And I wanted to thank my husband and I didn't want to thank him like you know I really love him and everything so
I'd like to thank my husband Parker the man who has given me the big one for the last eight years
Tonight on TV TV we give you the big one as we preview televisions big night the 1993 Emmy Awards
Good evening later tonight 10 is screening a delayed telecast of the Emmys
But before that they've given us permission to bring you the highlights now some people dismiss award shows as grotesque
Pageants of some sort but the Emmys give us an insight into American culture and an idea of the shows
We'll be watching in the near future here. We voted on who could explain them a little bit more and the winner is Edith Bliss
the television Academy which hands out the Emmys was founded in
1946 as a forum to discuss and debate television issues three years later
They awarded the first Emmy for most outstanding television personality to Shirley Dinsdale
Shirley was a 20 year old ventriloquist who had a daily show with her sidekick puppet Judy splinters
These days there are hundreds of Emmys awarded each year in five different areas
This one is an international Emmy won by the ABC in 1989 for a production of labo M
It's covered in gold plate just like the ones handed out tonight in the primetime Emmys and it cost about
$200 to make but to the winners they're worth a lot more than that
Sharon Gless hinted at how important the awards are to an actor's career after she was pipped at the post as best actress in
1988 in itself a tremendous honor
After all each of these nominees is truly outstanding
In singling out one of the nominees the Academy is not suggesting that the winner is anyway better than the others
Quite the contrary
The Academy readily acknowledges that in many cases the winner is determined by a totally arbitrary and sometimes unfair process
the
Emmy judging system is designed to squash sour grapes once actors have been nominated by their peers
They choose one episode of their show to submit to a judging panel
Veronica Hamill once submitted a one-hour episode of Hill Street Blues which featured her for only ten minutes
She didn't win but winning an Emmy isn't always a career boost
In fact in many cases winning TV's Golden Girl is like getting the kiss of death
The Emmys have almost become notorious for honoring shows after they've been axed in the cases of Hill Street Blues and Cagney and Lacey
Emmy saved their lives
But the four acts shows nominated this year including the time-traveling drama series quantum leap have little hope of a reprieve
regardless of the results
So charge your glasses and sit back coming up the award for best drama American
Drama today is cops robbers eccentric receptionists and a moose
The Emmy for best drama could go to a program about a Jewish doctor
Incarcerated in Alaska or to a show about a sensitive husband wife team who deal with the legal and medical dilemmas