Rose was presented the Charles Osgood Award for Excellence Broadcast Journalism, named for legendary broadcaster, WFUV alumnus, and 1954 Fordham graduate.

In his remarks, Osgood complimented Rose for his productivity and his recent inclusion by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

“I cannot imagine when he sleeps or where he keeps his Legion of Honor medal or all the Peabodys and Emmys and the other cups and plates,” said Osgood. “You deserve them all Charlie. With you accepting it, I feel honored.”

Rose returned the compliment to Osgood, a colleague at CBS.

“He understands that a picture is worth a thousand words, but a word can define a thousand pictures,” Rose said.

Emrick, a play-by-play announcer for NBC and NBCSN, and former voice of the New Jersey Devils for 21 seasons, was awarded the Vin Scully Lifetime Achievement Award in Sports Broadcasting, named after the Hall of Fame broadcaster, play-by-play voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and alumnus of WFUV.

Scully, who graduated from Fordham in 1949, lauded Emrick in a taped segment as “nice a guy as ever got into the profession, meticulous in his preparation, and able to effortlessly broadcast hockey matches.”  Bob Ahrens, executive sports producer at WFUV, presented Emrick with the award.

Emrick singled out Sam Flood, executive producer and NBC Sports, and Lou Oppenheim, CEO, Headline Media Management as key colleagues.

“For those of you who are students here tonight, 50 years from now I hope you have two people in your life who take as good care of you as Sam and Lou have done for me,” he said.

In a post-award discussion led by CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Jane Pauley, Rose said growing up as an only child in a tiny town in North Carolina had a profound effect on him.

“Conversation was the way you found your place—by asking questions, by being able to somehow figure out how curiosity would serve you well,” he said. “That’s where it all began for me.”

Emric, when asked how he manages to narrate the action of a game that moves at lightning speed, said that, ironically, it’s easier at the professional level than in amateur sports.

“When I was riding the bus leagues for several years, you’d have a 5-1 lead and it would become a 7-5 loss because there would be a lot of mistakes made and a lot of changes of possession. But at the level I get to work at now, its much more predictable,” he said.

The fundraising event, which replaced the annual gala that WFUV began celebrating in 2008, raised $200,000. On May 13, 2016, the station will celebrate its musical heritage with “The FUV High Line Bash: A Moveable Feast of Music and Food,” at Milk Studio in lower Manhattan.

Charlie Rose, anchor and executive editor of Charlie Rose, the nightly PBS program, and co-anchor of CBS This Morning, will receive the Charles Osgood Award for Excellence Broadcast Journalism, named for legendary broadcaster, WFUV alumnus, and 1954 Fordham alumnus.

Fordham welcomed Rose in 2008 as its commencement speaker and awarded him an honorary degree for his work profiling those on the cutting-edge of their fields, exploring fresh ideas, and illuminating difficult issues. In 2013, he won an Emmy Award and Peabody Prize for his interview that year with Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad. Just last year he was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine.

Mike Emrick, a play-by-play announcer for NBC and NBCSN and former voice of the New Jersey Devils for 21 seasons, will receive the Vin Scully Lifetime Achievement Award in Sports Broadcasting. The award is named after the Hall of Fame broadcaster, play-by-play voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and alumnus of Fordham (1949) and of WFUV.

Emrick, now in his 39th year covering professional hockey, has called more than 3,000 hockey games and worked on 25 consecutive Stanley Cup playoffs in his broadcast career. He served as the lead announcer for NBC’s coverage of men’s and women’s ice hockey at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, marking his seventh Winter Olympics assignment for NBC.

He is a two-time Emmy Award winner for best sports play-by-play personality.

Television anchor and journalist Jane Pauley will moderate an armchair discussion as the awardees reflect on their extraordinary careers. Two Fordham students who have demonstrated a commitment to pursuing media careers in news and sports will also be spotlighted.

