When the cheers and whoops faded, the outcome at the 20th annual Heartland Regional Emmy Awards was the same – KUSA- Channel 9 remains the gorilla in the kitchen.
As it does year after year, Channel 9 came up the big winner at the Seawell Ballroom on Saturday, bagging 28 statues, compared to 11 for its closest competitor, KCNC-Channel 4.
A surprise force this year was the newly hatched MetroBeat TV, Denver, carried on metro- area Channel 8s, which won four awards for its long-form documentaries and public forums.
KMGH-Channel 7 won nine times; KWGN-Channel 2, five; KDVR-Channel 31, three, and Rocky Mountain PBS, two.
Other highlights:
Mark Koebrich was “indisposed” in the men’s room when his name was called as top news anchor. “A guy told me some moron won and didn’t show up. It was me!” He got there in time.
Busted recently to a part-time employee at Channel 4, Marcia Neville, the high school sports specialist dubbed “queen of the pep rally” by colleague Greg Moody, won three Emmys, including two for her “Colorado Sportswomen” specials.
Paula Woodward, one of six inducted into the Silver Circle for 25 years in the biz, joked that while she’s been at Channel 9 since 1977, she’s only 31 years old. Later, Neville, accepting one of her awards, cracked, “Yeah, Paula’s 31. That makes me 12.”
Denver District Court Judge Larry Naves dutifully videotaped his wife, Bertha Lynn, as she gave her thanks as a Silver Circle inductee.
Mike Nelson of KWGN-Channel 7 and Kathy Sabine, the woman he left behind at Channel 9, tied as best weather anchor.
Silver Circle inductee Roger Cornish of KWCH-TV in Wichita, Kan., took only 30 seconds to say thank you. Others might have followed his example.
Radio voice Randy Jay from KXKL 105.1-FM doggedly kept attendees from fleeing with a series of drawings for door prizes.
To be fair, there was an attempt to speed up the awards process this year by eliminating acceptance speeches but the show still droned on for three hours. If producers of the annual aren’t-we-great festival really want to pare the marathon, they should mail out awards for “promos” and technical excellence.
While we’re at it, one more piece of unsolicited advice to individual stations – tone down the cheerleading. Particularly boisterous was Channel 7. As a football coach once chastised a player for an over-the-top end-zone dance, “Act like you’ve been there before.”
A complete list of winners from Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma in 77 categories is online at emmyawards.tv.
Quotable
“We were swimming in money then.” Paula Woodward, looking back on the days when local news was a coverage-at-any-cost enterprise.
Dick Kreck’s column appears Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. He may be reached at 303-954-1456 or dkreck@denverpost.com.
