Renaissance Center wins Emmys for teen parenting video, photography

Release Date: 1/29/2009. Expired: 2/28/2009

The Renaissance Center’s Multimedia Department brought home two trophies at the 23rd annual Midsouth Regional Emmy Awards presented Saturday, Jan. 24, at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville.

The center picked up awards in the Public Affairs and Photography categories.

The Nashville/Midsouth Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) announced winners in 75 categories at a ceremony hosted by singer/songwriter Hal Ketchum.

The Renaissance Center won the Emmy Award in the Public Affairs category for Baby Daddy/ Baby Momma, a video project produced for the Tennessee District Attorneys General Conference on the consequences of teens becoming parents. The program was written by David Van Hooser and produced by Van Hooser, Barry Cross, Ken Tucker and Annette Nole Hall. Executive producers were Doug Jackson and Steve Hall.

Instead of taking a morality or religion-based approach, Baby Daddy/Baby Momma tries to reach teens by making them aware of the more tangible consequences of becoming pregnant and having a baby through first-person accounts of actual teen parents. The teens featured in the video talk about the lifestyle changes, financial responsibility and other affects that having children brought into their lives.

The video was distributed to district attorneys across the state last fall to show in schools as part of the TDAGC’s What’s the Rush? Don’t Be a Teen Parent campaign.

The Emmy Award marked Van Hooser’s fifth since joining The Renaissance Center and brought his total to 21 for his television career in Middle Tennessee.

Ken Tucker, production manager at The Renaissance Center, won his second consecutive Emmy Award in the Photography/Program (Non-News) category. Tucker was recognized for his camera work on Machine Falls, a segment on Tennessee’s Wild Side, the center’s award-winning outdoors program produced with the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.

Tucker followed renowned nature photographer Byron Jorjorian to the Short Springs Natural Area in Coffee County as he explored one of the area’s main attractions, Machine Falls. Short Springs is one of 77 natural areas across the state designated by the Tennessee General Assembly to provide long-term protection for the state’s rare, threatened and endangered plant and animal life.

Tucker tied for the award with Mike Burke of UNC-TV in North Carolina.

The Emmy Award is Tucker’s ninth since The Renaissance Center opened in 1999 and gives him more than a dozen over his career as a photojournalist and producer.

Tucker’s award represents the sixth Emmy Award presented to Tennessee’s Wild Side, which airs on PBS stations across Tennessee and the Kentucky Educational Television network.

In the nine years that the Multimedia Department has existed, it has received 57 Emmy Award nominations and earned 17 wins.

The Nashville/Midsouth Chapter of NATAS represents television stations and production companies in Tennessee, North Carolina and northern Alabama. Nearly 750 entries were received from 63 stations and companies for the 23rd annual awards competition.

For more information on The Renaissance Center’s Multimedia Department, call (615) 740-5506 or visit www.rcenter.org.

The Renaissance Center is a fine arts education, performing arts and television production center at 855 Highway 46 South in Dickson, just 35 miles west of Nashville on Interstate 40 at exit 172.

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