ATHENS, Georgia (AP) — The winners of the 2009 Peabody Awards, announced yesterday, include the ABC sitcom "Modern Family," Fox network's "Glee," CBS' "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson" and HBO's "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency."

The awards recognise achievement and public service by TV and radio stations, networks, producing organisations, individuals and the Internet.

Other winners include the BBC's dramatic reconstruction "The Day that Lehman Died" and "Noodle Road," a survey of the Asian culinary staple by South Korea's KBS 1TV.

Hong Kong-based Now-Broadband TV News Channel, which won a Peabody in 2008 for its coverage of the Sichuan earthquake in China, won again for "Sichuan Earthquake: One Year On," anniversary coverage that asked hard questions about construction standards that may have increased the quake's death toll.

"To those who say all media content is the same, or presented from a single perspective, we offer this great range of material as a response," said Horace Newcomb, director of the Peabody Awards, in a statement.

"Our selections demonstrate that great work available in 2009 varied widely and appealed to viewers and listeners with very different tastes, interests and concerns," he said.

An award ceremony for the 69th annual Peabody Awards will be held May 17 in New York. It will be hosted by ABC "World News" anchor Diane Sawyer, who will receive an award for "A Hidden America: Children of the Mountains," a documentary shot in Appalachia.

Announcing the awards, Cully Clark, dean of UGA's Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, said "Modern Family," which follows the ups and downs of an extended family, "reinvents the situation comedy."

Other entertainment programming recognised with a Peabody included "Glee," a musical dramedy about the members of a high school singing club; "In Treatment," HBO's therapy drama; and "The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency," a series about a female detective in Botswana based on the novels by Alexander McCall Smith.

Blurring the line between entertainment and news, CBS' Scottish-born late-night talk-show host Craig Ferguson garnered an award for an interview with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who helped lead opposition to apartheid in South Africa in the 1980s.

The global financial crisis was a common theme among some winners, including "The Day that Lehman Died," PBS' "Frontline: The Madoff Affair" and Oregon Public Broadcasting's "Hard Times."

National Public Radio's website was heralded as a model for what a news site should be. The news organisation's Kabul bureau chief, Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, also got a nod for her extensive coverage of life inside Afghanistan.

The University of Georgia's Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication has administered the Peabodys in Athens since the programme's inception in 1940.