Why are the Emmy Awards called Emmys? Unlike the Tonys and the Oscars, which are named after real people, the TV Academy Award is not named after a real person named Emmy.
This is the story of how the coveted television award got its name.
How did the Emmys get their name?
Syd Cassyd, who founded the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in 1946, originally didn’t want to give out awards, according to the academy official site. He eventually changed his mind, but his first suggestion for the name of the new award was “Ike”, the nickname of a iconoscope tube, the first practical video camera tube that was used in early television cameras. However, the name was already associated with World War II hero General Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower, who became the 34th President of the United States in 1953.
The next suggestion came from Henry Lubcke, the third president of the Television Academy, who suggested “Immy” after the image-orthicon camera tubewhich was in use from the 1930s to the 1990s. The name was changed to “Emmy” to better match the female figure on the statuette.
Sadly, we missed the “IGOT” acronym for the coveted Mt. Olympus Awards for Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony winners.
Who designed the Emmy statuette?
The Television Academy rejected 47 proposals before accepting the statuette designed by television engineer Louis McManus, whose wife served as the model for the winged woman holding an atom.
Her wings represented the muse of art, and the atom and its electrons the science and technology of the new medium. McManus received his own Emmy in 1949 for designing the award.
When were the first Emmy Awards held?
The first Emmy Awards, which only honored Los Angeles programming, were held on January 25, 1949, at the Hollywood Athletic Club in Los Angeles.
