CBS' 'The Young and the Restless' Cleans Up at Dirty Daytime Emmys

CBS’ The Young and the Restless was the top soap opera winner of the 41st Daytime Emmy Awards, which were handed out Sunday evening at the Beverly Hilton.

Y&R, which is the highest-rated of the four soap operas left on the air, took home six awards, including outstanding drama. NBC’s Days of Our Lives, the lowest-rated of the four, claimed three awards, including outstanding actress in a drama, which went to Eileen Davidson for her role on Days of Our Lives, although she’s signed a two-year contract to return to Y&R. ABC’s General Hospital and CBS' The Bold and the Beautiful were shut out. One Life to Live, which went off of ABC’s air in January 2012 but aired for nearly nine months on Hulu and The Online Network, won one award for directing.

Among syndicated shows, CBS Television Distribution’s Entertainment Tonight and Warner Bros.’ Extra tied to win the first-ever Daytime Emmy for outstanding entertainment news program.

Warner Bros.’ Ellen was named outstanding entertainment talk show for the second year in a row, after losing in 2012 to Disney-ABC’s Live with Kelly and Michael. This was Ellen’s eighth outstanding talk show Emmy, although the category was split into entertainment and information in 2008. The show’s host, Ellen Degeneres, does not submit herself in the entertainment talk host category after winning for several years.

NBCUniversal’s The Steve Harvey Show was named outstanding informative talk show. Harvey also won outstanding game show host for Debmar-Mercury’s Family Feud, although Family Feud was not nominated as outstanding game show. Harvey was vacationing in Bali and not present, so his manager Rushion McDonald accepted on his behalf.

CBS Television Distribution's Jeopardy!, which has been on a ratings roll, was named outstanding game show for the 13th time. Warner Bros.' The People's Court was named outstanding court show, while CTD's long-time court leader, Judge Judy, was snubbed after finally winning last year. 

Dr. Mehmet Oz and Katie Couric tied as outstanding informational talk show hosts for Sony Pictures Television’s Dr. Oz and Disney-ABC’s canceled Katie, although neither was present. Couric got married in the Hamptons over the weekend. No-shows were fairly common, although most of the executive producers and soap-opera stars managed to be on hand.

ABC’s Good Morning America was named outstanding morning show.

Daytime Emmys were given out in three new categories: outstanding talent in Spanish, outstanding entertainment program in Spanish and outstanding talk show in Spanish. Those awards were won by Univision’s Rodner Figueroa, Telemundo’s Un Nuevo Dia and CNN en Espanol’s Clix. The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences has said that it is strongly considering launching a Spanish-language television awards ceremony.

This was the first year since 1984 that the Daytime Emmys hasn’t aired on a network, with the show airing the last two years on HLN. Executives at NATAS told B&C that they expect to be back on TV next year, after three networks showed interest this year after the decision was made to live-stream the awards.

The red carpet pre-show and the awards themselves were live-streamed at DaytimeEmmys.net, a format that allowed host Kathy Griffin and several presenters — mostly notably The Talk’s Sharon Osbourne — to go far more blue than they could have had the ceremony aired in primetime. Both Griffin and Osbourne dropped several F-bombs during the telecast, and Griffin personally told two awards accepters — Entertainment Tonight’s Linda Bell Blue and The Young and the Restless’ Jill Farren Phelps — to “wrap it up” since there were no rules around keeping acceptance speeches to a certain length.

The red carpet was populated by several “social-media hostesses” who themselves admitted on the stream that they were very inexperienced, which showed. The hostesses often did not know they were interviewing or in what show they appeared. Several hostesses and presenters also appeared drunk, including General Hospital’s Kelly Monaco, who became a trending topic on Twitter.

Paige Albiniak

Contributing editor Paige Albiniak has been covering the business of television for more than 25 years. She is a longtime contributor to Next TV, Broadcasting + Cable and Multichannel News. She concurrently serves as editorial director for The Global Entertainment Marketing Academy of Arts & Sciences (G.E.M.A.). She has written for such publications as TVNewsCheck, The New York Post, Variety, CBS Watch and more. Albiniak was B+C’s Los Angeles bureau chief from September 2002 to 2004, and an associate editor covering Congress and lobbying for the magazine in Washington, D.C., from January 1997 - September 2002.