Walter Cronkite to Host  61st Annual Peabody Awards

Deadline For Entries January 15, 2002 ATHENS, Ga. — Walter Cronkite, one of the most influential and respected journalists in American broadcasting, will host the 61st Annual Peabody Awards Luncheon. The event will be held Monday May 20, 2002, at the Waldorf/Astoria in New York City. Mr. Cronkite’s more than 60 years as a journalist included a 50-year association with CBS radio and television. He received personal Peabody Awards in 1962 and 1980 and has been associated with numerous other winning programs.

 

“We are indeed honored and fortunate to have Mr. Cronkite as our host for the 2002 Awards ceremony,” said Horace Newcomb, Director of the Peabody Awards Program. “In this year especially, when electronic media will have been so crucial to individual and social life, his experience and perspective will once again serve as a national ‘anchor’ for all of us.”

The Peabody Awards, considered the most prestigious prize in the electronic media industries, recognize excellence and achievement, and significant and meritorious work in electronic communication. Awards are made to radio and television stations, networks, web casters, producing organizations and individuals. More than 1,000 entries from 30 countries have been received each year during the past decade. The Deadline for Entries for programs aired in 2001 is January 15, 2002.

The official announcement of this year’s winners will be made at a press conference and live via satellite on Wednesday, March 27, at 8 a.m. (EST) from Georgia Public Television Headquarters in Atlanta Georgia. The announcement will be web cast at the Peabody Awards web site,www.Peabody.uga.edu

Mr. Cronkite was the only journalist to be voted among the ten “most influential decision-makers in America” in surveys conducted by U.S. News and World Report and also was named the “most influential person” in broadcasting. In a nationwide viewer opinion survey conducted as recently as 1995, more than a decade after leaving the CBS anchor desk, he again was voted “Most Trusted Man in Television News.”

The University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication administers the Peabody Awards, as it has since the program’s inception in 1939. The 15-member Peabody Board, whose members include television critics, broadcast and cable industry executives and experts in culture and the arts, judge the entries.

For more information regarding The Peabody Awards program visit www.Peabody.uga.edu. For information about the Peabody Awards Collection and the Brown Media Archives, consisting of over 40,000 radio and television-programs, visithttp://www.libs.uga.edu/media/collections/peabody/index.html