Dwight Schrute's bobblehead will have to make room for some cool new hardware.

The Office was among the winners Wednesday of broadcasting's most prestigious prize, the Peabody Award.

The Emmy-winning NBC comedy based on the British export of the same name (itself a Peabody winner in 2004) was one of three Peacock shows to be Peabody'd, joined on the esteemed list by the long-running quirky medical comedy Scrubs and the rookie high school football drama Friday Night Lights.

The Steve Carell-led Office crew, now in its third season, was feted for translating "with pitch-perfect brilliance" the BBC's mockumentary series' scathing satire of workplace (mis)manners at paper-supply company.

Fellow Must-See staple Scrubs was honored for its "sweet-and-pungent" Wizard of Oz parody representative of a show that, after six season, "never loses its respect for humanity despite a narrative style akin to Looney Tunes."

Friday Night Lights, adapted from the book and movie about high-octane high-school football in small-town Texas, won major props with the 15-member voting panel in its first season for being a "a richly-textured serial" representing contemporary America.

Another freshman show, ABC's Ugly Betty, was also lauded. The Salma Hayek-produced version of the popular telenovela received praise for being "unmistakably graced with wry intelligence and heart.

"This year the Peabody Board reviewed an amazing array of outstanding material," said Horace Newcomb, director of the Peabody Awards. "The result is that our work becomes more difficult—and more rewarding—as creators and producers of electronic media develop more and more powerful, important, and engaging work."

Usual suspect HBO was well represented, with five shows earning awards: Elizabeth I, the biopic starring Oscar winner Helen Mirren; Spike Lee's poignant Hurricane Katrina documentary, When The Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts; Baghdad ER, chronicling the horrors faced by U.S. military medical personnel in Iraq; Billie Jean King: Portrait of a Pioneer, an HBO Sports' program on the impact of the tennis legend on politics, culture and athletics; and The Music in Me, HBO Family's showcase of young classically trained musicians.

The Cartoon Network snagged its first Peabody for "Return of the King," a controversion Boondocks episode imagining what a resurrected Martin Luther King Jr. might think about contemporary issues like gangsta rap and the war on terror.

And Showtime's Brotherhood was hailed as "riveting drama" for its depiction of two Irish-American siblings, one a gangster, one a politician.

A slew of documentaries were saluted, including: Ric (Brother of Ken) Burns' Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film; Dateline NBC's special report The Education of Ms. Grove, following a first-year middle-school teacher in Atlanta; CBS' broadcast of Why We Fight, director Eugene Jarecki's expose of the past 60 years of American military intervention abroad; and Braindamadi'd…Take II, Canadian TV producer Paul Nadler's account of his own recovery from a serious brain injury.

On the new side, the late Ed Bradley was paid posthumous tribute for a story on the controversial Duke lacrosse rape case, one of his 60 Minutes segments before succumbing to leukemia in November.

ABC News garnered a Peabody for Out of Control: AIDS in Black America, its investigation into why African-Americans are suffering from AIDS at a higher proportion than the rest of the U.S. population.

National Public Radio was congratulated with an Institutional Award for StoryCorps, a project in which ordinary people recorded all kinds of oral histories in booths all around the country. And the public radio staple This American Life was honored for an installment titled "Habeas Schmabeas" about the struggle for basic legal rights for Guantanamo detainees.

Bestowed by the University of Georgia for the past 66 years, the Peabodys recognize excellence in broadcasting and cable. The winners are decided by a 15-member advisory aboard comprised of journalists and academics.

This year's awards will be doled out June 4 at a luncheon hosted by Bob Costas at New York City's Waldorf Astoria Hotel. For a complete list of winners go to www.peabody.uga.edu.