PBS News and Documentaries Earns 16 Emmy Nominations

The 33rd Annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards, honoring programming distributed during the calendar year 2011, will be presented on Monday, Oct. 1, 2012, at a ceremony at Frederick P. Rose Hall, Home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, located in the Time Warner Center in New York City. Emmy Awards will be presented in 42 categories, including Breaking News, Investigative Reporting, Outstanding Interview and Best Documentary, among others.
POV (Point of View) , public television's premier showcase for independent documentaries, has received 16 nominations in the 2012 News & Documentary Emmy® Awards, an all-time high for the series celebrating its 25th season on PBS. The nominees were announced today by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. POV came in second to CBS' "60 Minutes" in nominations. Four POV films, Armadillo, Better This World, Enemies of the People and Last Train Home, were nominated for Best Documentary. Four other films received nominations: the feature-length Mugabe and the White African and Where Soldiers Come From and the shorts Flawed and Miss Devine (featured in the StoryCorps Animated Series). PBS received 37 nominations in total.

"The films that the News & Documentary Emmys honor today with nominations represent some of the most creative voices in nonfiction film," said Simon Kilmurry, Executive Producer of POV. "For POV programs to receive 16 nominations during our 25th anniversary season highlights why documentaries have become such an important part of our culture."  "Documentaries are a reflection of our times," added Cynthia Lopez, Co-Executive Producer of POV.
"These nominations indicate how conflict at home and abroad, the role of soldiers and veterans as our global ambassadors and the struggle for identity are all vital content for understanding our world."
POV has won 27 Emmy Awards, including a 2007 Special News & Documentary Emmy for Excellence in Television Documentary Filmmaking. POV has garnered a total of 104 Emmy nominations, including a 2011 Primetime Emmy® nomination for The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. POV has also won 15 George Foster Peabody Awards, 10 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Broadcast Journalism Awards, four Independent Spirit Awards, three Academy Awards®, the Prix Italia, the Webby, two International Documentary Association Awards for Best Continuing Series and the National Association of Latino Independent Producers' Corporate Commitment to Diversity Award.

Produced by American Documentary, Inc. and now in its 25th season on PBS, the award-winning POV series is the longest-running showcase on American television to feature the work of today's best independent documentary filmmakers. Airing June through October with primetime specials during the year, POV has brought more than 325 acclaimed documentaries to millions nationwide and has a Webby Award-winning online series, POV's Borders. Since 1988, POV has pioneered the art of presentation and outreach using independent nonfiction media to build new communities in conversation about today's most pressing social issues.
American Documentary, Inc. (AmDoc) is a multimedia company dedicated to creating, identifying and presenting contemporary stories that express opinions and perspectives rarely featured in mainstream media outlets. AmDoc is a catalyst for public culture, developing collaborative strategic engagement activities around socially relevant content on television, online and in community settings. These activities are designed to trigger action, from dialogue and feedback to educational opportunities and community participation.