- The 2019 Emmy Awards will be held on September 22, 2019.
- Colin Jost and Michael Che hosted the 2018 Emmy Awards broadcast.
- Nominations will be announced on July 16, 2019.
The Emmy Awards have been a staple of American television since the late 1940’s and they continue today despite questionable relevance in a digital broadcasting environment. The first Emmy Awards were presented on January 25, 1949 at the Hollywood Athletic Club but the awards have grown in scope and stature since then to the point that you need a scorecard to figure out the various permutations.
Until 1974, the event we’re discussing here was known simply as the ‘Emmy Awards’. In 1974, however, a new awards show was created to honor excellence in daytime television. These were cleverly named the ‘Daytime Emmys’ and this show became the ‘Primetime Emmy Awards’. That is in addition to the Sports Emmys, Technical Emmys, International Emmys, News and Documentary Emmys and Regional Emmys. The whole thing is so convoluted that there’s actually two ‘Academy’ groups behind the awards–the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (ATAS) runs most of the Emmys with the exception of the Technical and Engineering Emmys and the Regional Emmys. These shows are run by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) who once worked with ATAS but split from the group in the mid 1970’s. NATAS runs all of the Regional Emmys except the Los Angeles Area Emmys which is under the auspices of ATAS. To make things all the more confusing each group has their own Engineering focused awards with ATAS giving out the ‘Prime Time Technical Emmys’.
TOUGH TIMES FOR BROADCAST TELEVISION
These are strange days indeed for the television industry. On one hand, television programming is extremely relevant again with a bumper crop of high quality shows. That’s evident by looking at the list of nominees with plenty of instantly recognizable ‘A Listers’. Back in the 70’s TV was basically situation comedies, crime shows like Mannix and banal ‘Movie of the Week’ productions that all seemed to star Karen Valentine. The transformation began over a decade ago with high quality programming like The Sopranos and continues to this day with series such as the recently concluded epic Game of Thrones. And here begins the crux of the problem not only for the TV industry but the film industry as well– the best work isn’t coming from the old line TV networks. Instead, it’s coming from cable networks and online streaming providers like Netflix and Amazon.
This is great and all were it not for the fact that the broadcast industry’s long standing revenue model is being obliterated in large part by the entities producing the best television programming. The legacy ‘analog era’ networks are not really equipped to completely reinvent themselves and look more and more like dinosaurs in today’s on demand avalanche of content. They have increasingly started to chase the ‘lowest common denominator’ which might keep the lights on but is a long term losing strategy. So TV programming continues to gets better and better as the broadcast industry as it has long been known is heading for extinction.
The Emmy Awards have accepted the changing reality better than their feature film counterparts. The Academy Awards have resorted to implementing all manner of rule changes designed to keep out nominees not produced by the ‘old guard’. At least that was the plan until the Justice Department reminded the Academy that their exclusionary plan would likely run afoul of the law. Since then, the Academy has decided against changing their rules to keep Netflix at bay though they put a positive spin on it.
A CELEBRATION OF TELEVISION EXCELLENCE BUT IS ANYBODY WATCHING?
Awards shows in general are as au courant as a pair of rabbit ears antenna on top of the TV set but the Primetime Emmy Awards have been particularly hard hit. In the year 2000, the late, great Gary Shandling hosted the Emmy Awards broadcast which would attract a record viewership of 21.8 million. It has been all downhill since. Just three years later, the 2003 show drew just 17.7 million viewers. By 2008, that viewership number was down to 12.2 million. It bounced up and down over the next few years with and saw a bit of an upswing for awhile reaching an apex of 17.63 million viewers in 2013. It has been in freefall ever since. Last year’s Emmy Awards broadcast attracted the lowest viewership in recorded history with just 10.17 million viewers. It’s hard to see much of a rebound happening in 2019. But wait–it gets even uglier: within the coveted 18-49 viewer demographic it pulled a pitiful 2.4 rating leading to many editorials suggesting that the show was clearly past it’s prime.
We’ll split our nomination odds into three separate articles starting with the Comedy Series awards:
71ST PRIMETIME EMMY AWARD NOMINATIONS 2019 BETTING ODDS
TO BE NOMINATED FOR OUTSTANDING COMEDY SERIES
Veep -350
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel -300
GLOW -150
Barry -110
The Kominsky Method +100
The Good Place +150
Russian Doll +150
Black-ish +250
Schitt's Creek +250
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt +250
Fleabag +350
Better Things +500
Any Other TV Series +500
TO BE NOMINATED FOR OUTSTANDING COMEDY ACTRESS
Julia Louise-Dreyfus/Veep -750
Rachel Brosnahan/The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel -500
Allison Janney /Mom -250
Natasha Lyonne/Russian Doll -110
Pamela Adlon/Better Things +100
Lilly Tomlin/Grace and Frankie +250
Phoebe Waller-Bridge/Fleabag +350
Allison Brie/GLOW +500
Aidy Bryant/Shrill +750
Christina Applegate/Dead to Me +750
Issa Rae/Insecure +750
Catherine O'Hara/Schitt's Creek +750
Any Other Actress +1000
TO BE NOMINATED FOR OUTSTANDING COMEDY ACTOR
Bill Hader/Barry -750
Michael Douglas/The Kominsky Method -500
Ted Danson/The Good Place -250
Don Cheadle/Black Monday -250
Anthony Anderson/Black-ish +150
Jim Carrey/Kidding +250
William H. Macy/Shameless +500
Jim Parsons/The Big Bang Theory +500
Ricky Gervais/After Life +750
Sacha Baron Cohen/Who Is America +750
Issa Rae/Insecure +750
Ramy Youssef/Ramy +750
Any Other Actor +1000
TO BE NOMINATED FOR OUTSTANDING COMEDY SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Kate McKinnon/Saturday Night Live -350
Alex Borstein/The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel -350
Anna Chlumsky/Veep -250
Betty Gilpin/GLOW -150
Marin Hinkle/The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel +150
D'arcy Carden/The Good Place +350
Olivia Coleman/Fleabag +350
Aidy Bryant/Saturday Night Live +350
Laurie Metcalf/The Conners +750
Leslie Jones/Saturday Night Live +750
Sarah Goldberg/Barry +1000
Molly Shannon/The Other Two +1000
Any Other Actress +1000
TO BE NOMINATED FOR OUTSTANDING COMEDY SUPPORTING ACTOR
Alan Arkin/The Kominsky Method -600
Tony Hale/Veep -500
Henry Winkler/Barry -500
Tony Shaloub/The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel -250
Matt Walsh/Veep +150
Kenan Thompson/Saturday Night Live +250
Tituss Burgess/Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt +500
Stephen Root/Barry +500
Timothy Simons/Veep +750
Anthony Carrigan/Barry +750
Alec Baldwin/Saturday Night Live +750
Andrew Scott/Fleabag +750
Any Other Actor +1000
