Entertainment Facts

What are the Emmy Awards?

The Emmy Awards is a ceremony held in America in recognition of various sections of television and broadband programmes, which include the Television Academy and the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, programmes like daytime, sports, news and documentary pieces.

The founder of the Emmy awards was Syd Cassyd in 1948.

Although the Emmy name derived from a suggestion by Harry Lubcke, a former television engineer and third academy president who wanted to use the name Immy, as this was a term used for the image orthicon tube used in early cameras.

However, it was changed to the more feminine name Emmy as this related to the female statuette, which was the design of a television engineer named Louis McManus, it showed a winged woman holding an atom. This was to symbolise the status of the uplifting form of art and science in television.

It now costs around $400 to make an Emmy statuette and takes five-and-a-half hours of labour to create. They are made at R.S. Owens of Chicago. After the employees have molded the statuette they then carefully hand paint each figure in copper, nickel, silver, and gold.

2018 is the 70th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards ceremony, and the annual event normally take place during September.

The first ever Emmy Award ceremony was held on 25th January 1949 at the Hollywood Athletic Club in Los Angeles, California and was hosted by Walter O’Keefe.

The first Emmy to be awarded went to Shirley Dinsdale and her puppet Judy Splinters for the Most Outstanding Television Personality.

There are many different categories within the Academy Awards ceremony, which include the Prime time Emmy Awards, the Creative Arts and the Engineering Emmy Awards.

Lorne Michaels has been nominated for the most individual Emmy Awards of all time for his creation of Saturday Night Live, a total of 78 nominations so far and was nominated for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series for SNL in 2017.

Since it was broadcast 42 year ago, Saturday Night Live has been nominated 231 nominations and has come away with 52 awards. This makes the show the most nominated one in Emmy history.

However, the person who has collected the most Emmy Awards to date is HBO Documentary Films president Sheila Nevins. She has a total of 30 Emmy Awards, compared to Lorne Michaels’s 14 awards.

If an Emmy winner wants to take their award statuette home they have to pay the $400 to do so.

When and why was BAFTA founded?

Although it was not known as the BAFTA academy when it was first founded, the beginnings of the society commenced on 16th April 1947, when an elite group of members from the British film production industry met at a room in the Hyde Park Hotel.

The group of members present that day made David Lean a leading film director the Academy’s Chairman.

The academy all started in order to provide recognition for those who had contributed an outstanding creative piece of work towards the enhancement of British film.

After eleven years later, the British Film Academy decided to merge with the Guild of Television Producers and Directors, duly forming The Society of Film and Television Arts as its replacement.

With David Lean generously donating the royalties from his films “Bridge On The River Kwai” and “Doctor Zhivago” to The Society, this money became an invaluable source of capital for the newly founded society.

In 1976, with the opening of its new headquarters The Society became officially known as The British Academy of Film and Television Arts and BAFTA was born.

Although the BAFTA awards ceremony happens but once a year, the society itself is busy throughout the year with international programme of learning events and initiatives.

These programmes offer an unique access to some of the most inspiring techniques and talents through their various workshops, masterclasses, scholarships, lectures and mentoring schemes.

These initiatives are about connecting with the audiences of all ages and backgrounds across the UK, Los Angeles and New York.

On 12th February 2017, BAFTA awards ceremony which took place at The Royal Albert Hall, London, celebrated it’s 70th Anniversary.

When and why was the Oscar Academy founded?

On the 16th May 1929, the first ceremony for the Oscars took place at a party held for about 270 people in the Blossom Room of the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, California.

Back in 1927 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), was formed and was a collaborative effort of 36 most elite individuals in the motion picture industry, but was first thought of by Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM film studio.

Douglas Fairbanks Sr, a film actor was chosen as the first president of the Academy. The reasons of setting up this society was a way for the establishment to award and honor the talents of the artists within the Motion Picture Industry.

In May 1929, the first Oscar for Best Actor was won by the German tragedian Emil Jannings, for his role in ‘The Last Command’ and ‘The Way of All Flesh’. Whilst the award for Best Actress went to Janet Gaynor, for ‘Seventh Heaven’, ‘Street Angel’ and ‘Sunrise’.

There were two awards in Direction, for Dramatic Picture and Comedic Picture, won by Frank Borzage and Lewis Milestone, respectively. The fist official Best Picture winner, which was a silent film and the only silent film to win the Best Picture award was Wings, and it was directed by William Wellman.

The Academy only started using the nickname ‘Oscar’ for its awards in 1939. The official title for the award is an “Academy Award of Merit”.

On 26th February 2017, the 89th Oscar Awards ceremony will take place at the Dolby Theatre at the Hollywood & Highland Center, Los Angeles, California.

When was the pantomime invented?

Back in Roman times, a pantomime was a performance by one person, who mimed all the parts in a mythological story.

In 18th century England, a pantomime was still silent, but with a full cast of actors and dancers. At that time only certain theatres known as “Theatre Royals” were allowed to present proper plays with words.

So “music houses” such as Sadler’s Wells staged elaborate musical pantomimes with the lovers Harlequin and Columbine and clowns.

It was in the 1840’s that what we now think of as traditional pantomime was established.

A lavish Christmas entertainment for children based loosely on a fairy story, with the Principal Boy acted by a woman, the Dame by a man and somewhere along the way a transformation scene from earth to fairyland, such as the Prince’s palace to Cinderella’s hovel.

How do Facebook deal with false accounts?

After Facebook revealed that about 83 million people on the site don’t actually exist, they have commenced with the long awaited purge of the fake accounts.

Celebrities such as Katy Perry, Rihanna and Lady Gaga have seen a significant drop in their followers after the cull came into practice. One of the most popular sites on the pages is Zynga’s Texas HoldEm poker lost more that 100,000 followers in one day.

Fake accounts take up around 8.7 percent of facebooks 845 million users. These fake accounts generate ‘likes’ to falsely boost a brand’s figures. It’s a scam which causes harmful misuse to the real accounts on facebook.

Hopefully with facebook addressing the problem it will reduce the number of false likes on a page by one percent.