ESPN reportedly submitted Emmy Award entries under fake names so that statuettes could be given to on-air personalities who we not eligible, according to The Wrap.
- ESPN also reportedly had the awards re-engraved and given to those who had not earned them.
- Kirk Herbstreit, Lee Corso, Chris Fowler, Desmond Howard, and Samantha Ponder are among those on-air personalities who were given the statuettes.
- Former on-air ESPN reporter Shelley Smith was also asked to return two sports Emmy statuettes she had been given over a decade ago.
- That same request was also made to many of the network’s stars.
- Overall, it has been reported that ESPN has acquired more than 30 statuettes to present to ineligible on-air talent.
- The talent in question was prohibited from winning by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS), the organization that puts on the awards presentations, in an effort to prevent “double dipping.”
- On-air talent is prohibited from winning the award for outstanding weekly studio show due to being eligible for individual awards.
- ESPN went around that rule by submitting fake names in the credit list for College GameDay.
- There is no evidence to suggest that any of the on-air talent was aware that any rule had been broken.
- While it is unclear at this time who at ESPN initially launched this scheme, vice president and executive producer of original content and features Craig Lazarus and senior vice president of production Lee Fitting have been banned from participating in the Emmys going forward.
What they’re saying:
- Statement from ESPN: “Some members of our team were clearly wrong in submitting certain names going back to 2007 (or that MAY go back to 1997) in Emmy categories where they were not eligible for recognition or statuettes. This was a misguided attempt to recognize on-air individuals who were important members of our production team. Once current leadership was made aware, we apologized to NATAS for violating guidelines and worked closely with them to completely overhaul our submission process to safeguard against anything like this happening again.