The 36th People's Choice Awards, honoring the best in popular culture for 2009, was held on January 6, 2010 at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles, California, and was broadcasted on CBS. Not all of the awards were presented on air during the show, as many including Favorite Movie were left out. As well as Favorite Actor, Johnny Depp also won the Actor/Actress Of The Decade award.

Performers:

Winners are listed in bold.

The People's Choice Awards is an American awards show recognizing the people and the work of popular culture. The show has been held annually since 1975 and is voted on by the general public. The People's Choice Awards air on CBS and are produced by Procter & Gamble and Survivor magnate Mark Burnett. In Canada, it airs on Global. Global promotion provided by Kroszover Entertainment.

The award show's creator, Bob Stivers, produced 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 annual event peaked in 1977, when the 3rd People's Choice Awards attracted 35.3 million viewers who witnessed 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 only sponsor, bought the show from Stivers in 1982.

The award categories have varied 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 (broadcast 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). 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. Stargate Atlantis ultimately became the first recipient of the award.

The Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards (WCCA) are annual awards in which online cartoonists nominate and select outstanding webcomics. The awards have been held since 2001, were featured in a The New York Times column on webcomics in 2005, and have been mentioned as a tool for librarians.

The WCCA represent a form of peer recognition, with voting rights granted only to creators working on online webcomics. Winners of awards receive an individualized web banner for their site, although MegaCon announced in 2007 that a live presentation would be made for the first time. In 2003, 2005 and 2006 the awards were presented in an online ceremony depicted in comic strip form and involving a number of creators.

The WCCA were started by Scott Maddix and Mark Mekkes in 2000, with the first awards made in 2001. Mekkes noted his motivation as being to "create a webcomic award process that would do the most to help the webcomic community and encourage creators to strive toward greatness." Mekkes set up a committee to run the awards, initially known as the Cartoonists' Choice Awards, assuming the position of chairman, a role he was still holding in 2007. A press release on The Dreamland Chronicles' nomination described the committee as "an independent organization dedicated to the promotion and recognition of online comics and their creators." However, committee member Lewis Powell has criticised the awards as being "horribly mismanaged, they are not well organized and they don't do what they are supposed to" and that "Problems with the WCCAs [include] making people aware of them, getting people to care about them."

Sofía Margarita Vergara Vergara (born July 10, 1972) is a Colombian actress, comedian, television hostess and model.

Vergara had been widely known for co-hosting two television shows for Univisión in the late 1990s. Her television career opened up for her a window of exposure to North American audiences prior to her first notable acting job in English, the 2003 film Chasing Papi. Subsequently, she appeared in films, including two Tyler Perry films, Meet the Browns (2008) and Madea Goes to Jail (2009), receiving an ALMA Award nomination for the latter. Vergara's success on television has earned her roles in recent films, The Smurfs (2011), New Year's Eve (2011), Happy Feet Two (2011) and The Three Stooges (2012).

As of 2012^[update] Vergara stars on the ABC series Modern Family as Gloria Delgado-Pritchett, for which she was nominated for two Golden Globe Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and three Screen Actors Guild Awards for Best Comedy Actress.

Vergara was born in Barranquilla, Colombia. Her mother, Margarita Vergara Dávila de Vergara, is a homemaker, and her father, Julio Enrique Vergara Robayo, produced cattle for the meat industry. "Toti" was the nickname given to Vergara by her five brothers and sisters and many cousins. She grew up in her hometown of Barranquilla and was raised as a devout Catholic in a well-off family, attending a private bilingual Spanish/English school.

Kristopher Neil "Kris" Allen (born June 21, 1985) is an American musician and singer-songwriter from Conway, Arkansas, and the winner of the eighth season of American Idol. Prior to Idol, he self-released a 2007 album entitled Brand New Shoes.

Allen's Idol coronation song, "No Boundaries" and his version of "Heartless" both charted within the Top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100. Allen's post-Idol self-titled album was released on November 17, 2009, through 19 Recordings and Jive Records. The album debuted at number eleven on the U.S. Billboard 200. The album's lead single, "Live Like We're Dying", was released on September 21, 2009, and peaked at number eighteen in the U.S. with combined sales of over 1.7 million. Allen's second major-label album Thank You Camellia was released on May 22, 2012, and the lead single "The Vision of Love" was released March 26, 2012.

Allen was born in Jacksonville, Arkansas, to Kimberly (née Wood) and Neil Allen. He is the elder of two sons; his younger brother, Daniel, is a college cheerleading coach.