For the third consecutive year, Buckeye Rural Electric Cooperative has earned national awards for communication and advertising programs.

Winners of the 2006 “Spotlight on Excellence” awards program, sponsored by the Council of Rural Electric Communicators, were announced in May at the Connect 2006 Conference in San Antonio, Texas. Rural electric cooperatives from across the nation submitted entries in categories ranging from Best News Story to Best Total Communications Program.

Faculty members from the University of Missouri-Columbia and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill judged the entries.

Buckeye REC won awards of excellence for Best Feature Story and Best Advertising Program and awards of merit for Best Web Page and Best Photo Essay.

The award-winning feature story was a “Stray Voltage” column about a Christmas-time power outage, written for the local pages of “Country Living” magazine by Steve Oden. His photo layout on the 2005 National Wild Turkey Federation call-makers contest also won.

Buckeye’s WSAZ TV-3 ad campaign featuring spokesman John Marra was judged the Best Advertising Program. The co-op’s Web home page, www.buckeyerec.com, garnered honors.

“Cooperatives are working hard to communicate effectively with the members they serve,” said Maggie Tilley, administrator of the Spotlight on Excellence program. “Those efforts were clearly demonstrated in the entries we received from across the nation.”

The competition is an annual event recognizing the best communication and marketing efforts by electric cooperatives and related organizations. Electric cooperative communicators and marketing professionals submitted more than 700 entries in the Spotlight on Excellence program, now in its 18th year.

The Council of Rural Electric Communicators, organized in 1982, seeks to advance the recognition, education, and professionalism of electric cooperative communicators and their affiliated organizations. It is a volunteer association working on behalf of approximately 1,300 electric cooperative communicators across the United States.

NRECA, the trade and service organization representing the national interests of cooperative electric utilities, coordinates the Council’s activities. Other national organizations supporting the work of the Council are the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, National Rural Utilities Cooperative Finance Corporation, the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative, and Federated Rural Electric Insurance Exchange.