USA: Keke Palmer has broken through the game show host boys’ club.
Palmer won the Emmy for Outstanding Host for a Game Show for NBC’s Password – the first time that the category has been part of the primetime Emmys after moving from the daytime awards.
She beat Jeopardy!’s hosts Ken Jennings and Mayim Bialik, Family Feud’s Steve Harvey and Wheel of Fortune’s Pat Sajak.
Palmer becomes the first woman to win the award since 2009 when Meredith Vieira won for the syndicated run of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
Harvey won last year and Alex Trebek won the three years prior to that.
“Wow. That is so exciting thank you so much. I’m really just so thankful, I’m almost speechless. I want to thank the people who allowed this to happen, thank you to Jimmy Fallon, thank to NBC,” she said.
Game shows began to appear on radio and television in the late 1930s. The first television game show, Spelling Bee, as well as the first radio game show, Information Please, were both broadcast in 1938; the first major success in the game show genre was Dr. I.Q., a radio quiz show that began in 1939. Truth or Consequences was the first game show to air on commercially licensed television; the CBS Television Quiz followed shortly thereafter as the first to be regularly scheduled.
