HBO’s a Hero at Peabodys
Premium Network Leads the Pack of Cable Honorees
By Kent Gibbons -- Multichannel News, 6/10/2007 8:00:00 PM
New York — Cable networks ranging from mun2 to HBO helped share the glory last Monday (June 4) when George Foster Peabody Awards were handed out for excellence in video programming.
HBO collected four of the statuettes, including one for the hard-edged documentary Baghdad ER. “I’m a humble soldier in Sheila Nevins’s army,” said John Alpert, the doc’s co-director and producer, referring to HBO’s documentary and family president.
Alpert also said “there was an attempt made to censor this film” that HBO wouldn’t allow to happen. On stage with him was Paula Zwillinger, whose son, U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Robert Mininger of Sellersville, Pa., died in 2005 at the 86th Combat Support Hospital in Iraq and whose final hours were recorded in the film. “I’ve come to realize that heroes come in many forms,” she said. “My son. My friends. And HBO.”
Flavio Morales, vice president of programming at mun2, said his cable channel, known mostly for programming to young Latinos, started producing news and documentaries about a year ago, following ideas generated by staff members, including For My Country? Latinos in the Military. “This was very important to us,” he said.
There were some lighter moments at the lunch-time ceremony, held at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. Four NBC broadcast network programs won awards, and NBC’s Bob Costas, host of the event, said NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker told him that was in keeping with his new operating philosophy: “He doesn’t give a damn about ratings and profits. He only cares about critical acclaim and prestigious awards. A philosophy he will no doubt take with him when he moves to C-SPAN in just a few months.” Zucker, sitting at a table upfront, winced at the joke.
Creator and executive producer Bill Lawrence accepted the Peabody for NBC sitcom Scrubs, left the stage and actually came back on several seconds later to say he somehow forgot to thank his wife, Scrubs actress Christa Miller. Costas then joked that earlier nominees now had equal time to mention anyone they might have overlooked, including: “spouses, significant others, people they’d like to schmooze from a business standpoint.”
Two legendary broadcast journalists — ABC News anchor Peter Jennings and CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley — were acknowledged in moving ways by producers of documentaries they were involved with that won Peabodys. Jennings died in 2005; Bradley died last year.
Director Spike Lee (When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, on HBO) put in a plea to continue to help the people of New Orleans who were abandoned by local, state and federal governments. “We can’t forget about them,” he said. After the ceremony, he told the Associated Press he planned to go back to the Crescent City and follow up on the stories he told in the four-hour documentary but not right away. “It’s too soon,” he said, according to the AP.
Other cable-network awardees include Brotherhood on Showtime; Boondocks: Return of the King on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim; Food Network’s Good Eats; IFC’s Beyond Borders: Personal Stories from a Small Planet; and BBC America’s Gideon’s Daughter, a drama that won two Golden Globe awards.
Another NBC sitcom, The Office, received a Peabody, which was noteworthy given that the original British version of the show won a Peabody in 2004
Greg Daniels, an executive producer on the show, accepted the Peabody with other show principals and noted NBC had ordered another 30 half-hour episodes, up from 22 last season.
“Thanks for the applause, but that’s probably going to kill everyone on this stage,” he joked, also observing that executive producer Ben Silverman got out of working on those episodes by being named co-chairman of NBC Entertainment last week: “How convenient!”
The Peabody Awards were established in 1940 and are administered by the University of Georgia’s Grady College. The awards honor distinguished achievement and meritorious public service by stations, networks, producing organizations and individuals.
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