Library of American Broadcasting to Honor Giants

07.25.2008

William Shatner, Cokie Roberts and longtime NBC boss Robert C. Wright are among 10 “Giants of Broadcasting” to be honored by the Library of American Broadcasting in New York Sept. 25.

Tim Russert, Jim McKay and longtime CBS CEO Roger M. King will be posthumously honored.

Robert C. Wright was the longest-service head of NBC since David Sarnoff. He led the network’s move into cable with CNBC and MSNBC. “He is credited with transforming NBC and maneuvering it through a key intersection of the technological, economic, political, social and cultural forces that helped shape U.S. television at the end of the 20th century,” Library of American Broadcasting’s resident scholar Douglas Gomery said. Wright and his wife founded Autism Speaks.

Born in Montreal, William Shatner has boldly gone where few have gone before, from the Canadian version of “Howdy Doody” to his present Emmy-winning performance as Denny Crane in ABC Television’s “Boston Legal.” Most noted for his role as Captain Kirk in “Star Trek,” he’s appeared in more than 50 films and 80 television efforts.

Jerry Lee’s WBEB Philadelphia is an object of awe for its ability to compete as an independent FM station (soft rock/adult contemporary) in a major market, and remains one of the most successful in the country. He’s been called a “lifetime optimist and longtime Philadelphian” and conceived the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology (located at the University of Pennsylvania), whose mission is “to produce major discoveries about the causes and prevention of crime, showing how to make a safer and more democratic world.”

Cokie Roberts is senior news analyst for National Public Radio, for which she was congressional correspondent for more than 10 years. She was co-anchor of the ABC News Sunday morning broadcast, “This Week with Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts” from 1996 to 2002, while also serving that network as chief congressional analyst. Her books include two bestsellers.

James H. Quello served as an FCC commissioner for more than 23 years and continues, at age 94, as a consultant to the government relations practice of Washington law firm Wiley Rein.

Bill Baker is president emeritus of New York’s Thirteen/WNET and was a key launcher of the Discovery Channel and the Disney Channel, among others.

Lucy Jarvis broke the political barriers in Russia while producing the Emmy-award winning “The Kremlin” for NBC News, filmed in 1963 during the Cuban missile crisis. (President Kennedy is said to have joked: “I told Khrushchev if he got the missiles out of Cuba, I would get Lucy Jarvis out of the Kremlin.”) She later produced “China and The Forbidden City.” She received six Emmys, a Peabody, a Radio-TV Critics Award and the French government’s Chevaliere de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Newsman Charles Osgood will host the sixth annual awards ceremony at luncheon at the Grand Hyatt Hotel.