Best Emmy-nominated shows of all time

>> In honor of the 2019 Emmy Awards, Stacker has compiled a comprehensive ranking of the best Emmy nominated shows of all time. >> In honor of the 2019 Emmy Awards, Stacker has compiled a comprehensive ranking of the best Emmy nominated shows of all time. Photo: Home Box Office (HBO) Photo: Home Box Office (HBO) Image 1 of / 77 Caption Close Best Emmy-nominated shows of all time 1 / 77 Back to Gallery

The first Emmy Awards show took place at the Hollywood Athletic Club in 1949. Hosted by Walter O’Keefe, tickets to the show were five dollars and only six awards were handed out—one award went to a ventriloquist.

Named after the image-orthicon camera tube, or “immy,” which was instrumental in capturing images for television, the Emmys were created by the Television Academy to award excellence in the television industry. The Emmy Award statue was designed to be a winged woman, representing the arts, holding up an atom, representing science and was modeled after television engineer Louis McManus’s wife, Dorothy McManus.

As time went on, the Emmy Award gained acclaim and grew into one of the most prestigious awards in the entertainment industry.

Over the years, the Emmys have come to be known as an awards show where anything might happen. From an impromptu make-out between “Veep’s” Julia Louis-Dreyfus and “Breaking Bad’s” Bryan Cranston to an unsuccessful prank to steal Betty Thomas’s award to Viola Davis’s powerful speech on diversity in the entertainment industry—the Emmy Awards have always brought together visionaries and artists with diverse perspectives.

With a new era of television comes a new format for awards shows. Following in the footsteps of 2019’s host-less Academy Awards ceremony, the Emmys will go without a host for the first time this year.

This article was first published on theStacker.com