ABC Action News recently won the top honors at the 38th Annual Suncoast Emmy Awards. ABC Action News/WFTS-TV was named Emmy Winner for Overall Station Excellence. The news team also won Emmy Awards in the highly sought after categories for Breaking News Coverage and a special I-Team Investigation.
Here are the 2014 ABC Action News Program winners with a link, where available, to the coverage:
- STATION EXCELLENCE – ABC Action News/WFTS-TV
- BREAKING NEWS - Dunedin Sinkhole
- I-Team – Insult to Injury
- Sports Feature – News, Views & Miscues
The Now Tampa Bay host Laura Harris led the on-air Breaking News coverage the day a sinkhole opened in Dunedin threatening a whole neighborhood. Here’s what Laura remembers, “We got the call of a possible sinkhole in Dunedin while we were doing another story at the Pinellas County Courthouse that morning. Corey gets us to the scene on Robmar Rd. where the huge hole opened and established a live signal quicker than the speed of sound. We were the first crew there, the first on the air… and we brought unique coverage throughout the next two days. Corey and I even got the first LIVE interview with the family who was inside the home when the sinkhole opened, even showing the family what was happening to their home on my cell phone via our Action News App from Action Air One. Thankfully no one was hurt and I do believe it was the on-air and online coverage of ABC Action News people of the Bay Area were counting on throughout the process.”
The ABC Action News I-Team exposed an important community story in a series of reports. I-Team Investigator Adam Walser tells us how it came about, “We looked at the rising costs of trauma care in the state of Florida, including a hospital organization that charged trauma fees of up to $33,000 the second patients arrive for care. We also examined issues involving pediatric trauma care, in which children’s lives may have been lost because they were taken to the wrong hospitals, where the care they needed wasn’t available. The project resulted in Hospital Corporation of America, the state’s largest operator of trauma centers, waiving trauma fees for uninsured patients and contributed to the Florida legislature refusing to adopt a new law favorable to HCA, which would have “grandfathered” new trauma centers opened against existing Board of Health rules.”
For a full list of winners, Click Here.
The Suncoast Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences is a nonprofit Florida corporation dedicated to excellence in television. We offer annual EMMY® Awards called The Suncoast EMMY® Awards to television markets in the entire State of Florida, Alexandria, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Lake Charles and New Orleans, Louisiana, Mobile, Alabama, Thomasville, Georgia and Puerto Rico.