The gala supports WFUV (90.7 FM), New York’s source for music discovery, and a noncommercial, member-supported public media service of Fordham University for more than 65 years.

For more information, contact [email protected] or (212) 636-6508.

Fans of WFUV, Fordham’s listener-supported public radio station, packed Manhattan’s Gotham Hall on May 8 to pay tribute to four standouts whose distinctive talents have shaped the entertainment industry past and present. FUV’s seventh Annual Gala raised $375,000 for the award-winning station, with online-auction bidding remaining open until May 22.

Supporters came out to celebrate soul and gospel legend Mavis Staples; veteran sportscaster Verne Lundquist; Katherine Oliver, former commissioner of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre, and Broadcasting; and NPR host Scott Simon.

Accepting the Artist of the Year Award, Staples recalled her late father, Pops Staples, leader of their family group, the Staple Singers.

“I can just see Pops right now,” said Staples “He’d say, ‘Mavis, they chose you? A station in New York City? That’s huge, that’s big. And it’s for the whole year?’”

Getting serious, she said, “I’m just so grateful to be here—to still be here.” The 74-year-old’s six-decade career has earned her a Grammy Award and a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. With the Staple Singers, she brought gospel-soul hits to the pop charts and protested alongside Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement.

“Mavis was the voice of that movement,” said Chicago Times music critic Greg Kot when he introduced her. “She is also the only woman,” he said, “who has reduced Prince and Bob Dylan to puddles of admiration and … love-struck mush.” Kot’s book I’ll Take You There: Mavis Staples, the Staple Singers, and the March Up Freedom’s Highway (Scribner) was published earlier this year.

The singer and her band—including her sister Yvonne—performed a rousing 30-minute set, opening with Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” and closing with the No. 1 hit “I’ll Take You There”—on which the audience enthusiastically sang backup.

Emceed by veteran New York DJ and WFUV afternoon host Dennis Elsas, the evening gave the station a chance to highlight its unique blend of music by new and legendary artists as well as quality news and sports that provide valuable training for student broadcasters. General Manager Chuck Singleton announced that the station’s weekly listeners now top 400,000.

“This is an audience delivered by quality,” said Scott Simon, the celebrated host of NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, who was honored with the WFUV Charles Osgood Lifetime Achievement Award. Simon’s tweets chronicling the final days of his mother’s life moved millions of readers in the Twitterverse and beyond last year.

Simon was introduced by Osgood himself, a 1954 Fordham graduate, who said that his father admired the work of Simon’s father, Ernie Simon, a radio host and comedian.

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, told the crowd that FUV is “all about excellence, it’s all about being slightly unexpected, and it’s all about New York”—a fitting opener for the presentation of the station’s Community Service Award to Katherine Oliver, a principal at Bloomberg Associates and pioneering commissioner of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre, and Broadcasting. In accepting the award, she thanked her boss of more than 12 years, former mayor Michael Bloomberg, who, she said, “continues to use media and technology to help change the world.”

In accepting the station’s Vin Scully Lifetime Achievement Award in Sports Broadcasting, Verne Lundquist, CBS Sports play-by-play announcer for the NCAA Tournament, recalled one of Scully’s calls from the 1988 World Series: An injured Kirk Gibson hobbled to the plate for the Dodgers and hit a home run. “In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened,” said Scully, a 1949 Fordham graduate who, like Osgood, began his career as a student broadcaster at WFUV.

In the midst of his 50th year as a broadcaster, Lundquist said, and a career of a lot of improbable moments, receiving the Vin Scully award “is the fulfillment of all of them.”

The evening opened with a performance by Amy Helm, daughter of the late Levon Helm, who received WFUV’s Artist of the Year award in 2010, and concluded with a live auction. Guests bid on rare items and special experiences, like a private concert for 20 by Suzanne Vega at WFUV’s Studio A and a VIP package for the Austin City Limits music festival. Fans and supporters can bid on many other items until May 22 via Charitybuzz, with all proceeds supporting WFUV.

