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It was another difficult year in 2022, and the sadness extended to many beloved and groundbreaking people in the show business and media worlds who died during the past 12 months.

Scroll through a photo gallery above, which also includes the obituaries.

The acting world lost giants including Sidney Poitier and Angela Lansbury, along with such big names as James Caan, Anne Heche, Bob Saget, Kirstie Alley, Ray Liotta, Nichelle Nichols, William Hurt, Louise Fletcher, Robert Clary, Emilio Delgado, Sally Kellerman, Robbie Coltrane, Monica Vitti, Leslie Jordan, John Aniston, Tony Sirico, Charlbi Dean, Tony Dow, Irene Papas, Howard Hesseman and Seinfeld moms Estelle Harris and Liz Sheridan.

We also pay tribute to directors including Ivan Reitman, Peter Bogdanovich and Marvin J. Chomsky.

Musicians who left us this past year include Jerry Lee Lewis, Loretta Lynn, Olivia Newton-John, Meat Loaf, Ronnie Spector, Naomi Judd, Ramsey Lewis, Stephen “tWitch” Boss and Coolio. Many key...

Producers of this Monday’s Primetime Emmy Awards ceremony have some difficult decisions to make about who to honor during the emotional In Memoriam segment. John Legend will perform “Pieces,” a new song he has written for the tribute. Kenan Thompson will host the 2022 Emmys for NBC at 8 p.m. Et; 5 p.m. Pt.

Our list below includes almost 100 people who made a strong contribution to television and have died since mid-September of 2021 following the previous Emmys ceremony. Only about 40-45 of these people will probably be in the video segment. Certain to be featured will be TV Academy Hall of Fame members actress Betty White and director Jay Sandrich.Other prominent names almost certainly chosen are: Mary Alice (acting winner), Louie Anderson (acting winner), James Caan (acting nominee), Anne Heche (acting winner), Howard Hesseman (acting nominee), William Hurt (acting nominee), Gregory Itzin (acting nominee), Ray Liotta (acting winner), Burt Metcalfe...

The country music community gathered today at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville to remember one of their own. As it might be expected, the best way to honor and memorialize one of the genre’s greatest hitmakers was found in song.

Naomi Judd: A River of Time was carried live and commercial-free on CMT.

“It’s so weird, yet so natural, to be in front of (the fans), our chosen family for 38 years,” Wynonna Judd said near the end of the memorial. “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine,” she said, quoting a gospel hymn,

Then, Wynonna said that she would be going on the 11-date national tour that she and her mother had previously announced.

“The show must go on, as hard as it may be,” she said.

Naomi Judd never met a stranger, according to her husband, Larry Strickland. He spoke while flanked by Ashley and Wynonna Judd,...

Naomi Judd, one half of the Grammy-winning duo the Judds, died at the age of 76 on Saturday. Her representative confirmed the news. No cause of death was given.

“Today we sisters experienced a tragedy,” her daughters, singer Wynonna and film star Ashley, wrote on Twitter. “We lost our beautiful mother to the disease of mental illness. We are shattered. We are navigating profound grief and know that as we loved her, she was loved by her public. We are in unknown territory.”

Today we sisters experienced a tragedy. We lost...

Jim Owens, who was in the forefront of bringing country music into a new era of entertainment television programming, died today with wife Lorianne Crook by his side.

Owens broke into national syndication in 1977 when he created and produced A Concert Behind Prison Walls with Johnny Cash, Linda Ronstadt, and Roy Clark.

The next year, he created the Music City News Country Awards. It became a top rated show in national syndication, with Owens producing and syndicating the awards show via his own company through 1984.

In 1983, he created country music’s first entertainment news talk show, bringing together news correspondent Lorianne Crook with veteran radio personality and local television host Charlie Chase . The Crook & Chase program, This Week in Country Music, brought country music entertainment news, interviews and performances to an audience hungry for information on its favorite music genre. The show was produced in various US cities and even went international.

Left out of most obituaries about renowned country music talk-show host Ralph Emery, who died Saturday, was his infamy among many rock fans for having gotten into a tiff in the late 1960s with the Byrds. Their beef even resulted in Emery being dismissed, by name, in a Byrds track — “Drug Store Truck Drivin’ Man,” which had Gram Parsons and Roger McGuinn attempting to get the last laugh in song.

But, lest Emery be remembered forever by Byrds buffs as a villain in the story, Emery invited McGuinn onto his highly rated cable series “Nashville Now” 17 years later for a reconciliation — albeit a deeply awkward one — that was captured for posterity and can be viewed on YouTube. The sight of the very, very proud Emery admitting his ingrained bias against rock music and extending a sort of olive branch to McGuinn years later manages to be both cringe-worthy and kind of touching.

