The first Emmy Awards ceremony was held on January 25, 1949
at the Hollywood Athletic Club.
The awards recognize excellence in television (which in the
1940s was a novel medium).
Hollywood’s first television academy had been founded three
years earlier by Sydney Cassyd, a former film editor for Frank
Capra who later worked as a grip at Paramount Studios and
an entertainment journalist.
At a time when only about 50,000 American households had
TV sets, Cassyd saw the need for an organization that would
foster productive discussion of the fledgling entertainment
medium.
Sydney Cassyd (1908 – 2000)