WFUV (90.7 FM), Fordham’s public radio station, honored three greats in music and media at a Manhattan celebration filled with respected artists, longtime loyal listeners, and passionate supporters and music lovers. The event raised $500,000 for New York’s listener-supported, commercial-free

“rock and roots” station, which broadcasts from Keating Hall on the Rose Hill campus.

WFUV’s sixth Annual Gala paid tribute to prolific singer and songwriter Rosanne Cash, veteran newscaster Sam Donaldson, and legendary sportscaster Bob Costas at a benefit held May 9 at the Edison Ballroom on West 47th Street. The station’s community service award went to the Agnes Varis Charitable Trust, which supports affordable access to the arts, education, and healthcare.

A Grammy-winning artist and author of a critically acclaimed memoir, Cash spoke warmly about WFUV’s support upon receiving the 2013 Artist of the Year Award.

“[It’s great] to know that my favorite radio station likes me back!” she said. The daughter of Johnny Cash also praised the station for playing an eclectic mix of artists.

“It moves me to know that between Miles Davis and Bill Monroe and Patsy Cline and Buffalo Springfield, there’s a place for me.”

Cash and her band treated more than 300 guests to a rousing performance at the gala’s close, with ballads and foot-stomping numbers like “Radio Operator,” about her father’s Army service in Germany and his longing for her mother back in San Antonio.

On hand to celebrate were special guests Suzanne Vega, Marc Cohn and Elizabeth Vargas, Pete and Maura Kennedy (of the group The Kennedys), Garland Jeffreys, and Southside Johnny. The evening was filled with accolades for the station, which not only champions talented new artists, but also provides a training ground in news, sports, and music broadcasting for about 80 Fordham students each year.

“WFUV is New York’s most interesting, most creative radio station, hands down,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham. “Tonight is very ecumenical for us,” he joked, noting that Fordham and FUV, two Bronx institutions, were celebrating Costas, a man from Queens, and Donaldson, who is from Texas. He called them both men of “extraordinary insight and courage.”

Presenting Donaldson with the Charles Osgood Lifetime Achievement Award in Broadcast Journalism was Osgood himself, a 1954 Fordham graduate. “[Donaldson’s] fellow news broadcasters regard him as one of the best ever,” said Osgood, host of CBS Sunday Morning and an FUV alumnus.

In accepting the award, Donaldson reminisced about his decades-long career which included coverage of the Vietnam War and the White House. “When we started it was so much simpler,” said the 46-year ABC News veteran, yet he praised today’s “tough” broadcasters and the technology that allows them to deliver the news almost immediately.

Iconic sportscaster Bob Costas, winner of 24 Emmys and numerous other awards, was honored with the Vin Scully Lifetime Achievement Award in Sports Broadcasting. Scully, a 1949 Fordham graduate, provided a video introduction recorded at Dodgers Stadium in Los Angeles.

“To receive an award with Vin Scully’s name attached to it is really pretty much the pinnacle,” said Costas, who kept the audience rapt by dramatically reading from the transcript of Scully’s call of Dodger Sandy Koufax’s perfect game in 1965.

Emceed by WFUV’s DJs, including Program Director Rita Houston and Morning Host Corny O’Connell, LAW ’91, the evening included a cocktail hour, an opening performance by musician Alejandro Escovedo, and a live auction. Guests bid on a songwriting lesson from Cash, a private concert with the band The Lone Bellow, and a meet-and-greet with Costas at a New York Giants game, among other items.

“Paul is one of the most influential artists to ever pass through the WFUV studios,” said Rita Houston, WFUV’s legendary music director. “But it’s not just that he’s written so many timeless songs or that he embodies the musical diversity of the station. It’s his relentless quest to keep growing creatively.”

In lasting tribute to legendary broadcasters Charles Osgood and Vin Scully, both of whom started their careers at WFUV, WFUV created two annual Lifetime Achievement Awards in their names. Enberg and Lehrer were nominated by well-known colleagues in their respective fields, many of whom also started their careers at WFUV.

