ABC's Modern Family, Fox's Glee, CBS' The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and HBO's In Treatment and The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency are among the entertainment programs to receive Peabody Awards.
The 69th annual awards honoring the best in electronic media for 2009 were announced March 31 by the University of Georgia's Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Ferguson was honored for a poignant interview with Archbishop Desmond Tutu about the art of forgiveness. The HBO documentary Thrilla in Manila, about the racially charged atmosphere surrounding the infamous 1975 Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier fight, also scored an award.
CBS News' 60 Minutes (Sabotaging the System and The Cost of Dying), WGBH's Frontline (The Madoff Affair), ABC News' special on the children of Appalachia, which was reported by Diane Sawyer, who will host this year's awards ceremony, was also recognized.
BBC America was awarded a Peabody for its newscast BBC World News America, as well as Where Giving Life Is a Death Sentence, a report by Lyse Doucet about a remote Afghan province that has the world's worst recorded rate of maternal mortality.
The BBC World Service received a Peabody for The Day That Lehman Died, a radio drama that reconstructed the frantic negotiations that preceded the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy filing that shook the financial world.
Hong Kong's Now-TV News won for Sichuan Earthquake: One Year On and Oregon Public Broadcasting won for Hard Times, which examined the impact of the financial crisis on ordinary folks.
Sundance Channel received a Peabody for BrickCity, about Newark New Jersey Mayor Cory Booker. The network is currently in production on a second season of the docuseries.
Web sites honored include National Public Radio's npr.org; and PBS' SesameStreet.org.
The Peabody Awards will be handed out May 17 at New York's Waldorf-Astoria. For a complete list of winners, click here.
