My mother-in-law hasn’t watched the Emmy Awards in five or six years. The main reason, as she puts it, “none of the shows I watch get nominated anymore.” Now, I’m sure the networks aren’t particularly concerned about the 75+ crowd, but they do seem intent on driving away generations of people who grew up watching the Emmys without doing much to bring in younger viewers. I also know a fair number of 45+ viewers that no longer watch the Emmys.
The Emmys continues to award TV series that most people haven’t seen, which only serves to depress ratings. How many viewers have seen the 2019 major comedy award winners. Fleabag, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and Barry? Not many. In the drama category, Game of Thrones was the lone major award winner with a sizable viewing audience (and was still available in less than half of TV homes). Despite press accounts that often predict the demise of broadcast television, the highest rated (i.e., most popular) shows on the air are still primetime broadcast network series (The Walking Dead and Yellowstone notwithstanding), few of which get nominated for major awards these days.
The Emmy telecast has alternated among the Big-Four broadcast networks over the years because of the once true notion that it’s a major promotional vehicle for all the broadcast networks. This, of course, is no longer the case. Of the 100 major comedy and drama nominees in 2020 – best comedy, best drama, best limited series, and the acting categories in each group – nearly half were on HBO and Netflix (each with 24). A sign that we really are in the era of Peak TV+, 44% of these nominations are for series on streaming services. The broadcast networks account just 11 nominations combined, 3 of which are for Saturday Night Live – 4 are for NBC’s The Good Place, 2 for ABC’s Black-ish, and 1 each for NBC’s This is Us and Brooklyn Nine Nine.
Among premium cable, HBO’s nominations are split among eight series, although the majority go to just two, Succession and Watchmen, which garnered 7 apiece. The network’s other nominees are, Insecure (3), Westworld (2), Big Little Lies (2), Curb Your Enthusiasm (1), Euphoria (1), and I Know This Much is True (1). Showtime managed just one nomination, for Black Monday.
Netflix’s nominees are split among 10 series, some returning favorites – Ozark (4), The Crown (3), Dead to Me (3), The Kominsky Method (3), GLOW (1), and Stranger Things (1), and some new – Hollywood (4), Unbelievable (2), Unorthodox (2), and Self Made (1).
Among the other streaming services, Amazon Prime Video’s 6 nominations are all for its perennial award winner, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel ; Hulu has 9 nominations divided among four series, The Handmaid’s Tale (4), Little Fires Everywhere (2), Ramy (2) and Normal People (1); Apple TV+ has 4 nominations, all going to The Morning Show, and Disney+ got a nomination for The Mandalorian.
On the ad-supported cable front, FX nabbed eight nominations for three series, Mrs. America (6), Pose (1), and What We Do in the Shadows (1). Pop TV got 5 for Schitt’s Creek, AMC got 1 for Better Call Saul, and BBCA got 4 for Killing Eve.
There were a few notable snubs (although I hate that word – perhaps overlooked is better).
- I don’t understand how Apple TV+’s The Morning Show can be nominated for best actor, actress, and supporting actor and not be nominated for best drama (Reese Witherspoon deserved a nom for supporting actress as well). Instead, Disney+’s The Mandalorian scored a surprise nod. It is essentially a space western about bounty hunters in the outer reaches of the Galaxy (taking place five years after the events in the Return of the Jedi movie). Decent and entertaining, but hardly Emmy-worthy. I guess voters wanted to throw Disney a bone for its new streaming service. The Morning Show deserved this spot.
- If CBS’s wonderful new supernatural drama, Evil, was on Netflix, it might be hailed as the best new show of the year. Only the current bias against broadcast series prevented it from being nominated. Few deserved a best actress nomination more than Evil’s Katja Herbers, or best supporting actor more than the deliciously creepy Michael Emerson. Likewise, ABC’s excellent new drama, Stumptown, and the always great Cobie Smulders deserved some consideration. Among comedies, CBS’s Young Sheldon was as funny as anything nominated, and The Big Bang Theory, in its final season, deserved some love.
- Saturday Night Live should not be competing with regular original scripted comedies. It grabbed two spots in the supporting actress category and one for supporting actor that should have gone to those who were in actual series.
- I don’t see how Rhea Seehorn was overlooked for her sublime performance in Better Call Saul. Or how the great Titus Welliver never gets considered for Amazon Prime Video’s Bosch, which is only the best procedural drama on television.
- And how is CBS All Access’s The Good Fight not nominated for anything?
In 2019, None of the major acting or outstanding series awards for comedy or drama went to a broadcast network show. In fact, a broadcast series hasn’t won for best drama since 24 got the honor in 2006. In 2017, This is Us was the first broadcast drama even nominated in six years (it was also nominated in 2018 and 2019). There are no broadcast series nominated for best drama in 2020 The last broadcast show to win for best comedy was Modern Family six years ago, in 2014. In 2018, Black-ish was the only broadcast network comedy nominated, while in 2019 and 2020, NBC’s The Good Place was the only broadcast comedy to make the nomination cut (although Black-ish did get a best actress nomination and both Black-ish and The Good Place got best actor nominations).
TV series that air on different video outlets have different creative limitations based on levels of language, sex, and violence, and whether they must answer to advertisers. Having them all compete with one another is inherently unfair, and works against the more traditional broadcast networks – particularly since streaming series generally have between 8 and 13 episodes per season while the broadcast networks typically have between 17 and 24. The obvious solution is to divide the awards into three categories – ad-supported, premium cable, and streaming services.
Had this been implemented for 2020, we might see an ad-supported drama category including, Evil, Stumptown, This is Us, Better Call Saul, Killing Eve, and Pose. The premium cable drama group might have Westworld, Succession, Billions, Watchmen, Big Little Lies, and Vida competing against one another (get rid of limited series – there’s no difference between one season of Watchmen and Succession). And the streaming drama category could have Ozark, Stranger Things, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Good Fight, Bosch, and The Crown. We’d get a similarly diverse group of shows in the comedy categories.
There are so many good TV shows on the air these days that it might be a good idea to break it down to sub categories. Instead of best drama for example, have best procedural drama, best supernatural drama, best action drama, best comedy-drama, best romantic comedy, best workplace comedy, and best family comedy.
This would also pave the way for ending category gender divisions, so performers such as Billions star, Asia Kate Dillon, the first gender-nonbinary performer to play a nonbinary character on a major television series, won’t have to choose between “male” or “female,” neither of which identifies them. With more nonbinary roles being cast, now is the time to do this. With the additional sub categories, not having enough nomination spots available would no longer be a concern in ending gender distinctions (you could still have five or six nominees per category).
This way, more television series that people have actually seen would be up for major awards without negatively impacting the high-quality shows that are only available to subscribers in half the country. There’s little doubt that ratings would improve as well. Otherwise, let Netflix or HBO have the Emmys. In its current form it has become a vehicle to promote the broadcast networks’ competitors, so why not let one of them air it. Given that the broadcast networks recently extended their rights to alternate the award show, however, now would be a good time to implement the above suggested changes.
If changes are not implemented to ensure that some of the most popular series are included, perhaps the broadcast networks should go back to the future and institute their own version of the long defunct CableACE Awards. These were given by the National Cable Television Association to recognize excellence in American cable television between 1978 and 1997 – when the Emmys refused to recognize cable shows, and were the exclusive domain of broadcast network series (ACE stood for Award for Cable Excellence). In the final year of the CableACE Awards, HBO’s OZ won for best drama and The Larry Sanders Show won for best comedy.
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