Attenborough To Receive Top IBC Honor

Sir David Attenborough will be the recipient of IBC's 2011 International Honor for Excellence, the highest honor that IBC bestows.
In recognition of his career in television and, in particular, natural history he will be presented with the award on September 11 during the trade show.
The award is given to individuals and organisations that have taken the best technology available to create the finest broadcasting content.
"Sir David Attenborough has been called 'the greatest broadcaster of our time', and throughout his career he has seized upon the latest developments in technology to illuminate natural history,"said chairman of the IBC Council Peter Owen.
Joining the BBC in 1952 Sir David immediately found his vocation in natural history programming. He made his name in front of the camera, as well as producing, with the Zoo Quest expeditions, in which he and a small crew set off with a 16mm camera to a remote corner of the globe, intending to return with a rare animal for London Zoo and sufficient footage to create a television series.
In the mid 1960s Sir David temporarily pulled back from making program when he was appointed the controller of the newly launched channel BBC2. Among the programs he commissioned was Monty Python’s Flying Circus—about as far from natural history as it is possible to imagine. But the natural world was too big a draw and he returned to finding new ways of presenting its wonders on television. The 1979 landmark series Life on Earth and its sequence with mountain gorillas became one of the most watched programs of all time.
His career spans almost 60 years, with his current Atlantic Productions documentary ,Flying Monsters 3D with Sir David Attenborough, one of the most acclaimed programs commissioned by Sky 3D.
Sir David said, "I am greatly honored to receive this award from IBC. Throughout my career I have used the best technology available. When I started, this was 16mm film, which gave us lightweight cameras to take into the wild. Since then my journey has taken me from black and white to color and from film to digital high definition, and today I am excited to be involved in 3D production, which really immerses the viewer in the scene."
The IBC Awards Ceremony will take place on Sunday 11 September in the RAI Auditorium at 18:30.
(LB/BMcC)