The National Comedy Center this week received a Telly Award for “Best Online Series” and a Telly Award for “Best Promotional Video.” P-J file photo

The National Comedy Center was honored this week with two 2021 Telly Awards for excellence in television and video across all screens.

The Comedy Center received a Telly Award for “Best Online Series” for its 2020 Lucille Ball Virtual Comedy Festival and a Telly Award for “Best Promotional Video” in the Museum & Galleries category for a video production showcasing the Comedy Center’s interactive and immersive visitor experience.

The Lucille Ball Comedy Festival went virtual in 2020 due to COVID-19 with 20 online programs featuring 30 artists in all-new, candid, in-depth conversations about their work, careers, influences and the art of comedy, including Tiffany Haddish, Jay Leno, Debra Messing, Kenan Thompson, Jimmy Fallon, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Weird Al Yankovic, Margaret Cho and Aidy Bryant and many more. The programs can still be viewed free online at anywhere.comedycenter.org/pages/livestream

“When COVID dramatically affected our museum visitor experience, we knew that we had to quickly pivot to online video to bring that experience into homes across the country –so that we could continue to fulfill our mission and build brand awareness among comedy fans who will plan visits to Jamestown as COVID subsides,” stated National Comedy Center executive director Journey Gunderson.

“These Telly Awards are wonderful validation of the creative work put into these two projects and will continue to pay dividends for our museum for years to come.”

The National Comedy Center shared the “Best Online Series” honor with award-winning online series produced by Microsoft, The Atlantic and the Library of Congress.

Cortina Productions, which produced much of the multi-media technology for the National Comedy Center exhibits, produced the promotional video honored with the Telly, in consultation with JRA and the National Comedy Center’s creative team. This video can be viewed here.

The Telly Awards was founded in 1979 to honor excellence in local, regional and cable television commercials with non-broadcast video and television programming added soon after.

The Telly Awards annually showcases the best work created within television and video. Receiving over 12,000 entries from all 50 states and 5 continents, Telly Award winners represent work from some of the most respected advertising agencies, television stations, production companies and publishers from around the world.

Previous winners include CBS, NBC, HBO, Discovery Communications, ESPN, BET Networks, Viacom, Comcast, Conde Nast and Bloomberg.