Smulyan to be Honored as a ‘Giant of Broadcasting’
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThe chief executive officer of Indianapolis-based Emmis Communications Corp. (Nasdaq: EMMS) will receive a major accolade from the Library of American Broadcasting. Jeff Smulyan is among the 2013 “Giants of Broadcasting” class, which also includes Alex Trebeck, Morley Safer and Dick Cavett. An awards presentation is set for October in New York City. Emmis owns our news gathering partners at Network Indiana/WIBC.
July 22, 2013
News Release
ALEXANDRIA, Vir. – The 11th annual staging of the GIANTS OF BROADCASTING, a yearly event sponsored by the Library of American Broadcasting and celebrating distinguished leadership or performance in television and radio, is scheduled for OCTOBER 16 in New York's Gotham Hall. The Library has announced the professionals who will be recognized in 2013 for their contributions to those media in the last half-century. The distinguished honorees join 161 Giants of Broadcasting who have been honored by the Library since 2003.
The Honorees:
BARRY DILLER, media titan, responsible for the creation of Fox Broadcasting Company and USA Broadcasting, and former CEO of Paramount Pictures, is currently the Chairman of Expedia and Chairman and Senior Executive of IAC/InterActiveCorp, a new media conglomerate specializing in e-commerce. The life of Barry Diller could be a Hollywood script. A self-made man, he started at the bottom of the social scale working in the mailroom of casting agencies in Hollywood, including the William Morris Agency, before joining ABC as a television executive. At ABC, Diller created the ABC Movie of the Week, pioneering the concept of the made-for-television movie through a series of 90-minute films produced exclusively for television. At 31 years old, he became president of Paramount Studios and saved the company from bankruptcy by reducing budgets and launching shows including Taxi and Cheers and feature films such as Saturday Night Fever and Raiders of the Lost Ark. When Rupert Murdoch bought Twentieth Century Fox Corporation and asked Diller to help him launch the broadcasting division, few thought a fourth network was possible. Diller revolutionized television programs before deciding it was time to have his own business. He amassed a media empire, including multiple cable channels and Internet companies. Diller purchased a stake in home-shopping channel QVC, and later took control of USA Interactive. In 1996, he became the head of Silver King Communications, renamed IAC/InterActiveCorp, and since then has led IAC to a series of acquisitions of Internet companies, including Ticketmaster, Expedia, Citysearch, Match.com and the search engine Ask.com.
ALEX TREBEK, one of television's most iconic figures, has entertained millions of viewers worldwide during the last three decades of Jeopardy! Trebek has hosted more than 6,000 episodes since the show's latest incarnation made its syndicated debut in 1984. Jeopardy! won its 30th Emmy earlier this year. Trebek himself has won five Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Game Show Host, and, in 2011, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. Trebek started his broadcasting career in 1961 as a reporter at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Canada's premier network, where he covered national news and special events for radio and television. Five years later he was offered the quizmaster position on a game show for Canadian high school kids, Reach for the Top. He left the show in 1973, and hosted several other Canadian game shows until he came to America to host NBC's The Wizard of Odds. After joining Merv Griffin’s Jeopardy!, Trebek was a hit with viewers and quickly became a pop-culture icon. A long-time USO supporter, Trebek has participated in 12 USO tours meeting America's men and women in uniform. He has been honored with a coveted star on both the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the Canadian Walk of Fame in Toronto, making him one of only a handful of people so honored by both the U.S. and Canada.
ANNE SWEENEY, is co-chair of Disney Media Networks and president of Disney/ABC Television Group, which includes The Walt Disney Company's global entertainment and news television properties, owned television stations group, and radio and publishing businesses. Curiosity, creativity and a single-minded focus on what consumers want have guided Sweeney’s groundbreaking career in television. Overseeing properties, including the ABC Television Network, Disney Channels Worldwide, ABC Family and ABC Studios, she led the industry into the digital era by making Disney/ABC Television Group the first media company to put television content on new platforms, including the iPod, iPad and streaming online. Under Sweeney’s leadership the Disney Channel quintupled its subscriber base, and she oversaw the successful launch of the 24-hour channel Toon Disney (now Disney XD) and later the launch of SOAPnet. Sweeney joined The Walt Disney Company in 1996. Previously she was chairman and CEO of FX Networks, Inc. where she presided over the launch of FX and FXM: Movies from Fox, Hollywood's first studio-based movie network. Before joining Fox, Sweeney spent 12 years at Nickelodeon/Nick at Nite, most recently as senior vice president of Program Enterprises. She has been named “The Most Powerful Woman in Entertainment” by The Hollywood Reporter, one of “The 50 Most Powerful Women in Business” by Fortune and one of “The World's 100 Most Powerful Women” by Forbes.
Few have ever been able to tell a story as well as MORLEY SAFER, the award-winning 60 Minutes correspondent and pioneering war reporter. Safer's witty and superbly written features have been a mainstay for over four decades on 60 Minutes. His primetime achievements rest on a foundation of groundbreaking war reporting that began in Africa and the Middle East for the CBC and continued at CBS News in the 1960s with coverage in Southeast Asia. Safer’s legendary CBS Evening News reports from Vietnam battlefields changed war reporting forever; his 1965 story showing G.I.s burning the homes of villagers in Cam Ne was named one of the top 100 news reports of the century. The report prompted the U.S. military to issue new rules of engagement. In 1965 Safer opened the Saigon Bureau for CBS News and he later served as the network’s London Bureau chief. In 2011 Safer landed one of the biggest interviews for CBS: 18.5 million people watched him ask Ruth Madoff what she knew about her husband Bernard's Ponzi scheme. Safer's investigative report on Lenell Geter, an engineer wrongly convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to a life term in Texas, also received national attention and prestigious broadcast journalism awards. Safer has won 12 Emmy Awards, three Overseas Press Club Awards, three Peabody Awards and two Alfred I. DuPont–Columbia University Awards. He has also written a best-selling book, Flashbacks: On Returning to Vietnam (1990), which describes his 1989 return to Vietnam.
DICK CAVETT, Emmy-winning talk show legend, comedian and writer, has hosted and interviewed a wide range of guests, from authors and political figures to musicians and singers. Over the course of his career, and on The Dick Cavett Show particularly, Cavett has enjoyed pairing controversial people with opposing views to discuss often taboo subject matter. Cavett has won three Emmy Awards for his work. He began his career as a copyboy at Time magazine, then got hired as a comedy writer for The Tonight Show after he slipped an envelope of jokes into Jack Paar's hands in an RCA Building hallway. Cavett also wrote for shows including The Jerry Lewis Show, and later did stand-up on The Tonight Show, The Merv Griffin Show and The Ed Sullivan Show. This success led to ABC giving Cavett the hosting job on This Morning in 1968 and then his own late-night program, The Dick Cavett Show, a year later. Cavett is probably best known for this first incarnation of the several talk shows