Horace Newcomb

It won’t do to call retiring Peabody Awards Director Horace Newcomb “Mr. Peabody.” That designation already attaches to the award’s namesake, philanthropist George Foster Peabody, not to mention a certain erudite canine who hung out in the same cartoon realm as Bullwinkle J. Moose and Dudley Do-Right. “Mr. Television” won’t do, either. Milton Berle acquired that nickname around the same time that young Horace Newcomb’s family was getting its first TV set. That leaves “Mr. Television Studies,” which may not be as zingy but does well suit the courtly scholar from Mississippi who built a resume that made him the ideal overseer of the classiest, most revered prize for TV, radio and other electronic media that there is or ever will be.