Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/100802
Angela Weiss/SAG-AFTRA P roducer Kathy Connell vividly remembers the 14 months leading up to the inaugural Screen Actors Guild Awards ceremony in 1995. As the irst SAG Awards Committee chair, Connell and four fellow board members worked tirelessly to establish the Awards program, from the categories, rules and design of the award to the sit-down dinner club ambience. In hindsight, that might have been the easy part. ���It was fairly terrifying when we sent out the invitations the irst year,��� recalls Connell, who stepped down from the board to become the full-time producer of the show in 1996, and who recently added the title of SAG-AFTRA assistant national executive director of awards and national programming to her resume. ���We were throwing a very grand party and we didn���t know if anybody would come. We didn���t know then that when you send out invitations nobody replies until two Producer Kathy Connell and SAG Awards Committee members Paul Napier, JoBeth Williams, Daryl Anderson and Scott Bakula celebrate another successful show in 2012. weeks before the show.��� But a bevy of enthusiastic guests did attend and were irst-hand witnesses to the highly successful debut of the Screen Actors Guild Awards, broadcast on NBC. Today, even as the 19th Annual SAG Awards approaches on Jan. 27 at the Shrine Exposition Center, Connell has more on her mind than RSVPs or where 1,200 guests will sit. With counsel from the Awards Committee, she negotiates contracts with the network and Jef Margolis Productions. She oversees every aspect of the show���s budget, marketing, promotion, and corporate sponsorships and partnerships, as well as both the awards and publicity departments. he SAG Awards Committee continues to play a vital role in the success of the show, which now airs on TNT and TBS. ���To this day, the committee, which includes Vice Chair Daryl Anderson, as well as members Scott Bakula, Shelley Fabares, Paul Napier and Woody Schultz, is involved in every step of the awards, from hiring the producer-director to adjudicating rules questions, to proofreading ballots and submission forms,��� says SAGAFTRA.org | Special Issue 2013 | SAG-AFTRA 42