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Think Emmy Categories Are Confusing Now? Here’s How Two TV Academy Experiments in the ’60s and ’70s Went ‘Super’ Awry
In his Awards Circuit column, Michael Schneider looks back at two extremely misguided Emmy category revamp experiments in 1965 and 1974.
In that year, rather than a best comedy Emmy, “The Dick Van Dyke Show” won that program achievement in entertainment Emmy alongside “Hallmark Hall of Fame: The Magnificent Yankee,” “My Name Is Barbra” and “New York Philharmonic Young People’s Concerts.” Van Dyke landed an actor/performer award, as did Leonard Bernstein, Lynn Fontanne, Alfred Lunt and Barbra Streisand. In 1974, the TV Academy announced the winners for several acting, writing, directing and crafts Emmys in the comedy and dramacategories days before the telecast — robbing them of their on-camera moments. Alda and Moore even criticized the concept onstage while accepting the Super Emmy, and just like in 1965, the TV Academy dropped the idea as quickly as it implemented it.
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