NBC, HBO, AMC and PBS Top WGA Awards

The Writers Guild handed out its awards Saturday Night in New York and writers for pay cable, commercial broadcasting and noncommercial broadcasting networks shared top honors among the television programming winners.

Writers for NBC, HBO, AMC and PBS topped the awards with three apiece. NBC's awards were for 30 Rock (best comedy series and best episode) and the writing team on Saturday Night Live (comedy/variety series). HBO awards went to the writers of In Treatment (new series), Recount (long-form original), and John Adams (long-form adapation).

AMC won for Mad Men (drama); the pilot of Breaking Bad (episodic drama, one-time airing).

PBS awards went to Secrets of the Parthenon (documentary), Frontline's Bush's War: Part One (documentary-current events); and Bill Moyers Journal, Yankee Stadium and the Gilded Age (news analysis, feature or commentary), and shared an award with IFC for the 2008 Film Independent Spirit Awards.

ABC writers took home two awards, and Fox, CBS and Nickelodeon collected one apiece.

CBS also won both promotional writing and graphic art awards for promo Jericho: Two Minute Drills and the medical animations on CBS Evening News.

Click here for the complete list of winners.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.