Burma VJ | Peabody Award Winner 2010

In the late summer and fall of 2007, great throngs of Burmese citizens, following the lead of Buddhist monks, began peaceful street protests of the ruling military junta. So repressive was the regime that the outside world only came to know of the so-called “Saffron Revolution” by way of the Democratic Voice of Burma. The brigade of volunteer, underground reporters filmed the protests — and the government’s eventual, brutal crackdown — with small video cameras and smuggled the footage by courier and the Internet to Norway. Supporters there supplied footage to CNN, the BBC and other news organizations and, via satellite, beamed it back to Burma as well. Burma VJ is a remarkable, visceral account of those months of rising hope and of the video journalists (VJs) who risked arrest and torture to insure that the wider world would know.

Read full winner’s citation here: http://www.peabodyawards.com/award-profile/burma-vj

Civilisation | Peabody Award Winner 1970

At this confusing moment in our history when so much television is devoted to hawking Man’s failures, viewers on both sides of the Atlantic have been refreshed by a gloriously intelligent celebration of Man’s accomplishments in the BBC series, Civilisation, which was written and narrated with wit, style, and passion by Kenneth Clark. His cameras rested leisurely and lovingly on their subjects; the musical background was an enhancement rather than a distraction; and Lord Clark’s keen sense of humor and history was unfailing in this fascinating adventure.

Read full winner’s citation here: http://www.peabodyawards.com/award-profile/civilisation

Elizabeth McKay Accepting the 2005 Peabody Award for “BBC DoNation Season”

A more focused and comprehensive public-service effort than BBC DoNation Season is hard to imagine. Responding to a critical shortage of organ donors in the UK, where 400 people die each year awaiting a transplant, the BBC committed resources to a week-long awareness-heightening campaign that harnessed its television, radio, online, and interactive elements. Producers John Douglas, Susie Donaldson, and Claire Faragher, working under executive producer Edwina Vardey (Factual and Learning), created Life on the List, a week-long series of five half-hour documentaries that brought viewers into the daily dramas of men, women, and children hanging on to life while waiting for a new heart, kidney, or lung. The BBC estimates that the campaign was responsible for adding 100,000 names to the organ-donor registers and, according to its follow-up surveys, instigating discussions of organ-donation wishes among 5 million people.

Read full winner’s citation here: http://www.peabodyawards.com/award-profile/bbc-donation-season

On this day in 2005, the science fiction program #DoctorWho returned to #BBC TV after a 16-year hiatus, with Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor. The program was given a rare Institutional #PeabodyAward in 2012 "for fearlessly exploring space, time, and the television world for half a century."⠀  ⠀ #DoctorWho Citation: http://www.peabodyawards.com/award-profile/institutional-award-doctor-who

Jon Plowman Accepting the 2003 Peabody Award for “The Office”

With no predictable jokes, no easy punch lines, no laugh track, and no known stars, The Office still manages to make audiences laugh out loud for thirty minutes at a time. Yet its quirky oh-so-real characters and situations set in an oh-so-ordinary British business office are sometimes as poignant as they are comic. Shot in “mockumentary” style, this skewed glimpse into office politics and mundane workday routines rings true for anyone who has spent time in an office. Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, who write and direct the show, have created an instant international sensation that takes half-hour television comedy into welcome new realms.

Read full winner’s citation here: http://www.peabodyawards.com/award-profile/the-office

Since the uprising of anti-government forces in #Syria six years ago, the Peabody Awards has recognized 10 programs for outstanding coverage of the conflict and its impact on the global community. We salute CBS, CNN, NPR, BBC News/World Service/Radio, Channel 4, NBC/MSNBC, VICE News and the PBS NewsHour for staying with the story.

An Age of Kings | Peabody Award Winner 1961

Entertainment and education became synonymous in An Age of Kings, a brilliant and imaginative portrayal of Shakespeare’s rich pageant of English history. Through the cooperation of the British Broadcasting Corporation, National Educational Television and Radio Center, Metropolitan Broadcasting, and stations too numerous to name, this ambitious and distinguished series made possible the widest visual availability of the works of the Bard of Avon in the history of British and American television.

Read full winner’s citation here: http://www.peabodyawards.com/award-profile/an-age-of-kings

Delia Fine Accepting the 1996 Peabody Award for Pride & Prejudice

With Pride and Prejudice, the BBC and A&E Television Networks have joined forces to create a splendid and lavish adaptation of Jane Austen’s timeless novel. This fully realized rendering faithfully follows the unpredictable course laid out in the book’s opening manifesto: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of good fortune must be in want of a wife.” With those words, Austen began the story of the five Bennet daughters and their search for wealthy husbands.

