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The Sports Emmy Awards are Emmy Awards that are given away for coverage of sports from the previous calendar year. The awards ceremony takes place every Spring, usually sometime in the last two weeks in April or the first week in May, and is held on a Monday night in New York City. Awards are given away for live sporting events, weekly sports series, and they are also given to broadcasters. The awards are all given away at one ceremony, unlike the Primetime Emmy Awards and the Daytime Emmy Awards, which hold a "Creative Arts" ceremony in which Emmys are given to behind-the-scenes personnel.

History

The first Emmy for sports coverage was handed out at the second annual Primetime Emmys in 1950, where KTLA, a local television station in California, won for coverage of pro wrestling. Another Los Angeles-based station, KNBH, won the award the next year for their coverage of Los Angeles Rams (now St. Louis Rams) football. At the seventh Emmys in 1955, NBC became the first major network to win a Sports Emmy for its series, the Gillette Cavalcade of Sports.

In 1979, an Emmys exclusively for sports coverage was held for the first time at the Rainbow Room in New York City. Winners included legendary golf announcer Jack Whitaker, and CBS for The NFL Today. The ninth annual Sports Emmy Awards were held on July 13, 1988, and became the first Sports Emmys to be televised. The hosts that year were actors Alan Thicke and Joan Van Ark. Comedian Jerry Seinfeld, at the time, a frequent guest on NBC's Late Night with David Letterman, did a performance. The live telecast was syndicated nationwide by Raycom Sports. Robert Klein hosted in 1989, and Dennis Miller hosted in 1991, a Sports Emmys that was broadcast by ESPN.

Winners at recent Sports Emmys include Bob Costas, Joe Buck, Al Michaels, Joe Morgan, and Cris Collinsworth.

Categories

At that inaugural ceremony in 1979, there were 12 categories. At the 2006 ceremony, the number of categories had risen to 29.

Here are all of those 29 categories:

The Sports Lifetime Achievement Award was first given away in 1989, when it was awarded to Jim McKay. It has also been awarded to Vin Scully, Dick Enberg, and Jack Buck, as well as many other legends in sports television. See the full list for all the winners.

In 1998 and 2002, one show actually had two features win the Outstanding Sports Journalism Emmy. HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel pulled off the tie the first time in '98, with ESPN's weekly edition of Outside the Lines duplicating the feat in 2002.

It should also be noted that, in addition to winning many Sports Emmys, NBC's Olympics coverage has also earned the network Primetime Emmys.

There are two now-defunct categories that gave Emmys to on-air talent — Outstanding Host or Commentator and Outstanding Analyst. A list of winners for the latter can be found in the Studio and Sports Event Analyst article.

External links

Emmy Awards | Sports trophies and awards | Sports media in the United States

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Sports Emmy Awards".

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