News Creative Arts, A Big Night for Behind-the-Scenes Download the list of Creative Arts winners press release HBO outdistanced the competition by a wide margin at the 2003-2004 Primetime Creative Arts, Engineering and Interactive Television Awards show on Saturday at the Shrine Auditorium, taking 16 awards, while Fox and PBS tied for second place with 5 awards apiece. The balance of this year’s primetime honors will be handed out at The 56th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards, which ABC will telecast from the Shrine on Sunday, September 19. HBO’s Creative Arts Awards tally included five statuettes for their supernatural series Carnivale and four for their miniseries adaptation of Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Angels in America. NBC’s Frasier and Fox’s 24 also picked up four awards each. Although the ceremonies focused primarily on the behind-the-scenes artists who work largely in anonymity to make on-camera talent look and sound their best, a quartet of acting awards were given for series guest appearances. In the comedy categories, awards went to Laura Linney for Frasier and John Turturro for Monk (USA). In the drama categories, William Shatner and Sharon Stone were both honored for their work on The Practice (ABC). “Wow. I can’t believe it,” Stone exclaimed as she accepted here award. “I had a dream the other night that I won this. It’s a lot better than that tidal wave dream I keep having.” Stone went on to give a long, impassioned speech thanking not the creative arts departments, but the men and women who toil away on film and TV crews. “I’ve been in the business so long and I’ve spent so much time with those guys. Those are my people,” Stone explained backstage. “We spend our lives on location and these become the people that you share your life with.” Academy chairman & CEO Dick Askin presented the Governors Award to Viacom Networks for their ongoing trio of public service campaigns, Nickelodeons “Let’s Just Play” and MTV’s MTV’s “Choose or Lose” and “Know HIV/AIDS.” Les Paul, known worldwide for the electric guitar that bears his name, was bestowed the Charles F. Jenkins Lifetime Achievement Award for his pioneering efforts to develop sound-on-sound recording, over-dubbing, the electronic reverb effect and multi-track tape recording. Paul constructed the first eight- track recorder in the late 1940s by synchronizing eight Ampex tape machines, In the early ‘50s, he used them to record a string of multi-tracked hits (“How High the Moon,” “Vaya Con Dios,” etc.) with then wife Mary Ford. The 89-year-old Paul – who still performs every Monday at the Iridium Jazz Club in Manhattan -- accepted via videotape from the recording studio in his New Jersey home where he built the historic machine, which will soon be enshrined in the Smithsonian Institution. The Philo T. Farnsworth Corporate Achievement Emmy was give to Chyron Corporation for their invention and development of the character generator. Engineering awards were also given to Dolby Laboratories for their Dolby LM100 Broadcast Loudness Meter and Sony/Panavision for their HDW-F900 24p digital imaging system. The award for Outstanding Reality Program went to Bravo’s Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Backstage the show’s quintet of makeover experts demonstrated their joy over their win by serenading the press with their rendition of “Emmy, You’re a Fine Girl” (sung to the tune of Looking Glass’s 1972 hit “Brandy”). “None of us have been so happy to take a lady home before,” explained the show’s fashion maven Carson Kressley.