Read full winner's citation here: http://www.peabodyawards.com/award-profile/pride-and-prejudice

Walking with Dinosaurs | Peabody Award Winner 2000

The ultimate dinosaur series, Walking with Dinosaurs introduces viewers to some of the most spectacular creatures the world has ever known. In this genuinely original three-hour co-production, the BBC and The Discovery Channel recreate an ancient planet using state-of-the-art imaging technology. Long extinct species are resurrected by marrying actual live action footage with the latest generation of computer animation, animatronic models and prosthetic devices. Covering 155 million years of prehistory, these spectacular beasts are depicted as living in the wild, just as if they were lions, rhinos or monkeys. Through extraordinary computerized special effects, each species’ unique traits are vividly brought to life, from their body mechanics to the distinctive sounds they utter.

Read full winner’s citation here: http://www.peabodyawards.com/award-profile/walking-with-dinosaurs

Putin, Russia and the West

Peabody Winner 2012 | Brook Lapping Productions, BBC, National Geographic Channel

In a remarkable four-hour documentary, key portions of the history of the early 21st Century are presented as a fine-grained tapestry. That history could have been told through the intimate personality profiles that emerge here. It could have been examined in the detailed explorations of how these personalities engaged one another across borders, over issues, and in tense negotiations. It could have chronicled major conflicts, defined in part by the events of September 11, 2001. What makes the series most powerful, however, is the constant reminder that none of these things can be best understood without the others, without context, comparison, without the full “back story,” or better yet, the “back stage story.” With footage from every major news organization that covered those years, the series involves all the major “players.” From Yeltsin to Putin to Saakashvili to Medvedev, from Bush to Rice to Powell to Obama, all are present. So too are the oligarchs and the demonstrators, the soldiers and the civilians. With the drive of historical narrative and the pull of international intrigue, we observe constant jockeying for power and influence, for political control and financial gain, for personal power and national pride. Putin, Russia & The West exposes and explains history as process, as something made with choices rather than something to be recalled and described. For this it receives a Peabody Award.

Episode 1 - "Taking Control"

Episode 2 - "Democracy Threatens"

Episode 3 - "War"

Episode 4 - "New Start"

Orphan Black Interview with Cast and Creators

Orphan Black won a Peabody Award for its first season.  In this video, cast and creators discuss their program. 

Complete 75th Annual Peabody Awards Ceremony

The #BBC reminded us why it's the gold standard of electronic-media news with its wide-ranging, richly detailed, deeply humane television and radio reporting on the European Migrant Crisis @bbcworldservice @bbcnews #bbcradio #bbcnews #syria

Winner 1998 | A Chestermead Production for the BBC, London, England, WGBH-TV, Boston, Massachusetts

In one of the best and most imaginative approaches to television in years, Mobil Masterpiece Theatre brought Shakespeare’sKing Lear to a wider audience. King Lear is the story of an old man’s attempt to manipulate his daughters’ love. In this masterful, eye-catching effort, director Richard Eyre’s award-winning 1997 London stage production was creatively restaged for television by executive producers Simon Curtis and Rebecca Eaton and producers Sue Birtwistle and Joy Spink. The austere stage set, innovative lighting and production design, and unusual costuming perfectly complimented the accomplished ensemble cast, headed by Ian Holm as Lear. Other fine actors in the stellar cast were Barbara Flynn, Amanda Redman, and Victoria Hamilton as Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia, respectively, David Burke as Kent, Timothy West as Gloucester, and Finbar Lynch and Paul Rhys as Edmund and Edgar. Over the years, the BBC and Mobil Masterpiece Theatre have become synonymous with great television, and the presentation of King Lear reinforced that assessment. For its ongoing commitment to the presentation of classical works of literature, and for doing so with freshness and imagination, a Peabody to the BBC and Mobil Masterpiece Theatre for King Lear.

2014 #Peabody winner: Ebola-#BBC World Service

For presenting a lively illumination of the enduring issues of social pressures and gender politics that make Pride and Prejudice a most modern 19th-century novel, a Peabody Award to the BBC and A&E for Pride and Prejudice.

BBC television broadcasting began in earnest on June 7th, 1946, and it was a few short years later that the BBC won its first Peabody Award. Here’s a short history of their wins. 

No other living creature has shown us more about life on Earth than David Attenborough, a 2014 Personal Peabody Winner. He’s a credit to his species.

Photo Credit to Johann Edwin Heupel