Emmy Awards

The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are awards for artistic and technical merit in the television industry. It is considered one of the four major entertainment awards in the United States, the others being the Grammy (for music), the Oscar (Academy Award) (for film), and the Tony (for theatre). The Emmy statuette, depicting a winged woman holding an atom, is named after "immy", an informal term for the image orthicon tube that was common in early television cameras.

The awards are presented by three related, but separate, organizations: the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS), the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS), and the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (IATAS). Each of these three organizations are responsible for administering a particular set of annual Emmy ceremonies held throughout the calendar year. The ATAS first awarded the Emmy in 1949 to honor shows produced in the Los Angeles area before it became a national event in the 1950s to honor programs aired nationwide. Over the next two decades, the ATAS, the NATAS, and the IATAS expanded the award to honor other sectors of the TV industry.

Each Emmy event has its own set of rules and award categories. The two events that receive the most media coverage are the Primetime Emmy Awards and the Daytime Emmy Awards, which recognize outstanding work in American primetime and daytime entertainment programming, respectively. Other notable Emmy events include those honoring national children's programming, national sports programming, national news and documentary shows, and technological and engineering achievements in television, including the Primetime Engineering Emmy Awards. Regional Emmy Awards are also presented throughout the country at various times through the year, recognizing excellence in local and statewide television. In addition, the International Emmy Awards honor excellence in TV programming produced and initially aired outside the United States.