One Peabody more than Bill O'Reilly...
No Fly Zone resident Jowi Taylor was awarded the prestigious Peabody award earlier this month in New York City .
He received the prize at 65th Annual Peabody Awards Ceremony, hosted by Jon Stewart, on June 5 at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
The Peabody recipients - from three continents and in seven languages - reflect the international scope of the competition. They range from television stations in Biloxi, Miss., and New Orleans, La., that provided heroic coverage of Hurricane Katrina`s devastating landfall and aftermath, to "Yesterday," a South African film that personalized the continent's AIDS crisis. They include a Spanish documentary about China, the dramatic serials "Battlestar Galactica" and "Bleak House," Martin Scorsese`s "No Direction Home - Bob Dylan," and WNYC`s Radio Rookies Project, which enables young people to find voices on radio. Multiple citations were awarded to HBO, the BBC and WGBH-Boston.
"As is the case every year, submissions for consideration by the Peabody Board provide insight into the astonishing array of electronic media productions," said Horace Newcomb, Director of the Peabody Awards. "These are the works self-selected by creators and producers as their very best work from the previous calendar year. This year`s Peabody Award recipients stand as hallmarks of excellence in news, documentary, comedy, drama, education and public service."
Jowi's won for his work on The Wire: The Impact of Electricity on Music. The Wire, a music series co-produced for CBC radio by Paolo Pietropaolo in Vancouver, Chris Brookes in St. John's and Jowi Taylor in Toronto's No Fly Zone, is an eight-part series exploring the impact of electricity on music.
Jowi said, "I had the incredible privilege of conducting one of the last interviews with Bob Moog, the legendary inventor of the synthesizer. I also spoke with Les Paul, the inventor of the electric guitar. He's 90 years old now. It was a great opportunity for us to present a topic reaching across barriers of genre and geography – in all, we interviewed some 40 subjects from Canada, the USA, the UK, Germany and countries as far away as Ghana and India.”
The Peabody Board is a 16-member group, comprised of television critics, broadcast and cable industry executives and experts in culture and the arts, that judges the entries. Selection is made by the board following review by special screening committees of UGA faculty, students and staff.
The Peabody Awards, the oldest honour in electronic media, do not recognize categories nor is there a set number of awards given each year. Today the Peabody recognizes distinguished achievement and meritorious public service by stations, networks, producing organizations and individuals.
All entries become a permanent part of the Peabody Archive in the University of Georgia Libraries. The collection is one of the United States' oldest, largest and most respected moving-image archives. For more information about the Peabody Archive or the Peabody Awards, visit www.peabody.uga.edu .