Entertainment

WGN America Nabs First-Ever Emmy Win

The 67th Annual Primetime Emmys won't air until next weekend, but the Television Academy is getting things kicked off this Saturday with the Creative Arts Emmy Awards, honoring the best in the often-overlooked technical categories, including Music, Visual Effects, and Main Title Design. That latter category has become a favorite among television audiences in the past few years, as the art of the television title sequence has blossomed from perfunctory introduction to full-blown art film. And this year, WGN America's Manhattan took home the Creative Arts Emmy for its superbly-crafted sequence.

Manhattan's win likely came as quite a shock to everyone involved. First of all, it won in a category that included such acclaimed main titles as FX's American Horror Story: Freak Show (breaking into stop motion animation in the anthology's fourth season), AMC's Halt And Catch Fire (with its electrifying animation and synth score), and Netflix's Daredevil (reflecting both the show's violence and its religious themes with its dripping red imagery). Amazon's Bosch and HBO's Olive Kitteridge rounded out the pack of five.

But more importantly, Manhattan's victory signals the first-ever Emmy Award for WGN America as a network. (It was also WGN America's first-ever nomination , which means the network is currently batting 1000.) The channel mostly known for reruns only branched into original programming last year, when it debuted both Manhattan and witchy drama Salem.

Manhattan now joins the likes of other classic Main Title Design winners like Dexter, Mad Men, Game Of Thrones, and True Detective. Check out the beautiful sequence here:

Images: WGN America