CPB Presents 2006 Fred Rogers Award to Children's Television Pioneer Samuel Y. Gibbon, Jr.

CPB Presents 2006 Fred Rogers Award to Children's Television Pioneer Samuel Y. Gibbon, Jr.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) today named children's television pioneer Samuel Y. Gibbon, Jr. the recipient of the 2006 Fred Rogers Award.

Writer, producer, media designer and educator in television, film, and interactive multimedia, Sam Gibbon began his career in children's television in 1957 as a member of CBS Television program staff assigned to Captain Kangaroo. Gibbon worked as a writer and associate producer for Captain Kangaroo from 1960 to 1967 before joining the Children's Television Workshop in 1968 as one of the original producers of Sesame Street. He later served as producer and executive producer of The Electric Company and as executive producer of 3-2-1 Contact during its period of development. Gibbon won Emmy awards for Sesame Street and The Electric Company.

"For more than a quarter century, Sam Gibbon demonstrated that television could not only teach, but that it could captivate a child's imagination by presenting information in an entertaining manner," said Patricia Harrison, president and CEO of CPB. "His work is very much in the spirit of Fred Rogers."

CPB created the Fred Rogers Award in 2001 to honor an individual or organization that, like Mr. Rogers, has contributed to excellence in children's educational media. For 32 years, as auteur of the groundbreaking PBS program "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," Fred Rogers shared his magical talents as a musician, songwriter, and master of puppet voices to educate children about the world in which they were growing up.

Past recipients of the Fred Rogers Award have been leaders within the fields of children's media and education. They include: Fred Rodgers (2001 inaugural award), Sesame Workshop (2002), LeVar Burton, Host of "Reading Rainbow" (2003), Shirley E. Timonere, Ohio Public Broadcasting executive and former teacher (2004), Dr. Milton Chen, Executive Director of the George Lucas Education Foundation (2005).

About the Corporation for Public Broadcasting:

CPB, a private, nonprofit corporation created by Congress in 1967, is the steward of the federal government's investment in public broadcasting. It helps support the operations of more than 1000 locally owned and operated public television and radio stations nationwide, and is the largest single source of funding for research, technology, and program development for public radio, television, and related on-line services.

Biography of Samuel Y. Gibbon, Jr.

Samuel Y. Gibbon, Jr. is retired after forty years as a writer, producer, media designer and educator in television, film, and interactive multimedia. He began his career in children's television in 1957 as a member of the CBS Television program staff assigned to Captain Kangaroo. He worked as a writer and associate producer for that program from 1960 to 1967. Upon its creation in 1968, he joined the Children's Television Workshop as one of the original producers of Sesame Street. He subsequently served as producer and executive producer of The Electric Company and as executive producer of 3-2-1 Contact during its period of development. He has won Emmy awards for Sesame Street and The Electric Company.

Often combining his creative work with teaching, Sam taught at Harvard University's Graduate School Education from 1972 to 1982 where he was also a producer in residence at the Center for Research in Children's Television. From 1981 to 1991, he served as executive director of the Bank Street College Project in Science and Mathematics, and was in charge of all aspects of the multimedia curriculum. This included the award-winning projects The Voyage of the Mimi and The Second Voyage of the Mimi.

For a portion of that time, he taught in the Department of Communication, Computing and Technology in Education at Teachers College at Columbia University.

Additionally and for many years, Sam worked in various roles with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. He served as a consultant and program officer responsible for grants for the purpose of education, public television programs and books. He also served as a member of the Advisory Committee for the Sloan Technology Service.

Mr. Gibbon received an A.B. degree in English Literature from Princeton University and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1952. In 1953 and 1954, he studied Elizabethan theater at University College, London as a Fulbright Fellow and received a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship.

Source: Corporation for Public Broadcasting

CONTACT: Michael Levy, Corporate and Public Affairs of Corporation for
Public Broadcasting, +1-202-879-9758, press@cpb.org

Web site: http://www.cpb.org/

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