HBO came away the big winner of this year's prestigious Peabody Awards, announced this morning, grabbing five Peabodys.
The pay network won for the much-lauded Elizabeth I starring Helen Mirren, and documentaries When the Levees Broke produced by Spike Lee, which was the filmmaker's impactful look at Hurricane Katrina; Baghdad ER, Billy Jean King: Portrait of a Pioneer and The Music in Me, which centered on the development of young musicians.
Click here for the full list of Peabody Award winners. Showtime, HBO's competitor, won a Peabody for its serial drama, Brotherhood.
ABC got three Peabodys, one for its news department for its 2006 coverage of the Congressional page scandal which revealed that Florida Republican Rep. Mark Foley had sent sexually-explicit e-mails to teenagers who served as pages; for a documentary Out of Control: AIDS in Black America; and the unusual comedy Ugly Betty, based on a Hispanic telenovela.
CBS was lauded for a 60 Minutes report on the controversial Duke University rape case. It was reported by the late Ed Bradley.
NBC won for Scrubs, Friday Night Lights and The Office. It also will get a Peabody for a Dateline NBC segment "The Education of Ms. Groves," about a challenges of a new teacher.
PBS won one Peabody for an American Masters portrait of Andy Warhol produced by Ric Burns. Cartoon Network won for a bold Boondocks episode called "Return of the King" which imagines that Martin Luther King awakes from a coma to confront current racial attitudes. Telemundo's mun2 channel won for For My Country? Latinos in the Military, a documentary about the large number of Latinos who have enlisted, questioning whether recruiters targeted them.
BBC America also won the drama, Gideon's Daughter. The Independent Film Channel won for Beyond Borders: Personal Stories from a Small Planet, nine short films by children between the ages of 9 and 13. The Food Network won for its quirky series Good Eats.
Four TV stations also received Peabodys:
--WTNH New Haven, Conn. for a report on defective helicopter parts installed at a local plant; --KMOV, St. Louis, for stories about nepotism and mismanagement of the East St. Louis, Ill., school system's special education department; --WTHR, Indianapolis, for two separate reports, one about how pharmacies disposed of sensitive information in ways anyone could pick it up and other stories about inadequate tornado warning systems in the area; -- WISH, Indianapolis, for an investigation about how adding inexpensive padding to military helmets could have prevented many soldiers from serious head injuries.
The Peabody Awards, which also lauds radio broadcasts, are administered by the University of Georgia. They are different from most awards in that there are no categories, nor any set number of winners. The awards will be presented June 4 at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York.