The gala will raise much-needed funds for WFUV — one of the three major public radio stations serving the New York City market. Funds will enable the station, located at Fordham University in The Bronx, to continue to provide unique music, news, and sports services, and train the next generation of journalistic talent.

Spring Gala ‘09 will begin at 6 p.m. with cocktails, followed at 8 p.m. by dinner, entertainment, and a terrific live auction that includes Adventures in Rock VIP Vacation Package to Dublin to hear U2; US Open Golf and Tennis VIP packages; and autographed rock memorabilia. Of course, there’s much, much more. The gala will be held at the Puck Building, 295 Lafayette St. (at Houston Street) in lower Manhattan on May 6. Individual tickets are $1,000 and $2,500; tables are $10,000, $25,000,  $50,000 and $75,000. For further information about the event or to purchase tickets, please email [email protected] or call 212 245-6570 ext. 18.

Public radio listeners are accustomed to hearing pledge drives on the hour – a small price to pay for non-commercial news that’s not sensationalized, and musical genres that have continuous appeal. But in the current climate, more established stations like WFUV are turning to another source of funding: the Gala. Last year, WFUV’s first gala raised $700,000 – rivaling its sister stations. WFUV’S galas are attracting the big names.

“This public radio station is in fact here to provide a public service,” says Ralph Jennings, general manager of WFUV. “We serve a community of musically and intellectually curious listeners who support what we do because it enhances their quality of life. And as technology continues to evolve, we’re committed to offering more ways for them to enjoy our unique content.”

WFUV is a 50,000-watt, noncommercial, member-supported radio station, licensed to Fordham University for nearly 60 years, serving approximately 300,000 weekly listeners in the New York area and thousands more worldwide on the Web.  Professionally run by a full-time staff of 28 broadcast veterans with the help of student interns, WFUV has pioneered a unique format of musical variety, news and cultural programming, while providing unparalleled professional experience to Fordham students, who have gained invaluable experience working in the most competitive media market in the world.

WFUV has built a large, devoted following in the New York City area, and around the world, for its award-winning weekday format of adult album alternative music [a mix of adult rock, singer-songwriters, roots and other music], news from NPR, and a culturally diverse weekend lineup. The station has garnered over 50 prestigious awards in the past two years for news direction, public affairs programming, sports coverage, news documentaries, news reporting, and individual achievement. Over the past 60 years, WFUV has fostered many outstanding broadcast journalists, who return to give of their time, talent, and support.

As an affiliate of National Public Radio and Public Radio International, WFUV carries programs such as The Thistle and Shamrock, World Café, Mountain Stage and American Routes. WFUV has partnered with NPR to podcast “WFUV’s Take Five,” a daily series of five-minute conversations and performances with many of today’s finest singer-songwriters and bands, recorded in the WFUV studios.  At the same time, WFUV is itself a national programming producer, supplying specials such as “The Downtown Messiah,” “It Was 40 Years Ago Today” (marking the Beatles’ arrival in New York), “Start Making Sense” (a literacy documentary), and “Democracy on the Block” (spotlighting grassroots activism) to public radio stations around the country.

The station honored recording artist Emmylou Harris as well as CBS journalist Charles Osgood (FCRH ’54) and voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers Vin Scully (FCRH ’49), who both started their careers at WFUV (www.wfuv.org).

The event was emceed by ABC News anchor and correspondent Elizabeth Vargas. Academy Award-winning director Jonathan Demme, CBS Sunday Morning anchor Bill Geist and former Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca presented lifetime achievement awards to the honorees. Harris performed a set of songs, including a cover of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” drawing a standing ovation from the 400 guests, including Les Paul, Joan Osborne and Phoebe Snow. Sotheby’s auctioneer C. Hugh Hildesley led a live auction. The event was co-chaired by Henry Barkhorn, John A. Herrmann and Lisa Shalett.

