Sir David Attenborough wins IBC’s highest honour

London – The winner of the IBC2011 International Honour for Excellence is Sir David Attenborough, in recognition of his remarkable career in television (in particular, natural history), which spans almost 60 years.

The International Honour for Excellence is the highest award which IBC bestows. It is presented to individuals and organizations which have taken the best technology available – and driven technology forward – to create the finest broadcasting content.

Sir David Attenborough joined the BBC in 1952 and immediately found his vocation in natural history programming. In the mid 1960s Sir David temporarily pulled back from making programmes when he was appointed the controller of the newly launched channel BBC2. Among the programmes he commissioned were Monty Python’s “Flying Circus” and the 1979 landmark series, “Life on Earth”, in which its sequence with mountain gorillas became one of the most watched programmes of all time.

“Sir David Attenborough has been called ‘the greatest broadcaster of our time’, and throughout his career he has seized upon the latest developments in technology to illuminate natural history,” said Peter Owen, chairman of the IBC Council. “Working with the BBC Natural History Unit he pioneered time-lapse sequences in The Private Life of Plants and low-light and infrared cameras to capture the behaviour of nocturnal mammals.”