Emmy Awards Make Major Changes and Add More Nominees

The Emmy Awards have made some major changes and added some nominees this year. The Television Academy is making some moves to accommodate the era of streaming programming and that means more nominees in comedy and drama categories. Now, there will be eight shows represented regardless of the number of submissions in those categories. But, that isn’t all they told Variety. In action, every category will have at least four nominations. If there are 20-80 submissions, there will be five nominations, and so on until 240 shows have been submitted, in which case there will be 8 nominees. Tiers dictate how many it takes to add one more to the fold. A big winner in these changes is the ever-expanding limited series category which will now have the ability to secure eight nominations.

“To align the nominations selection process across all awards categories and to allow for more inclusiveness in the recognition of excellence.” Other categories will now determine their nominees by how many submissions are received.

“The increase in submissions is a reflection of the number of new voices, new television platforms and a tremendous growth in content from existing platforms across our industry,” Television Academy Chairman and CEO Frank Scherma told Variety. “Despite production suspension resulting from COVID-19, there is a wealth of excellent work submitted for this year’s competition.”

Despite the fact that the 72nd Emmy’s are still scheduled to take place on Sunday Sept 20th, the Daytime Emmys got canceled this year due to the coronavirus outbreak. They announced that decision back in March.

“Given our concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic, we have decided that we will not be staging the 47th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards in Pasadena this coming June,” NATAS chairman Terry O’Reilly told the press. “As there are so many unknowns right now with the flow of information changing on a daily, almost hourly, basis, it would simply be irresponsible to move forward with our annual celebration of excellence in daytime television at this time.”

“These were extremely difficult decisions to make, but at the end of the day the health and safety of our event attendees and staff must remain our paramount concern,” NATAS president and CEO Adam Sharp explained to Deadline. “We are closely monitoring public health authorities’ guidance, seeking feedback from our awards communities, and evaluating the flexibility of our venue and production partners as we plan for the future in this unprecedented context.”

Are you looking forward to the Emmy Awards this year? Let us know down in the comments!