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May 19, 2016
In The Mix

The Honor Unlike the Others

An awards competition based — not in New York or L.A., but in Georgia — that has no set categories or number of awards? That's the pined-for Peabodys, which this year mark 75 years of salutes to the finest storytelling.

Libby Slate

"Sorry, different show." That's what Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields, executive producers of FX's The Americans, half-expected to hear in a follow-up call after receiving word that their Cold War spy drama had won a 2014 Peabody Award.

"We were utterly dumbfounded," recalls Weisberg, who created the series. "And we were pretty excited, too."

There was no mistake: the show had joined the select roster of television and other electronic programming honored by the George Foster Peabody Awards, which celebrate its 75th anniversary this year. Other shows chosen in recent years include AMC's Breaking Bad and Mad Men, Comedy Central's Inside Amy Schumer, the CWs Jane the Virgin, CBS's 60 Minutes and PBS's Independent Lens.

This year's ceremony takes place May 21 in New York; a condensed version airs on the Pivot network June 6.

Founded in 1940 to recognize excellence in radio broadcasting and based at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Georgia in Athens, the awards were named for an investment banker-university benefactor who had recently died.

Television was first celebrated in 1948; as the media landscape evolved, honorees were expanded to include cable and international television, websites, a blog, a podcast and even a 26-second viral video, spotlighting rape prevention for college students.

"We are focused on the storytelling itself, rather than component parts such as acting," says awards director Jeffrey P. Jones, who holds a PhD in radio-TV-film from the University of Texas at Austin. "It's less important where that story appears than if it's a powerful story, powerfully told."

Some 1,200 submissions arrive each year and are viewed initially by senior media studies scholars and their doctoral students. Eighteen judges, including Jones, screen the  surviving entries - some 550 to 400 - and meet three times a year, in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Athens, to discuss them. All submissions become part of an archive of more than 90,000 titles.

"These people have risen to the top of their industries," Jones says of the judges, who are media professionals and scholars, critics and journalists. "They make impassioned pleas on behalf of the programs." There is no set number of awards; 30 to 40 recipients are chosen each year. Among those selected in 1994 was Mad About You, the NBC sitcom about a New York City married couple.

"We were trying to be funny and tender, but also truthful," recalls Paul Reiser, who starred with Helen Hunt and was also co-creator and an executive producer. When the series won, "I thought, 'All those people must have heard us — they got it that we wanted this to be something positive.' I took [the recognition] as a nod of appreciation and a sign of a level of quality and excellence."

More recently, Breaking Bad won twice, in 2008 and 2015. "The Grady College at the University of Georgia was one of the very first organizations to honor Breaking Bad," creator-executive producer Vince Gilligan said via email. "Winning a Peabody Award in the early days of the show was a great thrill and meant the world to me."

Agrees Fields: "The Peabody is one of the most prestigious honors out there. Just to be working on a show that could be considered is a tremendous honor, a career highlight. You just can't believe the company you're in."

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