People's Choice Awards winners: Why digital categories were recently added
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Molly Driscoll Staff writer
The 2016 People鈥檚 Choice Awards were held on Jan. 6 and pop culture entities such as 鈥淔urious 7,鈥� 鈥淭he Big Bang Theory,鈥� and music group Fifth Harmony were honored.
The ceremony aired on CBS, and, as indicated by the name, the awards honor those who were selected by the public as their 鈥渇avorite鈥� in a category such as favorite movie, favorite network TV drama, and favorite breakout artist.
The action movie 鈥淔urious 7鈥� was selected as favorite movie, while Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum won the favorite movie actress and favorite movie actor prizes, respectively. The favorite TV show and favorite network comedy prizes were taken by 鈥淭heory,鈥� while 鈥淕rey鈥檚 Anatomy鈥� was named as the favorite network drama.聽
The music group Fifth Harmony were named as the favorite group. Ed Sheeran took the title of favorite male artist, and Taylor Swift was named the favorite female artist.聽
New prizes were those in the digital category, which selected a celebrity as the public鈥檚 favorite on social media and also included awards such as favorite YouTube star.聽
The addition echoes that of the Teen Choice Awards, which added Web categories for the ceremony in 2014. The Teen Choice Awards air on Fox and are obviously aimed at a younger audience.聽
The new categories are no doubt an attempt to better represent a society in which young people can become internationally famous on social media. For example, Hayes Grier earned a spot on the ABC reality competition 鈥淒ancing With the Stars鈥� for his fame on the social media service Vine, where he has more than 4 million followers.
We鈥檒l see how ratings for this year鈥檚 People鈥檚 Choice Awards end up, but last year鈥檚 Teen Choice Awards, when those digital categories were part of the ceremony, did fine 鈥� the ratings were about the same as in 2014 and the show was the best of the night in ratings for teenagers. 聽
Younger viewers are most likely drawn to the ceremony for a variety of factors, such as which actors or musicians are nominated in a certain year, but it seems that adding digital categories didn鈥檛 alienate teenage viewers and kept the show a viable commodity for Fox.
