Robert Trachinger Award
for Excellent Young Media Professionals
EBIZZ.TV donates the ROBERT TRACHINGER AWARD FOR EXCELLENT YOUNG
MEDIA PROFESSIONALS in honor of media pioneer Robert Trachinger
- for his professional and humanistic values - to young international
media artists and our current new world of media professionals.
Robert Trachinger stands for responsibility and sensitivity to the
human condition: the artistic and managerial courage to tell today's
stories well.
The award is valued $ 10.000,-.
About Robert Trachinger
(born 1923, New York, NY)
Robert Trachinger's professional life combined the corporate world and
academia.
He is Professor Emeritus of UCLA and a Fulbright scholar. From 1968 to
1998 he taught at UCLA's School of Theater, Film and Television, with
emphasis on humanistic leadership, ethics, creative media skills,
production competence, and the remarkable art of storytelling.
His original career was in television. He retired in 1985 as Vice
President and General Manager of ABC-TV in Hollywood, California.
A television pioneer, Robert Trachinger had joined WTMJ-TV,
Milwaukee/Wisconsin, in 1948 as cameraman and video operations
engineer. In 1950, the American Broadcasting Company in Hollywood
hired him as cameraman evolving into a 35-year tenure. He was
Technical Director on many of the network's first coast-to-coast
shows. When promoted to Manager of Broadcast Engineering in 1958, he
worked side by side with Roone Arledge, President of ABC-TV Sports, on
the evolution and development of innovative concepts revolutionary for
television sports production. In 1964, he was made Director of Program
Development and Operations at ABC Sports in New York. In that
capacity, he was involved in the production, development, and design
of many shows, including the "American Sportsman". He produced and
supervised shows in Kenya, India, France, Russia, and throughout the
United States.
Robert Trachinger is best known in engineering circles for initiating
the original concept and experimental work resulting in the first
successful black-and-white slow motion videotape. He was responsible
for the development of the first broadcast quality hand-held cameras
which were the forerunners of the electronic news gathering (ENG)
cameras. The underwater electronic camera was developed in his home
swimming pool. All of these creative innovations were exclusive to
ABC-TV for years and contributed greatly to ABC Sports' foremost
position. The National Association of Broadcasters honored him for his
work on the development of videotape.
1966 saw him promoted to Executive Producer for ABC's owned television
station in Los Angeles. He won two EMMY AWARDS for documentaries and
was recognized for "Decision to Die" which exposed and explored the
high rate of suicide among American adolescents - a subject which had
been unmentionable in TV for 20 years. UCLA invited him to a symposium
on the production of his documentaries which grew into the avocation
of teaching. This led to his parallel academic career spanning over 30
years at UCLA.
In 1971, UCLA recruited him for a year to reorganize its Media Center.
He then returned to ABC-TV and maintained his professional
relationship with the university. Robert Trachinger was promoted to
Vice President of ABC-Television in 1978. In 1980, he was assigned the
additional duties of Executive in charge of Broadcast Operations and
Engineering for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
Upon retiring from ABC-TV after 35 years, Robert Trachinger received a
one year Fulbright-Award as Senior Professor at Gutenberg University,
Institut fuer Publizistik, Mainz/Germany, in 1985-86. Professor
Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann and Professor Hans-Mathias Kepplinger were
hosts. Teaching German students in English to create television
productions was an eye-opening cross-cultural enrichment. During the
Fulbright year, he followed invitations to teach at the Sorbonne in
Paris and Tel Aviv University.
Back in the USA, he occasionally taught at the College of Santa Fe,
New Mexico, where he also fostered a partnership between academia and
the corporate world.
Trained as a para-professional in the field of psychology, Robert Trachinger has worked with young people in Upward Bound programs and
facilitated encounter groups for disadvantaged youths. After moving
from Los Angeles to San Diego in 1989, he lectured at the University
of California San Diego, and became a counselor for caregivers of
Alzheimers patients. Counseling young people is an ongoing avocation.
On Crystal Cruise ships, he turned storyteller about the hilarious
early days of live television. A "Media Legend" award was bestowed on
him in 1997.
In the new millenium, Robert Trachinger lives with is wife Helga in
Rancho Santa Fe, California. He has a son Set in Boulder, Colorado.
His daughter Mia Trachinger, a UCLA graduate, is a script writer and
filmmaker and lives with her husband Jason Brush and daughter Lotte in
Los Angeles.
For more information about the Robert TRACHINGER AWARD FOR EXCELLENT YOUNG MEDIA PROFESSIONALS please contact award@ebizz.tv.
|
