Category : BBC
Date : 24.03.2004
Printable version

BBC Yorkshire and Lincolnshire's Look North programme has been named Best Evening News Programme at the Ruby Television Awards which honour the achievements of the BBC's regional news broadcasting across the United Kingdom.

The awards were presented by the Acting Director-General of the BBC Mark Byford at a special ceremony hosted by Pat Loughrey, Director of Nations & Regions, and presented by Huw Edwards, held at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium last night (23 March 2004).

BBC North East & Cumbria, BBC South West, BBC South East and BBC South picked up two Ruby awards each.

Carol Malia was named Best Presenter and Peter Lugg and Mark Egan won the Broadcast of Diversity Issues category for the Look North programme.

Steve Briers won the award for Outstanding Camera Work for Spotlight and Janine Jansen was recognised for Best Use of PDP / Video Journalist Material for the Spotlight programme.

Neil Ansel and the BBC South East Today team won the award for Exclusive Story and Anna Fowler was recognised for Outstanding Craft Skills in Post Production for the South East Today programme.

Mark Sanders was named Best TV News Journalist and Roger Johnson was awarded the Ruby for Best Sports Coverage, one of three new categories for the South Today programme.

There were a further two awards in new categories, BBC West picked up the Best Coverage of Running Story award for Points West and BBC North West won the Best Live Sequence / OB award for North West Tonight.

A special award, the Nations and Regions Director's Award for Lifetime Achievement, was presented to BBC Wales' Wales Today sports correspondent Bob Humphrys who has worked at BBC Wales for 27 years.

Originally from Cardiff, he joined Radio Wales News in 1978 as a reporter/presenter from The Western Mail newspaper and in 1980 became chief reporter for BBC Wales flagship current affairs programme Week In Week Out.

In 1989 he joined the Wales Today team as Sports Correspondent.

He has received two BT Press Awards for Welsh Sports Reporter of the Year in 1994 and 1995.

Presenting Bob with the award, Pat Loughrey said: "Bob has a gift with words - not only finding accurate ones for the stories he's covered - but presenting and delivering them in such a way, and with such great wit, it's a joy to listen to his reports.

"As a great scriptwriter, he's always encouraged younger journalists to choose their words carefully and has taken the time to train new BBC recruits in the art of television scriptwriting.

"Above all, he has a passion for what he does – his enthusiasm about going on air live is infectious and seeing his work go out every night gives him a huge buzz."