Today in Smithsonian History: September 12, 1987

“Smithsonian World” executive producer Adrian Malone (left) and SI television consultant Tom Wolf proudly display the Emmy Award for Outstanding Informational Series. (Photo by Dane Penland, as featured in the Torch, November 1987)

September 12, 1987 The television series Smithsonian World wins an Emmy Award for Outstanding Informational Series. Smithsonian World also won an Emmy in 1985 for Outstanding Informational, Cultural or Historical Programming.

Smithsonian World was an ambitious television series covering the arts, sciences and humanities, hosted by David McCullough and coproduced for public television by WETA in Washington, D.C., and the Office of Telecommunications of the Smithsonian Institution from 1984 to 1990. With its encyclopedic array of topics, Smithsonian World covered subjects ranging from the Panama Canal to Anne Morrow Lindbergh to a rare Sumatran tiger. In 1994, cable’s Learning Channel started airing ’80s episodes under the umbrella “Smithsonian Treasures.”

Read more about the legendary producer Adrian Malone, who died in 2015, in this reminiscence by former colleague Elizabeth Smith Brownstein.

Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution Archives

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