Major Emmy Rule Changes
Thursday, June 18, 2020 at 6:33PM
Abe Friedtanzer in Emmys, Punditry, TV, streaming

by Abe Fried-Tanzer

It’s been a big week for awards announcements. First the Oscars were postponed to April with an expanded eligibility window, and now the Emmys are making sweeping modifications that will affect every single category.

The deadline for contenders in all categories was June 5th, and while we won’t see ballots until July 2nd, it’s clear that the number of submissions are way up from last year by 15%. What that means is that both Best Drama Series and Best Comedy Series will have eight nominees (up from seven) and all of the series acting categories will be based on the number of contenders on the ballot. It’s a lot to process, but we’ll do our best…

 

For performer categories, the new rules mandate the following submissions to nominations ratios:

1-19 submissions: A sliding scale between 0 and 4 nominations
20-80: 5
81-160: 6
161-240: 7
More than 240: 8

There used to be a rule that dictated that if the fifth and sixth top-voted contenders were within 2% of each other, that created a tie resulting in six nominees. That’s no longer the case, though I suspect that an actual tie would still result in extra nominees. Corresponding categories, like comedy supporting actor and comedy supporting actress, will have the same number of nominees, though it’s not clear which number would be used if one had 230 submissions and another had 250, for example.

At this time last year, Paul Sheehan from Goldderby went through and added up the totals from the past four years, which is very helpful in understanding what these new rules practically would have meant. Only drama supporting actor and drama supporting actress have exceeded 240 submissions every year, while the corresponding comedy categories fell just short of that in 2019 but eclipsed it in 2018. The only category that actually produced eight nominees recently was comedy supporting actress in both 2019 and 2018, and under these new rules, that would have only happened in 2018.

As someone who revels in the statistics and year-to-year comparisons of awards races, this new ever-shifting scale initially seems like a real headache. First it was six acting nominees and seven series contenders, and now it’s impossible to track. The Oscars only changed their Best Picture race to include between five and ten nominees, but this is every single category, and they might go up or down each year. It’s also a shame to think of the performers who scored sixth, seventh, or eighth in previous years and didn’t get in (John Krasinski might have been nominated for every season of The Office, for instance, since we know he used to place in the ten-wide finalists list).

But there is plenty of good in this news. Ultimately, it means more people have the chance to be recognized for their great work on shows. The ratios also mean that supporting players have a better shot to be honored, which makes sense since there are inarguably more of them on television (maybe Rhea Seehorn can actually get nominated now!). It’s also hard to argue that there aren’t more shows than ever before – I know that I personally watched more than 150 scripted series premieres this past season. Why shouldn’t we be citing more great work if the options are so much more plentiful? Also, given the reality of an awards show that might be virtual, the more clips the better!

We still won’t know some category placements for sure until ballots drop on July 2nd, and, correspondingly, how many nominees will actually be in each category, but given some recent updates and the chance to watch some of our predicted series that aired in May, here are our updated predictions that take into account what we expect to be the total number of submissions. Click on the category headings for our earlier analysis, most of which is still relevant.

 

What do you think of all these rule changes, and what prospective nominees will benefit the most?


 

Article originally appeared on The Film Experience (http://thefilmexperience.net/).
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