Emmys pay a heavy price for drama-free awards show: low ratings
That'll teach them to have a night of entertainment where attendees were respectful of one another and read the winners correctly
Aux News Unknown
What’s up, fight fans? We know you’re visiting The A.V. Club for our breathless coverage of backstage brouhaha and on-stage assaults that have become a fixture of awards season. For the last few years, the Oscars and the Golden Globes have become the reigning kings of celebrity fisticuffs and needless sniping, upping the ante in terms of hardcore violence on Hollywood’s biggest nights.
But not the Emmys.
An institution built on giving the same shows and actors awards for playing old Sheldons while seemingly ignoring Young Sheldons, the Television Academy often tries to tamp down the expectation that the evening’s festivities will devolve into an airing of grievances and the occasional bit of bloodshed. So last night, the Academy put on a show that was (mostly) devoid of the type of online chatter and publicist backpedaling. The night’s host, Kenan Thompson, was affable and funny. The presenters were quick, and the fabulous Jennifer Coolidge made a show of being played off the stage. It was all very nice.
Unfortunately, nice doesn’t equal ratings. And without any severe controversy to manufacture or react to, viewers stayed far away from the Emmys, bringing its ratings to a record low. Per Variety, ratings were down 25% from last year, and we have to assume the cause is a lack of controversy or the lack of Halston, Ryan Murphy’s Netflix miniseries that people can’t stop talking about. Compared to last year’s CBS telecast, which netted 7.9 million viewers, this year’s Emmys were down roughly two million, bringing a total of 5.9 million people watching category after category of Succession actors facing off against each other. And not even in the fun Succession way, but in the magnanimous and supportive one (though, it was a valiant effort from Bryan Cox).
This year was even lower than 2020’s Emmys, and the 6.37 million people who were bored enough in quarantine to see Julia Garner, Succession, and Zendaya win their first Emmys. That was a pre-Lasso time when Schitt’s Creek was the friendly comedy that everyone wouldn’t stop recommending until the Emmys said, “fine” we’ll give Dan Levy even more power in this town. So now we have an advertising landscape awash in Levy. Visible Wireless ads, Citibank commercials, and Tostitos spots have become Levy delivery vehicles, a chance to spot his spiky hair and chunky glasses while making faces that scream, “Awkward!” Who does this guy think he is, Kevin Hart?
Is this what we want? Do we want Ted Lasso to return to commercials? The public voted with their eyeballs and said, “No.” Nevertheless, we know the truth: Resistance is futile.
25 Comments
Don’t worry, House of Dragons will give the Emmys a bump next year like Game of Thrones did for 8 years
If they award the person who put the Targaryens in those awful wigs, I’m done.
To be fair, Game of Thrones had this problem in the first season too. Someone producing the show apparently felt very strongly that all the Lannisters needed to not just be blonde, but BLONDE.
Yeah, it’s blonde to the point where it’s unnatural, and thus unnerving. I can’t believe anyone with a functioning pair of eyes looked at those wigs and went “Yeah, all good”. Seriously, just change it for the next season, and maybe hire some Uzbekistani CGI team to re-tone the hair in post for this season.
Or Rings of Power
So House of Dragons is like cocaine for the Emmys?
But the Emmys will still be on NBC and Peacock while the HoD audience is on HBO Max. The problem is not that the viewership for nominees is small. Stranger Things and Squid Game were both nominated and have massive global audiences. But they’re not on NBC or Peacock either. They’re on Netflix.
People under 60 are less likely to watch live television and people over 60 are less likely to know what a Ted Lasso is.
Let alone many Ted Lassos which would necessitate an entire rack.
Over 60 here. I recorded it, fast-forwarded to the place were Melanie Lynskey should have won but didn’t (dammit), then deleted it.
Wait. They televised the Emmy’s on the Monday of opening weekend of the NFL and the ratings weren’t all that great? I mean, I get it, a lot of you aren’t into “sportsball” or whatever but, um, you are aware other people exist, right? And they add to the numbers of people who watch things?
They should’ve had a Clap Clock.
It was a G. I. Jane joke, dude!
At least we finally got an answer to that Zen koan.
I understand that this counts as reportable news, but TV ratings on the whole have been in steady decline for years for reasons already provided here and about a million other places. We are getting to the point where journalists/executives seem to be getting nostalgic for the days when shows like season 1 of the X-Files (Friday nights!) could pull in 8 million viewers, though I do not know why.What I find amazing is that for all the content out there, streamers still want to create *even more* content, then are surprised when viewership is down.
In fairness, even back then, The X-Files was a fluke (no pun intended). Every other science fiction show Fox tried in that slot bombed with exception of maybe Sliders but that was no where near as successful as The X-Files and (I’m like 90% sure) Fox just felt ratings there were good enough and decided not to mess with something that was kind of working. Remember VR.5? I do and that kind of worries me.
I remember M.A.N.T.I.S.
Especially considering how much more advertising there is everywhere these days, and how much more specific and efficient advertising has gotten due to technology and market research. How much further does a dollar’s worth of advertising go for all those Cash 4 Gold companies now that they figured out that buying out the 4pm-10pm block of Fox News hits 99% of their target audience? Who cares about how many eyeballs are watching a show when you can match specific eyeballs to particular advertisers?
Broadcast is dying, sure. So they put the Emmys on a streamer but which one did they pick? Peacock. The least popular streamer. Were there even any nominees from Peacock?HBO Max and Netflix had the most nominees, why not pick one of those instead? Why not pick both? Why not get the damn show on every streamer with nominees? The only people who care if Stranger Things wins an Emmy are Stranger Things fans. You can reach them on Netflix, not NBC or Peacock. Ditto for the rest of the nominees.The ultimate problem is that the Emmys are dependent on ad revenue and HBO Max/Netflix/etc have big portions of their audience on ad-free tiers so the ads would have to be stripped out. So what, go to the streamers for revenue to support these shows. They benefit from the PR value, why shouldn’t they pay? Apple alone could pay for the whole thing out of petty cash.
IT’S LIKE WATCHING TED LASSO ON APPLE TV WHILE THEY WIN AGAIN!A OZARK MARATHON WHILE JULIA ACCEPTS HER AWARD!Isn’t it ironic? doncha think?Who wants to sit through long award shows when you can read the winners the next day in 5 minutes? Go on YouTube to see the winner acceptance speech.
Did they pay a heavy price? Or did they just decide that their dignity was worth more to them than rating?
They wanted to eliminate the snark, but snark is why people tune in. Otherwise just announce the winners on twitter and be done with it.
I say this every year when the Emmys ratings drop. The nominees come from Netflix, Apple, HBO Max, Hulu etc. They don’t come from NBC or Peacock. So why is the ceremony on NBC and Peacock, two of the worst places you could pick, if you are trying to reach the fanbases for the nominees? Who else is going to watch this show except for fanbases, who are interested in their favorite shows winning stuff? Why would anyone else care?And the problem is not that “nobody watches” the nominees. Two nominated shows – Stranger Things and Squid Game – were massive global hits. Stranger Things turned a decades old Kate Bush song into a hit. Even now there’s still chatter online about Stranger Things. Season 5 is two goddamn years away but people will be yakking about it all the way till them. If the Emmys people can’t figure out how to tap into the nominees’ fanbases and mine PR value out of that, they are hopeless.
How would an audience know before the fact that no drama would occur and thus not tune in?