(Altoona) On Saturday night, the KSOM/KS95 news team brought home ten awards in small market radio at the Iowa Broadcast News Association Annual Awards Banquet at the Prairie Meadows Event Center in Altoona.
Tom Robinson received first-place awards in Public Affairs, Farm and Agribusiness, and Spot News coverage. He also received second place for Political coverage and third-place awards in Spot News and General Reporting.
Bennett Blake received a first-place award in Best Sportscast, second place in Feature, and a third-place award in the Play-by-Play categories.
Mandy Billings received a third-place award in the depth/series category.
Retired KCCI TV and Iowa Public Radio Journalist Rick Fredericksen was named the winner of the Jack Shelley Award. He began his career in the military, where he learned the broadcast trade and was on the air on the Armed Forces Radio Network in Vietnam. That’s the network highlighted in the movie “Good Morning Vietnam.”
He returned to Iowa and the news department of what was then KRNT TV. The station became KCCI, and Fredericksen was part of the first dual anchor team behind the Channel 8 news desk.
He left KCCI to take a job as a news anchor in Hawaii; he left there to become bureau chief for CBS News in Bangkok, Thailand. Fredericksen returned to Iowa once again, joining Iowa Public Radio and working until his retirement.
