1949 Primetime Emmy Awards

[DonRocks]

Many people consider 1948 to be a seminal year in broadcast television - the first Emmy Awards took place in 1949.

Back then, there was a Los Angeles contingent, and a New York contingent, and the first Emmy Awards only applied to the Los Angeles-based Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS), i.e., only west-coast programs were considered.

Note also that these awards were retroactively named the First Primetime Emmy Awards 23 years later with the advent of the First Daytime Emmy Awards in 1972 (back in 1949, everything was in primetime).

The awards were presented at the Hollywood Athletic Club in Los Angeles, and were hosted by Walter O'Keefe when Rudy Valee had to leave town at the last minute.

There were only three categories: Most Popular Television Program (Pantomime Quiz), Best Film Made For Television (The Necklace), and Most Outstanding Television Personality (Shirley Dinsdale).

Shirley Dinsdale (and her puppet, Judy Splinters) is the reason I'm writing this post. I have spent days searching for any video of her and her puppet to no avail - there are plenty of photographs, but no video that I can find.

If anyone could find some video, and post it here, I would greatly appreciate it.

[DonRocks]

This is troubling, and may be brand new information to many people:

"Bowling Headliners" was a TV game show in 1949 (the second year of network TV) - people bowled for prize money.

The interesting part is that there are no known surviving episodes. Not a single one. The show is deemed to be "lost" - that's an actual term - in other words, every copy of every episode was erased or destroyed, and there aren't any privately owned films of the episodes known to exist.

Given the power of television, this seems incredible, but with infant technologies, one never knows of future worth. Every known episode is gone.

[The Hersch]

Given the power of television, this seems incredible, but with infant technologies, one never knows of future worth. Every known episode is gone.

Not exactly the Library of Alexandria.

[DonRocks]

This is troubling, and may be brand new information to many people:

"Bowling Headliners" was a TV game show in 1949 (the second year of network TV) - people bowled for prize money.

The interesting part is that there are no known surviving episodes. Not a single one. The show is deemed to be "lost" - that's an actual term - in other words, every copy of every episode was erased or destroyed, and there aren't any privately owned films of the episodes known to exist.

Given the power of television, this seems incredible, but with infant technologies, one never knows of future worth. Every known episode is gone.

Not exactly the Library of Alexandria.

I've recently found out that it's not just the super-early stuff that's lost. Remember the show "Till Death Us Do Part?" - the British series on which "All In The Family" is based? Most of the first few seasons of that are lost as well. This seems almost unbelievable, but the digital age has changed *everything*.

This is so sad - it's like a part of history is completely gone. Well, I suppose this happens all the time - after all, ancient Roman coinage isn't even worth that much. You can buy 2,000-year-old coins for a few dollars (which I actually think is pretty cool, but like any other collectible, the upper-level items are priced accordingly).