The People's Choice Awards is an awards show recognizing the people and the work of popular culture. The show has been held every year since 1975 and is voted on by regular people. The People's Choice Awards air on CBS and are produced by Procter & Gamble and Mark Burnett. Global promotion is handled by Kroszover Entertainment.

The award show's creator, Bob Stivers, made the first show in 1975. The first awards recognized The Sting as 1974's Favorite Picture, Barbra Streisand as the year's Favorite Film Actress, and John Wayne as its Favorite Film Actor. Ratings for the show peaked in 1977, when the 3rd People's Choice Awards attracted 35.3 million viewers who saw Farrah Fawcett-Majors win for Favorite Female TV Star, Star Wars win as the Favorite Picture, and Streisand and Wayne win again in the Film Actress and Actor categories.

Procter & Gamble, the show's first and only sponsor, bought the show from Stivers in 1982.

In 2008, the People's Choice Awards introduced a new category: Favorite Sci-Fi Show. The nominees were Stargate Atlantis, Battlestar Galactica, and Doctor Who. The winner was Stargate Atlantis.

Categories
The award categories have changed over the years. For example, the 16th People's Choice Awards had categories including Favorite All-Around Movie (Batman), and both a Favorite Movie Actor (Tom Cruise) and a World Favorite Movie Actor (Dustin Hoffman). At the 23rd People's Choice Awards, Rob Reiner was named the People's Choice Awards Honoree. More recently, the 32nd People's Choice Awards (shown in January 2006) included categories such as Favorite On-Screen Match-Up (Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson in Wedding Crashers), Favorite Leading Lady (Reese Witherspoon), Favorite Tour (U2), and an award named after a Procter & Gamble brand: Nice 'n Easy Fans Favorite Hair (Faith Hill).

Poll-based awards
In the 20th century, the awards were based on results from Gallup polls. Each year, Gallup took a survey of different categories for favorite actor, actress, movie, artist, television show or group. There was no limit on who or what could be chosen. The public could choose whomever or whatever it liked. The results of the annual survey were announced in the form of the People's Choice Awards.

Since polls have margins of error, many years' awards have had ties in at least one category, when Gallup declared that the voting was so close that a single winner could not be chosen. For example, in 2003, both Spider-Man and The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring were recognized as Favorite Motion Picture.

Switch to online voting
The winners of the 31st People's Choice Awards (shown January 9, 2005) were decided by online voting rather than Gallup polls. The nominees submitted for Internet voting were picked using an unpublished process involving editors at Entertainment Weekly, the show's production team, and a group of pop culture fans.

The nominees for the 32nd People's Choice Awards were picked by web research company Knowledge Networks, which took what it described as a nationally representative sample of men and women ages 18 to 54, with and without Internet access, to come up with the nominees after being presented with a list of candidates determined by national ratings averages, box office grosses and album sales, and they had the option to write in their favorites. Knowledge Networks picks these people by calling them and gives a Web TV and Internet access to people without Internet access so they can see what other people think.

The nominees for the 2010 People's Choice Awards were determined by media research company Visible Measures, which specializes in measuring Internet Video audience behavior.  They used a program called True Reach to find out people's reactions to online videos.

Kids' Choice Awards
In 1988, Nickelodeon created the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards, a children's version of the People's Choice Awards. Though they have similar names, the two shows are owned by different companies. Also similar but unrelated is the Teen Choice Awards.

References

Other websites
 People's Choice Awards website
 People's Choice blog 
 Information and results  at the Internet Movie Database
 35th Anniversary article from "The Hollywood Reporter"

Entertainment awards
Movie awards