Winners

• 1985: Grant Tinker
  Grant Tinker
  Grant Almerin Tinker is the former chairman and CEO of NBC from 1981 to 1986, co-founder of MTM Enterprises, and television producer. Tinker is the former husband of television actress Mary Tyler Moore...
  
  
• 1986: Walter Cronkite
  Walter Cronkite
  Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr. was an American broadcast journalist, best known as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years . During the heyday of CBS News in the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trusted man in America" after being so named in an opinion poll...
  
  
• 1987: Hill Street Blues
  Hill Street Blues
  Hill Street Blues is an American serial police drama that was first aired on NBC in 1981 and ran for 146 episodes on primetime into 1987. Chronicling the lives of the staff of a single police precinct in an unnamed American city, the show received critical acclaim and its production innovations ...
  
  
• 1988: David Brinkley
  David Brinkley
  David McClure Brinkley was an American newscaster for NBC and ABC in a career lasting from 1943 to 1997....
  
  
• 1989: Lucille Ball
  Lucille Ball
  Lucille Désirée Ball was an American comedian, film, television, stage and radio actress, model, film and television executive, and star of the sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy and Life With Lucy...
  
  
• 1990: Jim Henson
  Jim Henson
  James Maury "Jim" Henson was an American puppeteer best known as the creator of The Muppets. As a puppeteer, Henson performed in various television programs, such as Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, films such as The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper, and created advanced puppets for...
  
  
• 1991: Brandon Tartikoff
  Brandon Tartikoff
  Brandon Tartikoff was a television executive who was credited with turning around NBC's low prime time reputation with such hit series as Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, ALF, Family Ties, The Cosby Show, Cheers, Seinfeld, Miami Vice, The Golden Girls, Knight Rider, The A-Team, St...
  
  
• 1992: Johnny Carson
  Johnny Carson
  John William "Johnny" Carson was an American television host and comedian, known as host of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson for 30 years . Carson received six Emmy Awards including the Governor Award and a 1985 Peabody Award; he was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1987...
  
  
• 1993: Bob Hope
  Bob Hope
  Bob Hope, KBE, KCSG, KSS was a British-born American comedian and actor who appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in radio, television and movies. He was also noted for his work with the US Armed Forces and his numerous USO shows entertaining American military personnel...
  
  
• 1994: Charles Kuralt
  Charles Kuralt
  Charles Kuralt was an American journalist. He was most widely known for his long career with CBS, first for his "On the Road" segments on The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, and later as the first anchor of CBS News Sunday Morning, a position he held for fifteen years.Kuralt's "On the Road"...
  
  
• 1995: Ted Turner
  Ted Turner
  Robert Edward "Ted" Turner III is an American media mogul and philanthropist. As a businessman, he is known as founder of the cable news network CNN, the first dedicated 24-hour cable news channel. In addition, he founded WTBS, which pioneered the superstation concept in cable television...
  
  
• 1996: Angela Lansbury
  Angela Lansbury
  Angela Brigid Lansbury CBE is an English actress and singer in theatre, television and motion pictures, whose career has spanned eight decades and earned her more performance Tony Awards than any other individual , with five wins...
  
  
• 1997: Fred Rogers
• 1998: Roone Arledge
  Roone Arledge
  Roone Pickney Arledge, Jr. was an American sports broadcasting pioneer who was chairman of ABC News from 1977 until several years before his death, and a key part of the company's rise to competition with the two other main television networks, NBC and CBS, in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s.-Early...
  
  
• 1999: Norman Lear
  Norman Lear
  Norman Milton Lear is an American television writer and producer who produced such 1970s sitcoms as All in the Family, Sanford and Son, One Day at a Time, The Jeffersons, Good Times and Maude...
  
  
• 2000: Dick Van Dyke
  Dick Van Dyke
  Richard Wayne "Dick" Van Dyke is an American actor, comedian, writer, and producer with a career spanning six decades. He is the older brother of Jerry Van Dyke, and father of Barry Van Dyke...
  
  
• 2001: Sid Caesar
  Sid Caesar
  Isaac Sidney "Sid" Caesar is an Emmy award winning American comic actor and writer known as the leading man on the 1950s television series Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour, and to younger generations as Coach Calhoun in Grease and Grease 2.- Early life :Caesar was born in Yonkers, New York,...
  
  
• 2002: Bill Cosby
  Bill Cosby
  William Henry "Bill" Cosby, Jr. is an American comedian, actor, author, television producer, educator, musician and activist. A veteran stand-up performer, he got his start at various clubs, then landed a starring role in the 1960s action show, I Spy. He later starred in his own series, the...
  
  
• 2003: Carl Reiner
  Carl Reiner
  Carl Reiner is an American actor, film director, producer, writer and comedian. He has won nine Emmy Awards and one Grammy Award during this career...
  
  
• 2004: Don Hewitt
  Don Hewitt
  Donald Shepard "Don" Hewitt was an American television news producer and executive, best known for creating 60 Minutes, the CBS television news magazine, in 1968, which at the time of his death, was the longest-running prime-time broadcast on American television...
  
  
• 2005: Bob Newhart
  Bob Newhart
  George Robert Newhart , known professionally as Bob Newhart, is an American stand-up comedian and actor. Noted for his deadpan and slightly stammering delivery, Newhart came to prominence in the 1960s when his album of comedic monologues The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart was a worldwide...
  
  
• 2006: Carol Burnett
  Carol Burnett
  Carol Creighton Burnett is an American actress, comedian, singer, dancer and writer. Burnett started her career in New York. After becoming a hit on Broadway, she made her television debut...
  
  
• 2007: Mary Tyler Moore
  Mary Tyler Moore
  Mary Tyler Moore is an American actress, primarily known for her roles in television sitcoms. Moore is best known for The Mary Tyler Moore Show , in which she starred as Mary Richards, a 30-something single woman who worked as a local news producer in Minneapolis, and for her earlier role as...
  
  
• 2008: Lorne Michaels
  Lorne Michaels
  Lorne Michaels, CM is a Canadian-American television producer, writer, and comedian best known for creating and producing Saturday Night Live and producing the various film and TV projects that spun off from it.-Early life:...
  
  
• 2009: Betty White
  Betty White
  Betty White Ludden , better known as Betty White, is an American actress, comedienne, singer, author, and former game show personality. With a career spanning seven decades since 1939, she is best known to modern audiences for her television roles as Sue Ann Nivens on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and...
  
  
• 2010: James Garner
  James Garner
  James Garner is an American film and television actor, one of the first Hollywood actors to excel in both media. He has starred in several television series spanning a career of more than five decades...
  
  
• 2011: Oprah Winfrey
  Oprah Winfrey
  Oprah Winfrey is an American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer and philanthropist. Winfrey is best known for her self-titled, multi-award-winning talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011...