We're proud to again handle PR for the Christopher Awards.
We've been working with The Christophers for more than 25 years, to honor the best creators of TV, film and books for adults and for children.
Click here for info on the 23 films, TV shows and books that are this year's winners.
We're proud to again handle PR for the Christopher Awards.
We've been working with The Christophers for more than 25 years, to honor the best creators of TV, film and books for adults and for children.
Click here for info on the 23 films, TV shows and books that are this year's winners.
We've been handling publicity for The Christopher Awards for more than 20 years...actually, closer to 25.
Every year, The Christophers recognize books, TV programs and feature films that recognize the goodness in people, illustrating the Christopher motto "It's better to light one candle than to curse the darkness."
We've been able to get lots of publicity on the winners in their hometowns, as well as a few stories that were syndicated to Catholic papers nationally through Catholic News Service. And "Currents," on the Catholic Channel NetTV did a nice interview this week with one of the book winners, David Davis, who wrote about how injured WWII vets helped shape today disabilities rights.
Here's a link to the 3-1/2 minute interview.
More info on The Christopher Awards is at https://www.christophers.org/awards
Regardless of whether you liked the awards telecast or not, the The Emmy Awards again put the spotlight on how much TV has changed over the 20+ years.
First, take a look at which networks won the most awards... Most winners by network: HBO, 34; Netflix, 27; Amazon, 15; National Geographic, 8; NBC, 7; CNN, 5; FX, 5; CBS, 4; Fox, 4; Hulu, 4; VH1, 4; YouTube, 4.
One of the major broadcast networks -- ABC -- got only one Emmy Sunday night. And the four broadcast networks combined took home only 16 awards -- less than half of what HBO won.
But the big news is how many awards the streaming networks got -- Netflix, Amazon, Hulu. (Who even heard of Hulu five years ago?) The streamers dominated the awards.
Don't cry for the networks, though. Even if they don't dominate the awards anymore, they're still pulling big audiences and even bigger ad dollars. Broadcast TV isn't going to disappear, although the focus on the subscription (HBO and Showtime) and streaming services like Netflix and Amazon is forcing the broadcast nets to up their game in terms of program quality. They're not just lowest common denominator programming anymore.
I can remember when top film actors and directors wouldn't go near TV. But not anymore - not for a long time. TV programs now feature big screen stars like Michael Douglas and Jane Fonda.
TV (if you include all the ways programs get onto your TV screen) has come so far from the time in 1961 when FCC Commissioner Newton Minnow called it a "vast wasteland." TV now seems to be in a new golden age, which is good for all of us.
Thursday evening is the 70th annual Christopher Awards, honoring the creators of books, films and TV that tell stories of people doing good.
It's not about the best-seller list or box office or TV ratings. Instead, the Awards are about encouraging people to do whatever they can, in ways big or small, to make our world a better place.
Honorees this year range from Mark Wahlberg's film about foster parenting, "Instant Family," to the Mr. Rogers documentary, "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" to the 886-page book by David Blight about slave-turned-abolitionist/author and journalist Frederick Douglass.
We've been knocking on doors to get advance publicity on the winners in papers, on radio, TV and online. Tomorrow the awards will be presented. It's always an inspiring evening.
More to come in this space after the awards.
Big events like the Super Bowl, the Grammy’s and the Oscars traditionally were must-watch TV, pulling in giant audiences for the nationwide live broadcasts. But for the last several years, these events have not been a guarantee for a huge audience, which has been troubling for both the network carrying the event and for the advertisers spending in the millions per 30-second spot.
The Academy Awards last Sunday proved to be a winner – not only for Green Book, Bohemian Rhapsody and Roma, but for ABC as well.
The ratings were up by 11.5 percent over last year’s Oscars telecast, drawing in 29.6 viewers. And the event was profitable for ABC, which sold out all its available time in the telecast. The network earned about $120 million during the program, with 30-second spots going for more than $2.8 million.
For comparison, the Grammy’s brought in about $95 million for CBS. Approximately 30 million tuned in for the broadcast. Super Bowl, which was the least-watched Super Bowl in ten years, still drew a super audience of 98.2 million – dwarfing the Grammy’s and Oscars combined. Ad revenues for CBS were down five percent from a year ago, but still came to a hefty total of more than $385 million. The typical spot cost between $4.6 and $5.2 million.
