FRONTLINE, RAINmedia “I-Witness: Ambulansiyang de Paa” (GMA Network), GMA Network, Inc., Philippines “Independent Lens: The Order of Myths” (PBS), Folly River, Inc., Netpoint Productions, Lucky Hat Entertainment, ITVS “Hard Times” (OPB Radio), Oregon Public Broadcasting “Iran & the West”, Brook Lapping Productions for the BBC in association with National Geographic Channel, France 3, NHK, VPRO, SVT, RTBF, VRT, NRK, SRC/CBC, DRTV SBS, YLE, TVP and Press TV “Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson: Covering Afghanistan” (NPR), National Public Radio “The Great Textbook War” (West Virginia Public Broadcasting), Trey Kay Productions “Mind the Gap: Why Good Schools Are Failing Black Students” (KLCC Radio), Nancy Solomon “Endgame” (PBS), Daybreak/Channel 4/Target Entertainment, Presented on PBS/MASTERPIECE by WGBH Boston “Sichuan Earthquake: One Year On” (Now-Broadband TV News Channel), Now-TV News, Hong Kong “BART Shooting” (KTVU-TV), KTVU, Oakland, Calif. “American Masters: Jerome Robbins — Something to Dance About” (PBS), Thirteen/WNET “Chronicle: Paul’s Gift” (WYFF-TV), WYFF 4, Greenville, S.C. “Under Fire: Discrimination and Corruption in the Texas National Guard” (KHOU-TV), KHOU-TV, Houston, Tex., Belo, Inc. “Derrion Albert Beating” (WFLD-TV), FOX Chicago News: WFLD-TV and myfoxchicago.com “Where Giving Life Is a Death Sentence” (BBC America), BBC World News America, BBC America, BBC World News “Up in Smoke” (KCET-TV), KCET, Los Angeles
The awards recognize achievement and public service by TV and radio stations, networks, producing organizations, individuals and the Internet.
Other winners include the BBC’s dramatic reconstruction “The Day that Lehman Died” and National Public Radio’s Web site.
“To those who say all media content is the same, or presented from a single perspective, we offer this great range of material as a response,” said Horace Newcomb, director of the Peabody Awards, in a statement.
“Our selections demonstrate that great work available in 2009 varied widely and appealed to viewers and listeners with very different tastes, interests and concerns,” he said.
An award ceremony for the 69th annual Peabody Awards will be held May 17 in New York. It will be hosted by ABC “World News” anchor Diane Sawyer, who will receive an award for “A Hidden America: Children of the Mountains,” a documentary shot in Appalachia.
Announcing the awards, Cully Clark, dean of UGA’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, said “Modern Family,” which follows the ups and downs of an extended family, “reinvents the situation comedy.”
Other entertainment programming recognized with a Peabody included “Glee,” a musical dramedy about the members of a high school singing club; “In Treatment,” HBO’s therapy drama; and “The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency,” a series about a female detective in Botswana based on the novels by Alexander McCall Smith.
Blurring the line between entertainment and news, CBS’ Scottish-born late-night talk-show host Craig Ferguson garnered an award for an interview with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who helped lead opposition to apartheid in South Africa in the 1980s.
The global financial crisis was a common theme among some winners, including “The Day that Lehman Died,” PBS’ “Frontline: The Madoff Affair” and Oregon Public Broadcasting’s “Hard Times.”
NPR’s Web site was heralded as a model for what a news site should be. The news organization’s Kabul bureau chief, Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, also got a nod for her extensive coverage of life inside Afghanistan.
Several local news organizations got laurels for their local reporting efforts. They included Houston’s KHOU-TV, for its investigative series, “Under Fire: Discrimination and Corruption in the Texas National Guard,” which led to the firing of three Texas Guard generals; reporting by Chicago’s WFLD-TV on the sidewalk murder of honor student Derrion Albert; and “BART Shooting,” a series of reports by KTVU-TV in Oakland, Calif., on a deadly train station confrontation.
Hong Kong-based Now-Broadband TV News Channel, which won a Peabody in 2008 for its coverage of the Sichuan earthquake in China, won again for “Sichuan Earthquake: One Year On,” anniversary coverage that asked hard questions about construction standards that may have increased the quake’s death toll.
Arts and culture were represented by two “Independent Lens” documentaries: “The Order of Myths,” which examines race relations through the prism of Mardi Gras in Mobile, Ala., and “Between the Folds,” a study of the art of origami and paper folding. Making mouths water was “Noodle Road,” a survey of the Asian culinary staple by South Korea’s KBS 1TV.
The University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication has administered the Peabodys in Athens since the program’s inception in 1940.
Apple and Google Face UK Investigation Into Mobile Browser Dominance
Apple and Google aren't giving consumers a genuine choice of mobile web browsers, a British watchdog said Friday in a report that recommends they face an investigation under new U.K. digital rules taking effect next year.
The Competition and Markets Authority took aim at Apple, saying the iPhone maker's tactics hold back innovation by stopping rivals from giving users new features like faster webpage loading. Apple does this by restricting progressive web apps, which don't need to be downloaded from an app store and aren't subject to app store commissions, the report said.
"This technology is not able to fully take off on iOS devices," the watchdog said in a provisional report on its investigation into mobile browsers that it opened after an initial study concluded that Apple and Google effectively have a chokehold on "mobile ecosystems."
The CMA's report also found that Apple and Google manipulate the choices given to mobile phone users to make their own browsers "the clearest or easiest option."
And it said that the a revenue-sharing deal between the two U.S. Big Tech companies "significantly reduces their financial incentives" to compete in mobile browsers on Apple's iOS operating system for iPhones.
Both companies said they will "engage constructively" with the CMA.
Apple said it disagreed with the findings and said it was concerned that the recommendations would undermine user privacy and security.
Google said the openness of its Android mobile operating system "has helped to expand choice, reduce prices and democratize access to smartphones and apps" and that it's "committed to open platforms that empower consumers."
It's the latest move by regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to crack down on the... Read More