Pressroom
For Immediate Release June 24, 2002
Peter S. McGhee accepts Lowell award at PBS Annual Meeting in San Francisco
Peter S. McGhee Awarded Public Televisions Highest Honor
WASHINGTON, DC, June 24, 2002 - Public televisions highest honor, the Ralph Lowell Award, was today awarded to Peter S. McGhee, vice president for national programming at the Boston-based WGBH Educational Foundation.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which presents the award annually, recognized McGhee for his distinguished 32-year career, during which he made PBS the gold standard in nonfiction programming. He oversaw the creation and development of many of PBS's signature public affairs series such as Frontline, Nova, and American Experience. During McGhee's tenure, his productions won 37 Peabody Awards and 27 duPont-Columbia Awards. McGhee will be retiring from WGBH at the end of the summer.
"Peter has nurtured talent, developed international partnerships, and set the highest standards for editorial excellence," said CPB President and CEO Robert T. Coonrod.
McGhee began his broadcast career in 1964 as an associate producer of documentary at National Educational Television (NET) in New York. In 1969, McGhee joined WGBH as a producer of The Advocates and served as the series' executive editor from 1971 to 1974.
Later, WGBH named him program manager for national productions and in 1991 he became vice president for national programming. During his tenure, McGhee guided the development of Frontline, American Experience and Nova. Building on Nova's success, he created the WGBH science unit, whose productions include The Machine that Changed the World, Building Big and Evolution. History projects produced with McGhee's leadership include Vietnam: A Television History, War and Peace in the Nuclear Age, Inside Gorbachev's USSR, Columbus and the Age of Discovery, and the 26-part Century of Discovery.
Other programs developed under McGhee's watch include: a history of Rock & Roll, Sister Wendy's Story of Painting, Concealed Enemies and other dramas for American Playhouse, PBS's 24-hour Millennium Day broadcast, the AIDS Quarterly, Culture Shock, Exxon Mobil Masterpiece Theatre's American Collection and Antiques Roadshow, the most popular series on PBS.
"The award really goes to WGBH, whose peculiar chemistry drew so many creative people through its doors and fostered the work which the Ralph Lowell Award recognizes in honoring me," said McGhee.
CPB annually recognizes outstanding individual contributions to public television by presenting the Ralph Lowell Medal, the industry's most prestigious award. Ralph Lowell, a philanthropist and banker, was a founder of the WGBH Educational Foundation, licensee of WGBH, Boston, and served as its first president from 1951 until he became its chairman in the mid-1970s. He was instrumental in the formation of the Carnegie Commission on Educational Television, which led to the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 and the establishment of CPB.
A complete list of honorees follows this press release.
CPB, a private, nonprofit corporation created by Congress in 1967, develops educational public radio, television and online services for the American people. The Corporation is the industrys largest single source of funds for national public television and radio program development and production. CPB, a grant making organization, also funds more than 1,000 public radio and television stations. For more information, visit www.cpb.org.
Ralph Lowell Award Recipients
1971 Joan Ganz Cooney, founder and president, Childrens Television Workshop 1972 Jonathan Rice, former director of programming, KQED-TV, San Francisco 1973 Hartford Gunn, first PBS president 1974 Bill Moyers, journalist and producer 1975 Fred Rogers, creator and host, Mister Rogers Neighborhood 1976 James R. Killian, Jr., former CPB Board chairman 1977 John O. Pastore, former U.S. Senator 1978 Ralph Rogers, former PBS Board chairman 1979 James A. Fellows, former president, National Association of Educational Broadcasters 1980 Warren G. Magnuson, former U.S. Senator 1981 Fred Friendly, former communications adviser, Ford Foundation 1982 Newton N. Minow, former PBS Board chairman 1983 Walter H. Annenberg, founder, The Annenberg/CPB Project 1984 Lawrence K. Grossman, former PBS president 1985 David O. Ives, vice chairman of the board of trustees and former president of WGBH Educational Foundation, Boston 1986 Barry M. Goldwater, former U.S. Senator 1987 Sharon Percy Rockefeller, former CPB Board chairman 1988 Ernest F. Hollings, U.S. Senator 1989 Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer, co-anchors of The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour 1990 Ward Chamberlin, former president chief executive officer of WETA/FM-TV, Washington, D.C. 1991 Alistair Cooke, host and narrator of Masterpiece Theatre 1992 Chalmers H. Marquis, former public television representative to Congress 1993 Henry Hampton, president, Blackside, Inc. 1994 Bruce Christensen, former PBS president 1995 Ken Burns, documentary filmmaker 1996 Elizabeth Pfohl Campbell, former president of WETA and vice president for community affairs 1997 Jac Venza, Director of Cultural Arts Programs, Thirteen/WNET and Executive Producer, Great Performances 1998 Julia Child, world-renowned French cooking chef, best selling author, and cooking-show host 1999 Thad Cochran, U.S. Senator, and Edward M. Kennedy, U.S. Senator 2000 David J. Brugger, former President and CEO of the Association of Americas Public Television Stations (APTS) 2001 Peter S. McGhee, vice president for national programming, WGBH Educational Foundation.
###
Related Links
About CPB
CPB is a private, nonprofit corporation created by Congress in 1967 and is steward of the federal government's investment in public broadcasting. It helps support the operations of more than 1,100 locally-owned and -operated public television and radio stations nationwide, and is the largest single source of funding for research, technology, and program development for public radio, television and related online services.