Samuel's Blog

Peter Leonard wins award for Community Media

December 27th, 2007 at 01:09pm

On the 17th of December (Monday last week), Peter Leonard won the Chief Minister-Public Relations Institute of Australia (ACT Division) Award for Community Media, and in doing so became the first individual to win the award.

To quote from Jon Stanhope’s press release:

Mr Stanhope said Mr Leonard received the award, in its ffith [sic] year, for his service to media and the Canberra community.

“I am very pleased to be able to present the Award to such a deserving winner. Peter is well known to Canberrans as a proud, popular and vocal supporter of the ACT community,” Mr Stanhope said.

The award acknowledges outstanding contributions to the community by ACT media organisations or individuals. This year, for the first time, an individual has been chosen as the recipient of the award.

Mr Leonard was selected for his exceptional service to the community through the media and public relations industry in Canberra, particularly his work at WIN TV presenting ACT and district news for many years.

“Peter has also dedicated himself to a wide range of ACT community programs and events, was Canberra Citizen of the Year in 1991, and has been a tireless worker for local charities such as the MS Society of the ACT and the Cancer Council,” Mr Stanhope said.

“On behalf of the ACT Community I thank Peter for his contribution and congratulate him on this prestigious and well deserved award.”

Seeing as Peter has been handed this prestigious award, I think it is appropriate to run this 1995 promo for WIN News. This is the Canberra version of the promo, WIN also had versions of the promo produced for Wollongong and Western New South Wales and probably other places as well. The promos were based on Nine’s Who’s Who of News, and were probably produced by Nine.

Interestingly it’s the only WIN version of the promo not to include footage of the journalists reporting to camera. It is also worthwhile noting that Canberra’s set was different to the one used in Wollongong and Western New South Wales. I personally preferred the physical set to the keyed set currently used. It is my opinion that if you’re going to have a static background, you might as well use a physical set, and the old WIN News set had some charm. I would like to see them do what Nine do, and have a camera somewhere providing the city as a backdrop, it’s a pity that this probably isn’t a viable option for WIN, especially in the places where the local news is read elsewhere, as it would personalise their bulletins a lot more than the static out of focus control room image they currently use across the entire network.

Anyway, Jon Stanhope’s press release goes on to mention some previous winners of the award, namely:

The Canberra Times for its contribution to the bushfire recovery, WIN News for continuing to maintain an excellent local news service, and radio station 2XX for many years of service to community radio.

It also mentions 666 ABC Canberra for their work during the 2003 bushfire. I have to say that I didn’t understand that award. It really should have been a joint award between 666 ABC Canberra, 2CC, 2CA, WIN News and ABC TV News. 2CC and 2CA (2CC took over 2CA for the day) did just as much work as 666 covering the fires, the WIN staff came in without being asked and put on a special bulletin..one Jon Stanhope should remember as I seem to recall him being interviewed by Peter Leonard during the bulletin, and ABC TV News also put on a special coverage of the fire. Why one group was singled out when they all did excellent work is beyond me.

I suppose that’s a discussion for another day, as today I should really just be congratulating Peter Leonard on another fabulous achievement. The award is thoroughly deserved.

Samuel

Entry Filed under: Canberra Stories,Entertainment,Samuel's Editorials,TV/Radio/Media

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