WBFF-Fox-45-TV won eight Emmy Awards Saturday night. Among the winners are (left to right): Jennifer Gilbert, Kath- leen Cairns, David Larson, Melinda Roeder and Stephen Janis.
AS OTHER MAJOR NETWORKS GET 1 EACH
Investigative Producer Stephen Janis is first
to win Emmy and MDDC investigative award
Baltimore television station WBFF-Fox45-TV won eight Emmy Awards, leading all other Maryland outlets, as regional Emmys were presented Saturday night at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.
The area’s three major-network TV outlets — WBAL-Channel11, WJZ-Channel13, and WMAR-Channel2 — each won one Emmy apiece.
Leading the Fox News team was Melinda Roeder, who won two Emmys, one for general assignment reporting, the other in concert with Investigative Producer Stephen Janis, whose three-part “Controversial State Center Development” series Emmy was also shared by Photographer Paul McGrew.
Janis joined Fox45 in 2011 after founding and reporting for Investigative Voice, the precursor of Voice of Baltimore, which was named Baltimore’s Best Online News Source by Baltimore Magazine in 2010.
He is the first to win a regional Emmy as well as a Maryland-Delaware-District of Columbia (MDDC) Press Association Award for investigative reporting.
The station’s David Larson was named Best Photographer of the Year for his video essay, “We Have Not Forgotten.”
Other WBFF Emmys went to anchor Jennifer Gilbert for arts and entertainment, and Kathleen Cairns for her sports news feature, “Madame Butterfly.”
Additional Baltimore outlets to win Emmys were Maryland Public Television, which won six, while MASN and Comcast SportsNet garnered five apiece.
WBAL-Radio host Ron Smith, who died of pancreatic cancer in December, was named posthumously as recipient of the Ted Yates Award. (Yates was an NBC reporter who was killed in Jerusalem when the Six-Day War broke out in 1967 and his camera crew came under fire.)
Smith’s widow accepted the award Saturday for her husband.
Other TV outlets to win regional Emmys included WTVR-Channel6 in Richmond, which won 12, along with Washington stations WRC-Channel4, 11, WJLA-Channel7, 10, and WTTG-Channel5, 9, leading Baltimore Sun TV Critic David Zurawik to note that WBFF’s singular accomplishment “was only good for a fifth place finish behind one Virginia and three Washington stations.”
The 54th annual awards were presented by the National Capital Chesapeake Bay Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
— Alan Z. Forman
alforman@voiceofbaltimore.org
