NATAS Announces 2022 Award Ceremonies, Lifetime Achievement Honorees

• Yvette Kanouff (Television Technology & Engineering) A technology entrepreneur who has been involved in digital transformation worldwide for 25 years, Yvette Kanouff is an entrepreneur who has received numerous industry honors and awards throughout her career. In addition, she holds numerous patents andis an an active participant in industry organizations, standards bodies, and leading industry technology efforts.
  
  
• This Old House (Daytime Television) – The venerable home improvement series joins Sesame Street and 60 Minutes as the only programs — rather than individuals — to receive Lifetime Achievement awards from NATAS.  Like its peers in receiving this honor, This Old House has defined its genre and has become a television mainstay over the course of its 43-year run.
  
  
• John Aniston (Daytime Television) – John Aniston, who received a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in 2017, has been a regular on the “Days of Our Lives” for more than 35 years, portraying the nefarious Victor Kiriakis.  Throughout the years, he has also amassed a robust theater resume both on-and-off-Broadway.
  
  
• Sir David Attenborough (Documentary Television)  – One of the world’s preeminent natural history documentarians, Sir David Attenborough is a multiple-time Emmy and BAFTA Award winner.  Attenborough’s Life collection, created with the BBC’s Natural History Unit, is an unparalleled look into the plants and animals of our planet.
  
  
• LeVar Burton (Children’s & Family Television) – The longtime literacy advocate and host of “Reading Rainbow,” who taught a generation about the joys of reading, has won more than 20 Emmy Awards.  Burton currently hosts his own podcast, ‘LeVar Burton Reads,’  and has a YouTube Series ‘This Is My Story’ which highlights racism in America.
  
  
• Lesley Visser (Sports Television) – Trailblazing sports journalist Lesley Visser, who is enshrined in six different halls of fame, is the most highly acclaimed female sportscaster of all time.  She is the only sportscaster, male or female, to have worked on the network broadcasts of the Final Four, the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the Olympics, the World Series, the Triple Crown, the World Figure Skating Championship and the US Open Tennis.
  
  
• Judy Woodruff (News Television) –  A news and political journalist for more than five decades, Judy Woodruff is the anchor and managing editor of the PBS NewsHour. She has served as Washington correspondent for NBC News and PBS and a senior correspondent for both CNN and PBS, and reported on every national political convention and presidential campaign since 1976.
  
  

Attenborough joined the BBC in 1952 and, within several years, created his acclaimed Zoo Quest series – filming wild animals in their natural habitat. By 1965, he became Controller of BBC2 and responsible for the introduction of color television into Britain. In 1973, he left BBC senior management to return to program-making. The internationally acclaimed, thirteen-part series Life On Earth was the most ambitious series that had ever been produced by the BBC’s Natural History Unit, and created the famous ‘landmark’ format that continues to make the Natural History Unit world renowned to this day. 

Attenborough won the Emmy for Outstanding Narration for both Seven Worlds and Our Planet. Additionally, he narrated The Year the Earth Changed for Apple TV+, its highest-rated unscripted show for 2021, and will be narrating the platform’s upcoming series Prehistoric Planet. Other narrations include The Mating Game, Dynasties II and Frozen Planet II.

Throughout the 1990s and 2000’s, Attenborough presented natural history series to huge global audiences, including The Trials of Life (1990), The Private Life of Plants (1995), and The Life of Birds (1998), The Blue Planet (2000), Planet Earth (2006), Life (2009), Africa (2013) and Life Story (2014).  Attenborough has presented the four-time BAFTA and two-time Emmy award-winning series Planet Earth II (2016) along with Emmy award winning series Blue Planet II, (2017). In November 2021, he appeared in Glasgow at the COP26 climate summit for the premiere of The Green Planet and to address world leaders on the need to address climate change in his role as “People’s Advocate.”

In April 2022, Attenborough was named as ‘Champion of the Earth’ by the UN’s Environment Programme (UNEP) which is the highest recognition from the United Nations for his commitment to telling stories about climate change and the natural world.