Thirteen/WNET New York's NATURE Wins Prestigious Peabody Award for Silence of the Bees

Business Wire, April 3, 2008

Cited Among Group Of Winning Films Described By The Peabody Board As Worthy, Diverse and Impressive

Special Encore Presentation Of The Film To Air June 15 on PBS Accompanied By Online Updates On Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) Featuring Exclusive Interviews With Key Experts, Beekeepers And Farmers

NEW YORK -- NATURE, produced for PBS by Thirteen/WNET New York, won its third Peabody Award when Silence of the Bees was honored for broadcast excellence. Winners of the 67th Annual George Foster Peabody Awards for the best in electronic media for 2007 were announced April 2 by the University of Georgia's Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. Silence of the Bees was an inquiry into the unsettling decline in the world's honeybee populations, said the Peabody Board.

Honeybees are responsible for one of every three bites of food we eat. Each year, they pollinate $14 billion worth of crops and seeds in the U.S. alone. Their total decimation would be catastrophic from the local to the global level. Silence of the Bees, which premiered October 28, 2007 on PBS, was the first in-depth documentary to cover this breaking story of ecological crisis. NATURE will broadcast the award-winning film in a special encore presentation Sunday, June 15 at 8 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings). The film is available in High Definition. In addition to the broadcast, NATURE Online (www.pbs.org/nature) will feature extensive updates on this critical phenomenon since the film's premiere. Online content will include interviews with featured scientists and farmers affected by the crisis; Dr. Diana Cox-Foster, Head of the CCD working group; Dennis vanEngelsdorp, State Apiarist for Pennsylvania; and David Hackenberg, the beekeeper who first alerted officials on the massive die-offs of bees, among others. NATURE Online will also stream Silence of the Bees in its entirety.

Silence of the Bees is a production of Partisan Pictures and Thirteen/WNET New York. The film was written and produced by Doug Shultz. Peter Schnall was supervising producer and director of photography. NATURE is produced by Thirteen/WNET New York for PBS. Fred Kaufman is Executive Producer; William Grant is Executive-in-Charge.

NATURE pioneered and continues to evolve a television genre that is now widely emulated throughout cable and broadcast TV. Throughout the series' history, NATURE has brought the natural world into the homes of millions of viewers. The series has been consistently among the most-watched prime-time series on public television. Now in its 26th season on PBS, NATURE has won more than 450 honors from the television industry, the international wildlife film community, parent groups, and environmental organizations - including 10 Emmys, three Peabodys and the first award given to a television program by the Sierra Club. In 2007, the series won Emmy Awards for Chimpanzees: An Unnatural History and Christmas in Yellowstone.

NATURE video podcasts, available on iTunes and at NATURE Online (www.pbs.org/nature), range from two to 10 minutes in length and feature behind-the-scenes interviews with filmmakers and producers, program excerpts and outtakes.

Major corporate support for NATURE is provided by Canon U.S.A., Inc. and Toyota. Additional support is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the nation's public television stations.

The series is closed-captioned for the hearing-impaired and distributed with Descriptive Video Service (DVS) for the sight-impaired.