Five Forgotten TV Award Shows

Well we’ve entered award season with The Golden Globes that aired last weekend. Course we got a bunch of biggies coming leading up to the Oscars. Not to mention Grammy’s, Tonys, and Emmy’s in the fall. And several in between those. Award shows used to be a bigger deal, with the whole spectacle of the music and fashion and seeing all your favorite stars together. Though it always irked me when they would say “every star” is at the event, yeah I don’t think that was true. Still, award shows were and still are quite fun.

But the funny thing is all the award shows that aired, briefly, and then were forgotten. These were “fake” award shows so to speak, which no one took seriously. Oh sure sometimes they hit, like The People’s Choice Awards which are still on (even if they aren’t the same being owned by E!). The SAG awards came along twenty-five years ago and are still going strong. And of course VH1, MTV and Nickelodeon have famous award shows targeted to their respective demographics. But many others just kind of..fade away. This was especially a thing in the 90’s when creators apparently decided people would watch ANY award show they put on. This was not correct. Here are some award shows which came, and went.



TV Guide Awards

Oh man, you just had to feel bad for this one. You knew it was gonna bomb, and it sure did. While I admire the attempt to give TV a little more attention, this was not the venue. It’s what it sounds like, TV Guide giving out awards. This was a “winner has been notified they won ahead of time” show so that the nominee would show up. And the top prize was the “Best Show You’re Not Watching” award. Wow what an ego boost.








Soap Opera Digest Awards & Daytime Emmy’s

There was a time when these two were huge, if you were a fan of daytime TV anyway. Course there disappearance make sense for one simple reason. Soap Opera’s are a fading industry, someday they’ll go the way of Variety shows. The Daytime Emmy’s are still hanging in there because they also cover kids shows, talk shows, and game shows. Originally aired during daytime before moving to prime time. Nowadays no network wants to air it which is kind of sad (and why I mentioned it).  But while they do exist the Soap Opera Digest Awards are pretty much extinct at this point. As is its precursor, The Soapy Awards. These aired on TV with as much flash and spectacle as any award show.







Tv Land Awards

This one was a nice idea, but a little misguided. No harm in honoring nostalgic TV, heck I’m sure a fan, but as an awards show? I mean who gets excited to win an award for something they did thirty years ago? I think as a series of specials it would have worked better, like those old Museum of Television and Radio specials they used to air that I miss. Especially seeing how they were gonna run out of “categories” eventually. They did manage a few of these before the show finally and quietly disappeared.







American Comedy Awards

It’s well established that comedy gets no respect in any circle. The Golden Globe’s have to  combine comedy TV with the musical and variety shows. The Oscars even respect Animated movies but all but ignore funny movies, even if they’re decent. This was an attempt to change that. It was a nice idea, but never really stuck despite bouncing around different networks for a few years. The show celebrated comedy shows and movies and of course the comedians who make them. By the way there was the Comedy Hall of Fame which aired twice before disappearing forever.






It seems TV award shows make up most of these, and I guess I can see why. Movie awards can be broken down so one award show may feature winners and even categories another wont have. Especially since the bigger award shows tend to ignore the more popular films. Music shows always seem to stick around since people love the artists, heck even RadioDisney has one that’s lasted. But TV award shows are tough because it tends to be repetitive. Heck how many times did Oprah Winfrey win a Daytime Emmy? And Candace Bergen won an Emmy so many times in a row she had to stop submitting her name to give someone else a chance.

However I did find  one show so awful, so lame, that I can’t even find a decent picture for it. Which is it?




American Television Awards

Yeah this came around in the 90’s and I am not sure what they were thinking. There was no hook, like focusing just on comedy or an area not usually covered. It was basically just a redo of the Emmy’s. It wasn’t given by someone unique, like the foreign press, fellow artists, or just fans for instance. It was TV critics and journalists, wahoo. I tried to find out more but aside from a few clips (like, two) on YouTube it’s as if this awful show never existed.




Course some could argue even the big award shows will eventually be forgotten and/or irrelevant. But that’s a topic for another day.