At a press conference before the ceremony, Scully said that his award was even more meaningful than the honorary degree he received from Fordham in 2000, even if, he noted dryly, his life is not over just yet.

“Lifetime achievement is pretty heady stuff. It seems like the wolves are getting close to the campfire,” he said chuckling.

Harris, whose six-song acoustic set served as a sort of warm up to her upcoming national tour, called WFUV the archetype of stations that play music by her, Snow and other artists “that are kind of out in left field.” So close is her relationship to the station, Harris said she could not pick just one appearance or performance at WFUV as her favorite.

“It’s all kind of a blur, after all the performances and all the years of touring, but I just know when they say, ‘Hey, they want you to come play the WFUV thing,’ of course I’m going to go out there and play it because they played me so much,” she said. “I’m happy to give back whatever I can.”

To download hi-resolution photographs of honorees and guests at the event, please visit:http://www.wfuv.org/press.

WFUV is one of the nation’s most influential public radio organizations, with state-of-the-art broadcast facilities and a world-class training program for university students. Attracting one of the largest audiences among public radio stations in its format, WFUV is a destination of choice for listeners to discover new and significant artists.

WFUV is a non-commercial, listener-supported public radio station, licensed to Fordham University for 60 years. Serving nearly 350,000 listeners each week in the New York area and thousands more worldwide on the Internet, and a leader in contemporary music radio, WFUV offers an eclectic mix of rock, singer-songwriters, blues, world and other music, plus headlines from National Public Radio, local news and sports.

Grammy Award-winning singer and musician Emmylou Harris, CBS journalist Charles Osgood (FCRH ’54) and Los Angeles Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully (FCRH ’49) will be honored for their achievements. Harris, a longtime favorite of WFUV listeners, will perform at the event.

The desire to hold a gala has been brewing among WFUV’s advisory board for several years, general manager Ralph Jennings said. With the station’s recent move into a state-of-the-art facility in the basement of Keating Hall, it made sense to expand the station’s visibility with bigger events, he added.

Academy Award-winning director Jonathan Demme will present Harris with a WFUV Sound and Vision Award, while Osgood and Scully will receive awards established in their names. Veteran television journalist Harry Smith will present Osgood’s award, which, like Scully’s, will be given annually at future galas.

Rita Houston, the station’s music manager, said Harris has always been among the artists who embody the spirit of WFUV.

“She’s an incredibly gifted and talented artist who’s not just confined to one genre. That’s the best reflection of what WFUV is about, which is musical discovery,” Houston said. “She’s always trying new things and has a really restless, creative spirit.”

In addition, Osgood and Scully were natural choices for honorees. While music such as the alt-country that Harris plays is integral to the station, its reputation for training students in news and sports reporting is among the best in the country.

Osgood anchored the first morning drive shift for WCBS-AM in 1967, and Scully’s 58-year tenure with the Dodgers is the longest of any broadcaster with a single club in professional sports history.

“If we’re giving awards, why not have one in news and sports as well, and why not develop awards and name them for the most important news and sports figures at the station? We started at the top, and went to Osgood and Scully,” Jennings said.

In addition to a cocktail reception and dinner, the gala will feature a silent auction and a live auction led by Sotheby’s auctioneer C. Hugh Hildesley.

Items available for bidding will include an Adventures in Rock VIP vacation package to see Bruce Springsteen in Dublin; access to the press box and locker room at a New York Giants game; a “Fly on the Wall” guest pass to three tapings of WFUV’s “Live at Studio A;” a guitar signed by Lucinda Williams and a pair of size 9 boots given by Harris.

ABC news anchor and correspondent Elizabeth Vargas will emcee the event, proceeds of which will go to the station.

“As the station becomes more recognized, it’s possible to do these kinds of things,” said Jennings, who noted that WFUV appreciates the help of station member Bill Sheridan for enabling it to secure Sotheby’s as its venue. “We were pleased that so many alumni came out for the reunion; I think they were pleased with what we were doing.”