The winners of this year’s Emmys will be announced on Sunday, September 22. It’ll be the 71st Emmy Awards, and if you’re a big TV fan, you’ve probably watched quite a few of the awards ceremonies yourself over the years.
But, did you ever think about what “Emmy” means? Or perhaps, who Emmy is? Does it stand for something? Entertainment, uh, Media Metric… Yearly?
Turns out, the name Emmy isn't a cute nickname for someone, or whatever acronym guess I managed to pull together. It's related to the technology of making and watching television.
First, to be clear on what we’re talking about, “Emmy” refers to the award itself. The trophy of the winged lady holding the big atom is an Emmy. (We’ll get to more details on why it looks like that below.) “The Emmys” are not the organization that gives out the awards. That’s the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. So, someone could say they got an “Academy of Television Arts & Sciences award” instead, similar to how “Oscar” and “Academy Award” are used interchangeably.
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What happened was that the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences decided to start giving out awards in 1948, and once the award itself was designed, they wanted a name for it. According to the Emmys site, Syd Cassyd, who founded the organization in 1946, suggested naming the award “Ike,” which was the nickname for the iconoscope tube, which was used in television cameras in the 1930s and ‘40s. But, because Dwight D. Eisenhower was a famous war hero at the time and was known as Ike, members of the Academy thought a name with less of a connection to a famous person should be used. (If you’re wondering about the timeline here, Eisenhower became president in 1953.)
So, Harry Lubcke, “a pioneer television engineer and the third Academy president,” suggested the name “Immy,'' which was the nickname for the image orthicon camera. According to the Television Academy site, “The name stuck and was later modified to Emmy, which members thought was more appropriate for a female symbol.”
The symbol is female in that it’s modeled after the wife of the man who designed it. Louis McManus, a television engineer, designed the Emmy, which depicts a woman with wings holding an atom up above her head. The Television Academy explains that the wings represent the muse of art and the atom represents the science and technology that goes into making TV.
Now that you know what Emmy means, you can go into your viewing of the award show confidence in your new knowledge and ready to impress (or annoy) everyone at your annual watch party.