Teen Choice Awards

Teen Choice Awards
2015 Teen Choice Awards
Country	United States
Presented by	Fox
Reward	Special surfboards
First awarded	August 1, 1999
Official website	http://www.teenchoice.com/
Television/Radio coverage
Network	Fox
Runtime	88–104 minutes

The Teen Choice Awards is an annual awards show that airs on the Fox television network. The awards honor the year's biggest achievements in music, movies, sports, television, fashion, and more, voted by teen viewers (ages 13 to 19). Winners receive a full size surfboard designed with the graphics of that year's show.

History

As the executive producers, Bob Bain and Michael Burg came together to create an award show geared toward a teen demographic, somewhat older than that of the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards, but similar to that of MTV. Greg Sills has been the supervising producer and Paul Flattery has been the producer every year since its inception in 1999.

The format of the show has remained the same, awarding the achievements of those in the entertainment and athletic industries with non-traditional categories fixed into the ceremony. The show was held at the Barker Hangar at Santa Monica Airport for its first two shows in 1999 and 2000. However, since 2001, it has been held at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Universal City, California. Some years it airs live, but usually it airs on a one-day delay. With the demolition of the amphitheater in 2013, the show moved to a new location. Then after the remodeled Pauley Pavilion at UCLA in Westwood, Los Angeles was flooded by a broken 30" water pipe on July 29, 2014, the show was moved to the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.^[1]

Ballots were once used in teen-oriented magazines, where readers were to purchase and tear out their ballot. Votes could also be cast online through Fox.com. In 2008, Fox and the show's producers created Teenchoiceawards.com as the official website for the Teen Choice Awards. In 2009, the number of votes cast was in excess of 83 million. That same year "teenchoicegirl" appeared on Twitter. She is actually a teenage girl working on the show as an intern and keeps fans informed of news and gossip. In just a few weeks she had over 28,000 followers.

Since the ceremony's inception, the show has given out genuine custom-made surfboards to individual winners (they cost over $800 each to manufacture). They create a new original design every year. The surfboard was chosen as the award because it represents the freedom of the summer vacation for teens, whether they surf or not. Some celebrities, such as Jennifer Love Hewitt, have actually used them to surf; Marlon Wayans famously said, "Brothers don't surf"; and in 2009, Hugh Jackman, upon winning his first one, said that he was no longer the only Australian without a surfboard.

Awards ceremonies (by year)

In 1999 and 2000, the venue for the event was Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California. The event's venue was the Gibson Amphitheatre, Los Angeles from 2001 to 2013. In 2014, the venue was originally scheduled to be the UCLA Pauley Pavilion, but when it was flooded the venue was changed to the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.^[2]

Do Something

In 2008, Dosomething.org sponsored The Do Something Award—which recognized amazing young people. Nine nominees—who saw a problem in the world and then tackled it—each won $10,000 for their cause. One lucky winner received the $100,000 grand prize. The Do Something Award (formerly the BR!CK Awards) is a program of Do Something, a New York-based non-profit that reaches about 11.5 million young people annually. The award was not presented in 2009. It was replaced with "Choice Celebrity Activist" which was won by Hayden Panettiere.

Special awards

Note: Special Awards are not given every year.

Most wins

Controversy and allegations of rigging

On August 11, 2014, Vine star Cameron Dallas tweeted that the awards ceremony was "rigged", saying that he had been informed six days prior to the actual event that he had won the award, and the runners-up were told to still try to solicit votes from their followers, even though the results had already been decided. He also tweeted "So I found out that the Teen Choice Awards were rigged and used powerful internet people for marketing. I'm sad now. Television is stupid" before deleting the tweets, saying he "should have taken the high road", but he "didn't like the fact that [his fans] were being lied to".^[17] Soon after Dallas' initial tweets, fellow Viner Carter Reynolds stated that the Teen Choice Awards had "used everyone for promotion", using the hashtag "#TeensDontHaveAChoiceAwards", which soon began trending by fans who noticed the disclaimer at the end of the show saying that the producers reserved the right to choose the winners, asking what was the point of voting if their votes were ultimately worthless. Reynolds also later deleted his tweet.^[18][19]

The voting rules page^[20] states "Teenasaurus Rox reserves the right to choose the winner from the top four vote generators".^[21]

See also

• Kids' Choice Awards

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Teen Choice Awards.

• Official website