Pfft… a bundle, gone in 30 seconds.
It's not the Emmy's. It's not the Oscars. But in many ways, the annual Christopher Awards are more meaningful than the big industry awards, with all their glitz and glamour.
The Christopher Awards each year recognize the creators of work in TV, film and books that inspires and shows how each of us can make a difference. It's always an honor and a humbling experience to work this event, filled with so many people who use their creativity for good.
At the 69th annual Christopher Awards ceremony Thursday night, the authors, illustrators, writers, directors and producers of 21 books, TV programs and feature films were honored. Among them were author and historian David McCullough for his latest, "The American Spirit," and the writers, directors and producers of three films I enjoyed -- "Lady Bird," "Wonder" and "The Darkest Hour."
Ken Burns, the prolific filmmaker whose documentaries on PBS have taught so much about history and ourselves, was honored with a Christophers Life Achievement Award. His films have helped us understand and appreciate things and events as diverse as jazz, the Civil War, baseball, the Statue of Liberty and last year's 18-hour look back at the Viet Nam War. Coming soon, he says, are films on the history of country music and profiles of Ernest Hemingway and Muhammad Ali.
In an interview we arranged for him last week with Catholic News Service, he compared making documentaries to making fiction-based films. "Steven Speilberg can make stuff up; I can’t. We’ve talked about this. A good story is a good story, no difference between a documentary and a film."
Ken Burns certainly knows how to tell a good story, as do all the winners of the Christopher Awards. Info on all the award-winners is here.
Photo: Ken Burns, right, with Christopher Awards emcee Ernie Anastos, FOX5 New York anchor. Credit: Paul Schneck
It's good to see that the U.S. Postal Service has issued a stamp a few days ago to honor a gentle man who was a hero and friend to so many young people who grew up from the '60s through 2000.
Fred Rogers, known to most of us simply as "Mister Rogers," was a fixture on public TV for nearly 40 years, starting locally in Pittsburgh, then on the CBC for a few years before launching on PBS in 1968. "Mister Rogers Neighborhood" ran on PBS until 2001, two years before Fred Rogers' death at 76.
I had the chance to meet him and hear him explain why he kept his show soft and gentle and slow-paced, even as glitzy fast-paced programs like "Sesame Street" were getting all the attention and accolades.
"The space between the TV set and the young viewer -- those few feet -- is a holy space," he told the audience when he received a Christopher Award in 2002, just about a year before he died. "It's a space that can be used to educate, explain and comfort a child, to let him or her know that it's ok to be just who you are."
When I heard him explain that concept, I realized why he kept his program low-key. He was the friendly neighbor and a man kids could feel comfortable with, especially kids in homes without a soft and compassionate father figure. The daily opening ritual on the show -- coming in the door with a smile and a soft hello as he changed from his jacket to a cardigan and from street shoes to sneakers -- put him on a different level with his viewers -- still an adult, but a non-judgemental one you could talk with and let your fears and insecurities out just a bit. He was a man who could tell you, it's ok; whatever you feel inside, it's ok to be yourself.
I was at the Christopher Awards in my capacity as the PR person for the annual awards program...something I've been doing for more than 20 years and which I'll be doing again in May for the 69th Christopher Awards.
That year, when the formal program ended, I had a chance to spend some time with Mr.Rogers. A blizzard was raging outside and the car to take him to his hotel was delayed. He was going to walk the several blocks to the hotel, dragging his big suitcase through the windy snow and slush. I convinced him to wait, to stay inside until we were able to get a car. And we sat and talked.
In maybe 30 minutes or so, he learned from me that my father had passed away less than two years before and that I thought of him every day. I can't even remember the questions he asked me -- but he made the conversation more about me than about himself. He spoke in that quiet way that we all saw on TV for so many years, slowly and deliberately. He told me he had been a minister and, along the way, found that TV could be a powerful tool to minister to young people.
When I finally walked him downstairs to the car, he thanked me for the conversation and he said, "Your father must have been a special man, because he raised a good person in you."
I was blown away; in fact, tears came to my eyes. And for days after that, I was sort of floating, feeling I had been in the presence of a truly special person, someone truly touched by God.