Thoughts on the Daytime Emmy Awards 2015

Here are my yearly thoughts on the Daytime Emmy Awards. Below I list the winners and anything else that caught my interest during the show that aired on Pop TV.

This year we didn't have a red carpet show on television or online. The press who were there will share more with us once they've gone through their footage.

Tyra Banks was the host of the Daytime Emmy Awards show this year, and while she's known for being a model, she actually did watch soaps years ago. She didn't have to say it on the broadcast, as I somehow "knew" this, anyway Tyra is best known for her creation of "America's Next Top Model", which I'll refer to as ANTM for the rest of this entry, and had her own talk show. I have an episode or so saved as she had soap guests at one point. On one of the early seasons of ANTM (it was at UPN not the CW), Mark Collier, who was on "As the World Turns" at the time appeared in an acting challenge. Also there was a much later season, where Tyra's music was discussed as she had a video, so her rapping wasn't that shocking to me. The outfit changes reminded me of Lucy Coe on "General Hospital" during the Nurses Ball, but that wasn't intentional.

Now on to the show and the winners...here is a quick list (but in order of importance not including the Spanish programming I'm not familiar with and I don't want to misspell them and they weren't mentioned on the major sites I visited like tvline and ew)

Outstanding Drama Series: "The Young and the Restless" and "Days of Our Lives" (tie) Y&R won last year.
Outstanding Game Show: "Jeopardy!"(repeat winner)
Outstanding Morning Show: "CBS Sunday Morning"
Outstanding Talk Show/Information: "Steve Harvey"(repeat winner)
Outstanding Talk Show/Entertainment: "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" (repeat winner)
Outstanding Entertainment News Show: "Entertainment Tonight" (tied last year with "Extra")
Outstanding Lead Actress Drama: Maura West, "General Hospital"
Outstanding Lead Actor Drama: Tony Geary, "General Hospital"
Outstanding Supporting Actress Drama: Amelia Heinle, "The Young and the Restless" (repeat winner)
Outstanding Supporting Actor Drama: Chad Duell, "General Hospital"
Outstanding Younger Actress Drama: Hunter King, "The Young and the Restless" (repeat winner)
Outstanding Younger Actor Drama: Freddie Smith, "Days of Our Lives"
Outstanding Game Host: Craig Ferguson, "Celebrity Name Game"
Outstanding Entertainment Talk Show Host: "Live! with Kelly & Michael"
Outstanding Informative Talk Show Host: "The Chew" hosts
Outstanding Drama Series/Writing Team: "The Bold and the Beautiful"
Outstanding Drama Series/Directing Team: "The Bold and the Beautiful"
New Approaches in Drama: "The Bay"

Other wins that weren't shown during the live telecast include: Martha Byrne for her work on the web soap Anacostia, The Bay for new approaches drama, "The People's Court" repeating their legal show win from last year, Bobby Flay repeating for best culinary host, and the three-way tie for outstanding guest performer as Fred Willard, Ray Wise and Donna Mills were all given awards for their work on B&B, Y&R and GH respectively.

This year's show was a lot better than last year's in my opinion. We had montages with soap clips, an in memoriam, and more. The three montages were for Days of Our Lives celebrating their 50th anniversary. The cast came out and it focused more on the past then the present. The only glaring omissions were from the "last blast" era, as most everyone else was included, though I wish there had been a shot of all the actors who've won Emmys for their work on Days. Compared to some other montages for soaps in the last decade this was outstanding. There was another montage to the song "What I did for Love" from "A Chorus Line", which is a wonderful song, about the sacrifices one makes for a career in the arts. That said, it is so specific to Broadway, that seeing clips from west coast based soaps, most of whom star actors with no theater experience made me pause. If they'd done a montage to the same music, years ago when we had NYC soaps, I would have loved it. Unfortunately we saw more of the singer on screen (Tessanne Chin, who was part of Adam's team and won the program), then clips. The third montage was the in memoriam with Babyface singing "Gone to Soon". Other than Justin Gocke who died in late 2014, everyone I can think of was included that worked in soaps. He was a child actor and received a Daytime Emmy for his work on "Santa Barbara", so that would have been appropriate. My rule with in memoriam montages when all else fails include all the late winners of the awards if not people are going to notice. My favorite "geeky" part of the montage was how Guiding Light was referenced as "Guiding Light" when shown with James Rebhorn's picture, but as "The Guiding Light" when Nancy Malone's was shown as she was at GL back in the black and white era. Whomever knew to do that gets major points from me.

The Betty White tribute was about her work in game shows, though I'm not sure if they mentioned how she was the first woman to win the best game show host Daytime Emmy. I liked how the people involved in the tribute explained how they knew Betty as they mentioned what projects they had done with her. They played a mock version of "Password Plus" also.

Due to how voting is done for the Daytime Emmys, the winner of the most pre-nomination votes is the ultimate winner of the category. In some categories it wouldn't have made a difference as all of the soaps were nominated for best show, but otherwise that was not the case.

The feud between Ellen and Matt Lauer was mentioned, and he said if he was referenced he'd give $1000 per nominee who said his name. What we don't know is does he mean presenters who are nominees as well that evening or just people who won and mentioned him in their acceptance speeches. I hope it included nominees as then Linsey Godfrey's mentions will be included, though I was just glad to see her at the show looking so well after her accident.

I think last year the show had one talk show host category, but this year we had two. Since Kelly and Michael didn't attend that saved the show some time. The show went over by a few minutes, but it wasn't ridiculously long. I did like that no one was cut off even if the music started to play during certain speeches. When it comes to the soap winners, I wasn't that surprised. Maura West mentioned how she didn't think she'd get another once in a lifetime role. Considering what happened when she was on Y&R, I can understand that sentiment, though for me her signature part is still Carly on ATWT. Maura still has two Emmys from that role. It was great seeing Shemar Moore on the show as well, as the 1999 Emmy still rates as one of the last/best Daytime Emmy broadcasts. Tony Geary saying that he thinks people must not be sick of him winning yet. Well, I think his win happened partly due to how the awards are given out as while I think he was worthy of a nomination I didn't think he had the best reel in his category. Amelie Heinle and Hunter King repeated in their categories, and I felt their material last year was better, but this isn't the first time that happened. Chad Duell and Freddie Smith were the only new winners this year.

Those are my highlights of the Daytime Emmys for this year. I wish they had continued to show clips for the nominees as that stopped after the first half hour. The fan voted awards also stopped getting mentioned. It was odd how some fans won trips in the audience though I found it cool how early in the show Daniel Goddard brought a contestant winner out to give a prize. I hope that people who weren't able to see the program, get to view enough clips to get an idea of what the program was like. While having it online only was annoying, having it on Pop, a channel that isn't available outside of the US was frustrating in another way. I feel for the Canadian viewers, though I do find it cool that it was mentioned the show was on Armed Forces Network.