Ralph Emery, the country music disc jockey and television host who came to prominence on Nashville’s Wsm, died on Saturday of natural causes, while surrounded by family at Nashville’s Tristar Centennial Medical Center, his son Michael told AP. He was 88.

Among those paying tribute to Emery today was “American Pie” singer-songwriter Don McLean. “Ralph Emery was my friend. I did his show many times and he was kind enough to send me a Christmas card every year. He had that special country music knowledge and that voice,” McLean said in a statement provided by his publicist. “Ralph was to country music what Mel Allen was to the Yankees.”

Born on March 10, 1933 in McEwen, Tennessee, Emery was an inductee of both the Country Music Hall of Fame and the National Radio Hall of Fame who served as Wsm’s all-night disc jockey from 1957 to 1972, there hosting live performances by,...

Ralph Emery, a radio and TV host who became as famous in the country world as most of the stars he interviewed over the decades, died Saturday at Tristar Centennial Medical Center in Nashville. He was 88. No immediate cause of death was given.

Emery’s renown as, alternately, “the Dick Clark of country music” or “the Johnny Carson of country” was significant enough to earn him a place in the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2007, in addition to the more expected plaudits befitting a top broadcaster in the industry, like his membership in the Country Music Disc Jockey Hall of Fame, an honor that came in 1989.

“Ralph Emery’s impact in expanding country music’s audience is incalculable,” said Kyle Young, CEO of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.”On radio and on television, he allowed fans to get to know the people behind the songs. Ralph...

On Tuesday, Wnyc Studios and Radiolab‘s Jad Abumrad launched the first episode of Dolly Parton’s America, a new podcast examining the life, art, and cultural influence of one of country music’s most beloved figures. Beginning with a look into the East Tennessee native’s music, or “Sad Ass Songs,” as this episode is titled, the nine-part weekly series delves into what the “Jolene” singer’s life says about America.

Abumrad, who was raised in Nashville, grew up with an awareness of Parton but listened to what he calls “an amalgam of opera,...

On April 6th, 2016, his 79th birthday, country music icon Merle Haggard died at his home in California’s San Joaquin Valley after a battle with pneumonia. In the three years since his passing, Haggard’s already sizeable legacy continues to inspire country artists and others touched by his image as the “poet of the common man.”

Merle Haggard was one of the chief architects of the Bakersfield Sound, the hugely influential West Coast-based sub-genre of country music. The city’s first recording studio dedicated to country music was Tally Records,...

From toiling in the cotton fields of Mississippi to being enshrined in the Country Music Hall of Fame, Charley Pride’s journey out of the segregated South was fraught with adversity. In the upcoming PBS American Masters special, Charley Pride: I’m Just Me, debuting nationwide on Friday, February 22nd, at 9:00 p.m. Et, the country legend’s hardscrabble upbringing, his important role in destroying cultural stereotypes and the impact he would have on future generations of aspiring country artists are explored in depth. Pride and wife Rozene were interviewed for the film,...

Singer Shelby Lynne turns 50 years old today, and in her half-century has done more living than most can even imagine in twice that time. Since her October 1987 debut on the Nashville Network, Lynne has confidently covered an expanse of musical ground reserved for only the most expressive and eclectic song stylists. Born Shelby Lynn Moorer in Quantico, Virginia, and raised in tiny Frankville, Alabama, Lynne was just four years old when her father propped her up on a table to sing “You Are My Sunshine” for the patrons in a local pizza parlor.

At his show at Forest Hills Stadium this summer, Willie Nelson did something unusual: He played his classic “Funny How Time Slips Away” in full. Regulars of his shows might have noticed that he usually plays a short version of the 1961 song as part of a medley alongside “Night Life” and “Crazy,” but because he was playing a shorter set, he decided to drop some other songs and switch things up. “I like to keep it in [my set] if I can,” he told Rolling Stone afterward.

The performance was reminiscent of...

When Roger McGuinn phoned into Rolling Stone earlier this week, he was just a few hours away from playing his first Byrds concert in over a quarter century. Well, sort of. His current run of shows may include his fellow Byrd Chris Hillman and they may be playing the group’s most beloved album, 1968’s Sweetheart of the Rodeo, straight through in honor of its 50th anniversary in addition to a whole other set of Byrds classics, but they aren’t billing this precisely as a reunion. Instead, it’s...

Country music icon George Jones will be induced into the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame August 21, 2010 at 7:00 p.m. at the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame Theater. The singer will be inducted alongside Al Dexter and Ray Winkler. The event will feature special guest performer Mel Tillis and the Statesiders along with the Justin Trevino Band featuring Tony Booth, Georgette Jones, Frankie Miller, Darryl McCall, Mona McCall, Amber Digby and Curtis Potter. The legendary Ralph Emery will host the event. Many attempts have been made, but rarely capture in words the immense, singular vocal gifts that have made George Glenn Jones one of the most influential singers in country music history. He is...