EMMY FLASHBACKS
Then, television was the newest mass medium, well on its way to eclipsing radio as the most popular form of home entertainment. Now, television shares the stage with the Internet, the newest mass medium making its way into people’s homes. The relationship is concrete at times — network Web sites, hardware that connects your TV to the Internet, a card inside your computer that makes your monitor a TV screen, a cable network devoted to how to use a computer.
TV and the Internet can co-exist far better than TV and radio ever could. Few people listen to the radio while they watch TV — sports viewers who can’t stand the TV crew might be the largest group — but lots of people have the TV on while they’re on-line or working on a computer project.
The Internet also makes it possible to “watch” TV when it isn’t possible to tune in via broadcast, cable or satellite. Audio and video feeds of newscasts were among the most popular features during the week of Clinton’s speech and the bombings as people without access to television went on-line instead.
With all of this and more in mind, some media outlets are preparing Web sites for “The 50th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards,” which they hope will further blend TV and the Internet.
NBC will be Emmy Central on the tube and on-line. The network, whose Internet interests are so widespread that a map really would look like a spider’s web, is working with the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and a host of tech partners to produce www.Emmycast.com.
Built with production and technical help from USWeb Corp., Emmycast is planning a virtual Emmy extravaganza that may pave the way for things to come.
NBC is teaming up with MSNBC partner Microsoft for an enhanced broadcast produced especially for WebTV owners. The Emmy WebTV plans include background info on the nominees, interactive biographies of the presenters, an Emmy time line, four Emmy trivia games (available during the broadcast), a scorecard that lets you vote on the winners and keep track of the accuracy of your results, and interactive fan balloting about various topics. The additional content (visible only to WebTV users) will be available throughout the show.
Then there’s the Emmycast most of us will see. As always with Webcasts, the faster your processor and connection speed, the happier you will be with the results. (Patience also will come in handy, especially if you don’t have the other two.) NBC will use backstage cameras to provide streaming video of interviews with winners and presenters. To speed things up, download Microsoft’s NetShow MediaPlayer in advance at www.microsoft.com/windows/ mediaplayer/
Before and after the show, chat rooms will be open for Emmy observations that can’t wait for Monday at the water cooler or the coffee shop. If you can’t sit still for the intentionally lengthy show, check in for constantly updated results. A fairly tricky trivia quiz is already up and others will be added.
Some of the other elements mirror those offered for WebTV, including the increasingly ubiquitous interactive voting. The red carpet arrivals sometimes the best part of any awards show will be covered with live audio, video and text interviews.
WEB-WATCHING FOR EMMY
Even though NBC owns the exclusive rights to the Emmys this year, other media outlets are free to program their own Emmy sites and many will do just that.
– CNN’s Showbiz Emmy site http://cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/specials/1998/ emmys/
promises a message board, Emmy balloting, a word search game that will be devilishly hard if it’s anything like the “Seinfeld” one now up, an overview and a news archive. CNN already has a page with links to clips of the nominees for best drama and best comedy at www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/TV/9807/23/emmy.noms.03/
– E! Online has been here before. In fact, as of this writing, last year’s Emmys pages are still up but this year’s aren’t available yet. Scheduled to launch this week, http//www.eonline.com/Hot/Awards/Emmyspromises interactive balloting, live chat and a scorecard. The entertainment site also promises a live chat with Emmy expert Tom O’Neill on Friday and a behind-the-scenes look at the “secrets” of the Emmys written by O’Neill.
– For advance work, try UltimateTV’s well-done hypertext look at the major nominations at www.UltimateTV.com/news/emmys/98/ nominations/
– And there’s always www.emmys.org, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (ATAS) site with a clunky yet nifty search engine that goes back to the beginning of national Emmy time circa 1949. In a nice touch, the user is allowed to choose between frames or no frames/no java. This is the place to go if you want some real stump-your-pals trivia or you can’t go to sleep without knowing which show was nominated for best drama in 1951. The winner was KECA’s Pulitzer Playhouse, but you’ll have to do the rest yourself.
Tribune Media Services’ TVQuest, www.tmstv.com/ and TV Guide’s www.tvgen.com both offer Emmy voting. Emmy news and TV listings so you can keep up with your favorite Emmy-winning shows. TV Guide’s on-line archive, www.tvgen.com/archive/index.htm has plenty of useful and, OK, some completely useless, information about Emmy winners, Emmy losers and Emmy wannabees.
