LOST AWARD SHOWS
Every year, dozens of awards shows hit the air—the Grammys, Emmys, Oscars, Golden Globes, American Music Awards, ad infinitum. While it’s a crowded field, it used to be even more crowded. Here are some awards shows that got the prize for “best disappearing act.”
CABLEACE AWARDS (1978–1997)
Today, cable TV shows dominate the Emmy Awards—the last network TV show that won the prize Emmy for Best Drama Series was 24, in 2006. But up until 1988, cable shows weren’t eligible for an Emmy, so a cable TV trade group made up its own awards show, the CableACE Awards. Airing on as many as 12 different channels all at once, they honored the best performances on cable-only shows at the time. CNN generally won in the news and public affairs categories, while premium services such as HBO and Showtime dominated the entertainment fields. Still, there wasn’t enough good stuff on HBO and Showtime to fill out all the categories. In 1987, for example, Stuart Pankin won Best Actor in a Comedy Series for his work in HBO’s news parody Not Necessarily the News, Anthony Hopkins won Best Actor in a Movie or Miniseries for HBO’s Mussolini and I,… and Gary Busey won Best Actor in a Dramatic Series for his work on the USA late-night horror series The Hitchhiker.
FOOD NETWORK AWARDS (2007)
Seeing the success that MTV had enjoyed with its annual MTV Video Music Awards, the Food Network began its own ceremony in 2007. That was also the last year the network handed out awards for “Favorite Comfort Food Combo” and inducted someone into the nonexistent “Food Hall of Fame.” (The winners were macaroni and cheese, and Julia Child, respectively.)
SCREAM AWARDS (2005–2012)
Film genres like horror, fantasy, and science fiction tend to get ignored by the Oscars, so the cable channel Spike TV (now called the Paramount Network) took it upon themselves to come up with a ceremony to honor those kinds of movies. Over the years, it also gave awards to TV shows and comic books. Some of the bigger categories included “Most Vile Villain” and “Scene of the Year,” for the scariest film moment, which was called the “Holy Sh!t” award.
Snow leopards don’t roar, they chuff.
AMERICAN TELEVISION AWARDS (1993)
While TV industry professionals voted on the Emmys, this awards ceremony’s voting base was TV critics. The 1993 nominations were almost identical to that year’s Emmys. (For example, Seinfeld beat Cheers and Murphy Brown for Best Situation Comedy Series.) That redundancy is probably what killed the ATAs; the awards were canceled after the first year.
VH1 / VOGUE FASHION AWARDS (1995–2002)
In the 1990s, “supermodels” were a cultural phenomenon. No longer anonymous human billboards for chic and expensive clothes, they were celebrated like rock stars. That visibility also increased the celebrity of the fashion designers, such as Alexander McQueen, Todd Oldham, and Isaac Mizrahi. Because MTV had a successful award show in its annual Video Music Awards, network execs wanted its sister network, VH1, to have one too. So, in 1995, it teamed up with Vogue magazine to create the VH1/Vogue Fashion Awards. Categories included Designer of the Year, Model of the Year, Avant Garde Designer of the Year, and awards for fashionable celebrities and musicians. Oddly enough, the most enduring aspect of these awards was something that made fun of the world they celebrated: Ben Stiller’s beyond-dumb male model character Derek Zoolander, who debuted in a sketch produced for the 1996 iteration of the show.
MAR-A-LAGO
When the Post Cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post died in 1973, she bequeathed Mar-a-Lago (Spanish for “Sea-to-lake”), her Florida estate, to the federal government for use as a site for state visits by foreign dignitaries or a winter White House for U.S. presidents. She also left a sum of money to provide for the upkeep of the estate, but it wasn’t enough to cover the actual costs of running the place. President Richard Nixon helicoptered in to look at it about a week before he resigned from office in August 1974, but neither he nor President Jimmy Carter were interested in using it. In 1981 the U.S. Congress passed legislation to return Mar-a-Lago to the Post estate. Donald Trump bought it from the Post estate in 1985…and turned it into his winter White House after he was elected president in 2016.
Percentage of people with both red hair and blue eyes: 0.17 percent.