The Daytime Emmy Awards are awards presented by the New York- based National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the Los Angeles-based Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in recognition of excellence in American daytime television programming.
The first daytime-themed Emmy awards were given out at the primetime ceremony in 1972, when The Doctors and General Hospital were nominated for Outstanding Achievement in a Daytime Drama. That year, The Doctors won the first Best Show Daytime Emmy. In addition, the award for Outstanding Achievement By an Individual in a Daytime Drama was given to Mary Fickett from All My Children.
The first separate awards show made just for daytime programming was broadcast in 1974 from the Channel Gardens at Rockefeller Center in New York. The hosts that year were Barbara Walters and Peter Marshall. The gala is now usually held at nearby Radio City Music Hall.
In recent years, the Daytime Emmy Awards have seen its ratings decline, necessitating the move from three hours of televised content to two. Still, the award broadcast is guaranteed to draw in a fairly high percentage of viewers, and many special events have aired before the live telecast in an attempt to grab households tuning in for the awards. When NBC hosted the awards shows, they would routinely air special one-off episodes of their soap operas, such as Another World: Summer Desire.
For most of the last decade the show has been produced by one of own its Lifetime Achievement honorees -- Dick Clark.
List of Daytime Emmy Awards
