KARE and Huppert Nab National Emmy Nomination

Having fallen far out of the habit of watching primetime network TV, I can’t add much to any discussion of who got hosed when the Emmy nominations were announced today.

I was pleased with the final season of The Sopranos, which by all the nods looks to clean-up big time at the Emmy Awards Show in September. I watched most of Lost and thought it rebounded well from a lousy third season. But it didn’t rate an Outstanding Drama nomination. Likewise, The Wire, on HBO, has been a terrific series for years and still can’t get a couple cheap statuettes for its troubles.

Meanwhile, 24 got stiffed and I hear no complaints from anyone who watched that thing week after week last winter and spring.

But I have to acknowledge the respect the Academy showed KARE here in the Twin Cities with a “real” Emmy — in the news categories announced yesterday — for a four-minute feature called “Portrait of Compassion,” broadcast on KARE last November and picked up by The Today Show a couple months later. According to KARE News Director Tom Lindner, the show ran unedited, a rare occurrence when the network dogs get their paws on an affiliate’s work.

“Portrait of Compassion,” reported by Boyd Huppert and photographed by John Drilling, profiles a Utah artist, Kaziah Hancock, who has taken upon herself the duty of painting a portrait of every U.S. soldier killed in Iraq and sending it to the surviving family free of charge.

Lindner remembers seeing a blurb about the woman, “maybe in People Magazine or somewhere.” Following this, he dispatched Drilling and Huppert, an unusually deft and sensitive TV writer, to Utah, then up to Northome, and finally to the home of the parents of Staff Sargent Dale Panchot, for the portrait’s arrival.

Here is the text of Huppert’s story.

Here is the story as it appeared on KARE and NBC.

Here is a link to the artist’s website.

The other nominees for Outstanding Feature Story in a Regularly Scheduled Newscast include two CBS Sunday Morning pieces, one by Bill Geist, and one from ABC World News with Charles Gibson, so don’t ask what the odds are. But even a nomination for a national Emmy looks good in the resumé.

Attaboys.