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Lena Dunham, Louis CK, Lorne Michaels win Peabody Awards

The 72nd annual Peabody Award winners were announced on March 27, 2013.

The recipients of the world’s oldest awards for electronic media were named in a ceremony in the Peabody Gallery on the University of Georgia Campus and they “reflect diversity in content, genre and sources of origination.”

Lena Dunham won for her HBO show Girls, described by the group as a “comedy-drama about the young and the feckless in New York,” while Louis CK won for his FX comedy Louie, a “serrated, boundary-testing take on being a single, showbiz dad.”

Saturday Night Live’s Lorne Michaels picked up a rare individual Peabody for still discovering new comic talents, incubating ideas and nurturing careers” after 38 years as the show’s executive producer.

Documentary honourees include the Smithsonian Channel’s MLK: The Assassination Tapes, “in which rare archival footage was fused into a gripping reconstruction of the events surrounding the Civil Rights leader’s 1968 murder,” and Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present, “an HBO film about the performance-art pioneer that’s as challenging and outrageous as she is.”

“Our list of Peabody recipients for 2012 demonstrates the range of superb work,” said Horace Newcomb, director of the Peabody Awards. “From local to national to international, from radio to television, broadcast to cable to web, the Peabody sets the goals for every type of media production. We’ll continue to do this, no matter how the world of electronic media develops.”

The Peabody Awards will be handed out in a ceremony hosted by CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley in Manhattan on May 20.

Find the complete list of winners here.

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