American Idol, Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List, So You Think You Can Dance and The Amazing Race all captured 2007 Creative Arts Emmy Awards on Saturday, while Dancing with the Stars, Deadliest Catch and a few other reality shows were shut out.

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Idol received its first ever Emmy Award win thanks to its live April broadcast of Idol Gives Back, a charity event that helped raise more than $75 million to benefit relief programs for young people in poverty in America and Africa. 

Idol Gives Back claimed the Creative Arts Emmy for Outstanding Technical Direction, Camerawork, Video For A Miniseries, Movie Or A Special, an honor that goes to the show's technical director John Pritchett as well as the 24 cameramen who digitally created the charity event's duet between Celine Dion and Elvis Presley.

In addition, The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Board of Governors awarded the Governors Award to Idol Gives Back -- along with HBO's The Addiction Project -- recognizing both programs for using the power of television to educate and inform viewers about significant issues.  The Academy had previously announced Idol Gives Back would receive the Governors Award at a luncheon in August.

Idol has been nominated for 29 Primetime Emmy Awards since it was first eligible in 2003 -- including the seven it received this year -- however the show had gone 0 for 22 without a single win to its credit until Saturday.  If Idol had amassed four more losses without a win, it would have surpassed the sitcom Newhart as the show that had collected the most Emmy nominations (25) without winning, according to Reuters.

Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List's Emmy win came in the Outstanding Reality Program category, an awkwardly organized category that also included PBS' Antiques Roadshow, Showtime's Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, National Geographic Channel's The Dog Whisperer, and ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.  2007 had marked the second year in a row in which Griffin's Bravo reality show had been nominated in the category (in fact, all five of the nominees had also been nominated in the same category last year).  Extreme Makeover: Home Edition had won the award the last two years.

"I guess hell froze over," Griffin told the audience as she accepted her Emmy statuette.  "A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this. He had nothing to do with this... suck it Jesus, this award is my God now." 

Fox's So You Think You Can Dance went 2 for 2 and collected two awards at Saturday's ceremonies, both of which were awarded for Outstanding Choreography and given to show choreographers Wade Robson and Mia Michaels.  Because the Academy classifies Outstanding Choreography as an "area award," more than one nominee can be recognized.  While Dancing with the Stars also received a nod in the category, it failed to win -- a disturbing trend for the show on Saturday night.

Dancing with the Stars received eight nominations from the Academy -- leading the 2006-2007 reality TV Emmy Awards nomination field a year after it received six nominations and claimed two awards in its first primetime season.  But Dancing with the Stars was shut out in seven of the eight categories it received 2006-2007 Emmy nominations in, and the show's last attempt to take home an award is in the Outstanding Reality-competition Program category that will be presented during next week's 59th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards broadcast. 

Dancing with the Stars will face stiff competition for the Outstanding Reality-competition Program award.  It will be competing against Idol, Project Runway, Top Chef, and The Amazing Race -- the CBS reality show that has won the award every year since the Academy first created the category four years ago.

The 59th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards will air live from Los Angeles' Shrine Auditorium on Sunday, September 16 at 8PM ET on Fox.

Regardless of the outcome of next Sunday night's Outstanding Reality-competition Program award, The Amazing Race has already increased its lead as the most successful reality show at the Emmys.  It won two more awards -- Outstanding Picture Editing for Reality Programming and Outstanding Cinematography for Reality Programming categories -- at Saturday's 2007 Creative Arts Emmys ceremony, giving it a total nine Emmy wins since it was first eligible in 2002.

The Amazing Race's two new Emmy wins also mean that Bravo's Project Runway (which had also been nominated in the Outstanding Picture Editing for Reality Programming and Outstanding Cinematography for Reality Programming categories) and Top Chef (which had also been nominated in the Outstanding Cinematography for Reality Programming category) are now both pinning their Emmy hopes on the Outstanding Reality-competition Program award that The Amazing Race has dominated to-date. 

A loss would drop Project Runway's Emmy nomination record to 0 for 6 (the show has received three nominations during each of the last two years) and Top Chef to 0 for 2 (both of its nominations came this year.)

Discovery Channel's Deadliest Catch received four nominations in its second year of eligibility, however it failed to capture any statuettes.  CBS' Survivor, Discovery's Dirty Jobs, Fox's Hell's Kitchen, A&E Network's Intervention, and Fox's On the Lot had each received one nomination apiece but all also went home empty-handed.

E! will air an edited two-hour version of the 2007 Creative Art Emmy Awards ceremony on Saturday, September 15 at 8PM ET/PT.
About The Author: Christopher Rocchio

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