- 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. We began with the Comedy Series awards and in this post we’ll cover the Drama Series awards:
71ST PRIMETIME EMMY AWARD NOMINATIONS 2019 BETTING ODDS
TO BE NOMINATED FOR OUTSTANDING DRAMA SERIES
Game of Thrones -1000
Killing Eve -500
Better Call Saul -500
Succession +250
This Is Us +250
Ozark +250
Homecoming +500
Pose +750
Bodyguard +750
The Good Fight +1500
Billions +1500
Outlander +1500
Any Other TV Series +2500
TO BE NOMINATED FOR OUTSTANDING DRAMA ACTRESS
Emilla Clarke/Game of Thrones -350
Sandra Oh/Killing Eve -350
Julia Roberts/Homecoming -250
Jody Comer/Killing Eve -250
Robin Wright/House of Cards +250
Laura Linney/Ozark +250
Christine Baranski/The Good Fight +300
MJ Rodriguez/Pose +500
Toni Collette/Wanderlust +750
Ruth Wilson/The Affair +750
Jodie Whittaker/Doctor Who +1000
Taraji P. Henson/Empire +1000
Any Other Actress +1500
TO BE NOMINATED FOR OUTSTANDING DRAMA ACTOR
Kit Harington/Game of Thrones -500
Bob Odenkirk/Better Call Saul -500
Jason Bateman/Ozark -500
Sterling K. Brown/This Is Us -250
Richard Madden/Bodyguard -150
Milo Ventimiglia/This Is Us +150
Brian Cox/Succession +300
Billy Porter/Pose +500
Paul Giamatti/Billions +500
Dominic West/The Affair +750
Damian Lewis/Billions +750
James Franco/The Deuce +750
Any Other Actor +1500
TO BE NOMINATED FOR OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Maisie Williams/Game of Thrones -500
Lena Headey/Game of Thrones -500
Julia Garner/Ozark -500
Sophie Turner/Game of Thrones -250
Rhea Seehorn/Better Call Saul -150
Fiona Shaw/Killing Eve +250
Chrissy Metz/This is Us +300
Indya Moore/Pose +500
Sissy Spacek/Homecoming +500
Maura Tierney/The Affair +750
Kathy Bates/American Horror Story: Apocalypse +750
Gillian Anderson/Sex Education +750
Any Other Actress +1500
TO BE NOMINATED FOR OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTOR
Peter Dinklage/Game of Thrones -1500
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau/Game of Thrones -350
Jonathan Banks/Better Call Saul -250
Kieran Culkin/Succession -250
Michael Sheen/The Good Fight +300
Peter Mullan/Ozark +300
Justin Hartley/This is Us +300
Evan Peters/Pose +500
Shea Wigham/Homecoming +500
Asia Kate Dillon/Billions +750
Joshua Jackson/The Affair +750
Greg Kinnear/House of Cards +750
Any Other Actor +1500
