| You've Got Fans! AOL's Entertainment Asylum Announces Nominees For First-Ever Online Entertainment Awards Tom Hanks and James Van Der Beek to Chat Live With Fans During January 7 Online Award Ceremony Pop Group 'N SYNC and Teen TV Lead Nominations in Ten Categories Voting Begins December 26: AOL Keyword: You've Got Fans; URL: www.asylum.com/awards/ HOLLYWOOD, Dec. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- AOL's Entertainment Asylum, where fans meet the stars online, has announced nominations for You've Got Fans, the first annual worldwide online entertainment awards. You've Got Fans' nominees represent the will of AOL's 15 million households in categories ranging from traditional categories like Movie of the Year and best Musical Artist to Internet-savvy categories reflecting Entertainment Asylum's AOL pedigree, such as ``Celebrity On My 'Buddy List''' and LOL -- Internet parlance for ``Laugh Out Loud.'' The full list of nominees is: Movie of the Year Hottest Male Coolest Female Favorite TV Show Celebrity On My Buddy List CD of the Year Sexiest Newcomer Favorite Musical Artist Best of the Worst Beginning October 27, on Entertainment Asylum's first anniversary, EA began tabulating votes from fans in four categories. Drawing from AOL's enormous customer base, users voted on an additional category per week through December 22. EA estimates that users cast more than 60,000 You've Got Fans Awards. ``We've been amazed at the level of response. A lot of the results surprised us,'' said Monica Dodi, CEO of Entertainment Asylum. ``For the first time, fans were able to nominate as well as vote for their favorites representing what American truly thinks.'' Fans of the WB Network turned out in force to support the network's popular Buffy the Vampire Slayer with five nominations and Dawson's Creek with four. Music nominations, on the other hand, ran the gamut from pop artists 'N SYNC to alternative country crooner Dwight Yoakam. Now that the nominations are out, fans immediately take charge of the next phase of You've Got Fans. Beginning at 12:01AM, December 26 -- the moment the nominees are posted on EA's pages, users can vote for their favorites from among the nominees in ten categories. Voting closes January 4. On January 7, beginning midday with an online chat with James Van Der Beek (Dawson's Creek, VARSITY BLUES), winner of the You've Got Fans ``Spotlight Award.'' Entertainment Asylum plans to invite the nominees and winners in all categories to take part in chats with fans on awards day. Throughout the afternoon, nominees and winners will chat with fans both online and live from Entertainment Asylum's Studio i in beautiful Culver City -- the site of more than 300 celebrity interviews in EA's one-year history. The online awards ceremony and chat concludes with special guest Tom Hanks, multiple Academy Award winner and most recent Golden Globe Nominee for his role in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. Hanks will accept the You've Got Fans ``Entertainer of the Year'' Award. Online users will get live streaming audio of the celebrity chats; AOL users experience text chat. Why another awards show? ``This programming is unique among awards shows -- we say it's the first awards show the celebrities can stay home for -- as long as they're online with us, chatting with their fans,'' Dodi explains. ``First, the immediacy and ubiquity of the Internet provides fans worldwide with an unprecedented means of making their voice heard through online voting. Entertainment Asylum, in turn, enjoys unprecedented access to celebrities, and delivers those celebrities to their fans directly in a way no other medium can.'' Why now? ``This time of year is sweeps for the online world. Millions of families will wake up this holiday season to find a new computer in the house, and one of the ways families can share a computer is by going online. '' Dodi estimates that the heaviest Internet traffic day of the year is January 4, the day the nominations close. Entertainment Asylum is one of the Web's strongest brands. A measure of the strength of the site is the number and caliber of celebrities who have appeared in studio. From the firsts guests (Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner) to the 100th (Kenneth Brannagh) to the 200th (Jean-Claude Van Damme) and the 300th (Bryan Adams), Entertainment Asylum functions as the leading entertainment news source on the web. ``A number of the nominees are familiar and supportive of us because they've done chats and interviews with EA before,'' says Dodi. Among the nominated guests are Jennifer Love Hewitt, 'N SYNC, Jewel, Dwight Yoakam, Meg Ryan, and Adam Sandler. ``Those are just the ones who have been in studio or done chats. When you count the press interviews, set visits, junkets and premieres we've done, we've covered just about everyone.'' ENTERTAINMENT ASYLUM Where the fans meet the stars, online, is available on both AOL (Keyword: EA), AOL.com (www.aol.com/webcenter/entertainment) and the Web (www.asylum.com). Entertainment Asylum offers full, multimedia-rich entertainment features about the latest in entertainment. Covering movies, television shows, music and celebrities, Entertainment Asylum builds community around entertainment and enables unprecedented interaction between celebrities and the largest online audience of entertainment fans through Studio-i, the world's first interactive Webcasting facility. |