The People's Choice Awards is an awards show recognizing the people and the work of popular culture. The show has been held annually since 1975 and is voted on by the general public. The People's Choice Awards air on CBS and are produced by Procter & Gamble and Survivor magnate Mark Burnett. Global promotion provided by Kroszover Entertainment.
The award show's creator, Bob Stivers produced the first show in 1975. The first awards recognized The Sting as 1974's Favorite Picture, Barbra Streisand as the year's Favorite Film Actress, and John Wayne as its Favorite Film Actor. Ratings for the annual event peaked in 1977, when the 3rd People's Choice Awards attracted 35.3 million viewers who witnessed Farrah Fawcett-Majors win for Favorite Female TV Star, Star Wars win as the Favorite Picture, and Streisand and Wayne win again in the Film Actress and Actor categories.
Procter & Gamble, the show's first and only sponsor, bought the show from Stivers in 1982.
In 2008, the People's Choice Awards introduced a new category: Favorite Sci-Fi Show. The nominees were Stargate Atlantis, Battlestar Galactica, and Doctor Who. The winner was Stargate Atlantis.
The award categories have varied over the years. For example, the 16th People's Choice Awards had categories including Favorite All-Around Movie (Batman), and both a Favorite Movie Actor (Tom Cruise) and a World Favorite Movie Actor (Dustin Hoffman). At the 23rd People's Choice Awards, Rob Reiner was named the People's Choice Awards Honoree. More recently, the 32nd People's Choice Awards (broadcast in January 2006) included categories such as Favorite On-Screen Match-Up (Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson in Wedding Crashers), Favorite Leading Lady (Reese Witherspoon), Favorite Tour (U2), and an award named after a Procter & Gamble brand: Nice 'n Easy Fans Favorite Hair (Faith Hill).
[edit]Poll-based awards
Throughout the 20th century, the awards were based upon results from Gallup polls. Each year, Gallup took a survey of different categories for favorite actor, actress, movie, artist, television program or group. The scope was unlimited—the public could choose whomever or whatever it liked. The results of the annual survey were announced in the form of the People's Choice Awards.
Since polls have margins of error, many years' awards have had ties in at least one category, when Gallup declared that the voting was so close that a single winner could not be chosen. For instance, in 2003, both Spider-Man and The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring were recognized as Favorite Motion Picture.
[edit]Switch to online voting
The winners of the 31st People's Choice Awards (aired January 9, 2005) were decided by online voting rather than Gallup polls. The nominees submitted for Internet voting were selected using an unpublished process involving editors at Entertainment Weekly, the show's production team, and a panel of pop culture fans.
The nominees for the 32nd People's Choice Awards were determined by web research company Knowledge Networks, which took what it described as a "pop culture-involved using a nationally representative sample of men and women ages 18 to 54, with and without Internet access, to come up with the nominees after being presented with a list of candidates determined by national ratings averages, box office grosses and album sales, and they had the option to write in their favorites. Knowledge Networks recruits its panel by using a RDD phone recruitment method and provides a Web TV and Internet access to households without Internet access enabling them to infer back to the entire population.
The nominees for the 2010 People's Choice Awards were determined by media research company Visible Measures, which specializes in measuring Internet Video audience behavior. The announcement of this partnership stated, "For the first time ever, the People’s Choice Awards has incorporated Internet video viewing data into the initial nominee selection process, depending on Visible Measures’ True Reach™ metrics to objectively measure online video popularity. Visible Measures worked with the People’s Choice Awards to determine each potential nominees’ popularity on a True Reach basis, a unique measure of the total audience that has been exposed to an online video campaign – regardless of how widely the campaign spreads or where it appears. To measure True Reach, Visible Measures deploys a robust and patented set of technologies with the goal of capturing the universe of Internet video viewership data in near real-time."
The awards have received a fair amount of criticism for this selection process as essentially rewarding any celebrity who will show up (See, for example, http://popwatch.ew.com/2009/01/08/the-peoples-cho/.)
[edit]Kids' Choice Awards
In 1988, Nickelodeon created the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards, a childrens' version of the People's Choice Awards; beyond the similar names however, the two entities are entirely unrelated. Also similar but unrelated is the Teen Choice Awards.
