How One Crucial Rule Change Shook Up This Year’s Emmy Nominations

Well, would you look at that? The Emmy’s mostly got it right this year.

Except for this show and that show and oh, wait, definitely this other show they snubbed.

Then again, bravo to nominating this one show or specific actress they haven’t really nominated before.

I initially wrote those last two sentences with the intention of going back and filling in the blanks, but, really, it’s kind of the same story every year, isn’t it? This year, the shows we’re happy to see nominated include The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Best Comedy, Supporting Actor), Better Call Saul (Best Drama, Lead Actor), The Last Man on Earth (Lead Actor) and Inside Amy Schumer (Lead Actress, Best Variety/Sketch Series). Hurray for Orange is the New Black’s Uzo Aduba (Supporting Actress). However, where’s the love for Hannibal, The Americans, The Good Wife, Big Bang Theory, Fresh Off the Boat, Justified, Terrence Howard (Empire), Gina Rodriquez (Jane the Virgin), Lizzy Caplan (Masters of Sex) or Ellie Kemper (Kimmy Schmidt)? Also, why do they continue rubber-stamping Downton Abbey as a Best Drama nominee? I gave up on Homeland two seasons ago. Did it really improve so much this past season that it warranted a Best Drama nomination over Empire, Hannibal, The Americans or The Good Wife?

Personally, as someone who watches more genre TV, sketch shows and animated programs than anything else the Emmys are never really going to be meant for me. My favorite new shows of the past year – SyFy’s 12 Monkeys, the CW’s Flash, Adult Swim’s Rick and Morty, Netflix’s Bojack Horseman – weren’t exactly snubbed by the Emmys because they were never going to be nominated in any major category to begin with.  I say that and then notice that Game of Thrones was the single most nominated (24) show this year, and Orphan Black’s Tatiana Maslany finally got a long overdue Lead Actress nod. Plus, it seems like the shows the critics rave about got a lot of love this year, be they new (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Transparent) or not-so new (Orange is the New Black, Mad Men, Parks & Recreation). Or, at the very least, there’s more new blood this year.

As THR’s Tim Goodman put it, “There’s a lot less to bitch and complain about this year, which in many ways is a big win for the Television Academy […] Maybe the takeaway from the Emmy nominations this year is it could have been a lot worse – the sheer number of excellent shows and terrific actors nominated was enough to mask many of the oversights.”

The knock on the Emmys has often been that they nominate the same shows over and over again, and keep giving the award to the same person/show which means they snub the same other nominees every year. In recent years, 30 Rock was a perennial Best Comedy winner before Modern Family came along. Jim Parsons has had a stranglehold on the Best Actor award. If you’re old enough you might remember that they kept giving John Larroquette so many Emmys for Night Court that, out of embarrassment, he asked them to stop nominating him. Well, this year Jim Parsons wasn’t even nominated even though Big Bang Theory keeps giving Sheldon more emotional storylines, and the lack of a nomination is not because Parsons happily stepped aside to spread the wealth around to his fellow actors. Perennial nominee Girls was also mostly snubbed. Modern Family didn’t monopolize the acting awards like normal.

What happened? They significantly changed their voting process, that’s what. THR’s Scott Feinberg explained last month:

For many years prior to 2015, unbeknownst to the vast majority of people who tuned in to watch the annual Emmys telecast, Emmy winners were determined by only a miniscule percentage of the TV Academy’s membership. Volunteers from its ranks would serve on so-called “Blue Ribbon panels,” sometimes numbering only a few dozen members, that were empowered to vote on behalf of a collective that now numbers about 19,000. A volunteer could serve on up to four panels, two dealing with programs and two related to their specific “peer group” (acting, writing, etc.). One independent analysis calculated that it was possible to win an acting Emmy with as few as 12 No. 1 votes (panelists ranked every nominee in a category).

The reason this process made sense, the TV Academy maintained, was that few of its members were able or willing to devote the time and attention necessary to fairly judge all of the nominees. Before 2009, even nominees were determined by panels that would winnow down the 10 shows or people that received the most votes from the larger membership to five finalists.

But volunteer panels predominantly attract older members, who tend to be less busy professionally and make more conservative choices, which might explain why the TV Academy has faced criticism for decades for doing just that.

Now change is in the air: In February, the TV Academy announced that it has put a stop to this form of elitism.

‘In an effort to increase member participation in the voting process and to take advantage of the Academy’s extension of online voting to both rounds, all voters eligible to vote in a category’s nominating round are now eligible to vote in that category’s final round, so long as they meet two additional requirements: Much like the former Blue Ribbon panel process, voters must watch the required submitted material online and attest to no specific conflicts of interest with the nominees.’

Of course, the Academy also  changed their categorization system, mandating that comedies could only be half-hours and dramas hourlongs, and upped the number of potential nominees in the main drama and comedy races to seven. They also changed their old Mini-Series category to be the new default home for any kind of Limited Series.

The idea behind the changes was to widen the field a little more and stop rubber-stamping the same shows/actors. It’s certainly shaken up the nominations this year.  Whether or not things have truly changed will only be determined when we see who wins the awards.  Sure, change for change’s sake doesn’t make sense if you really think that, screw the detractors, Modern Family keeps winning because it’s still the most consistent comedy out there.  However, if you’ve been waiting for Louie to finally win this might be its year.

DRAMA

Outstanding Drama Series

Better Call Saul, AMC

Downton Abbey, PBS

Game of Thrones, HBO

Homeland, Showtime

House of Cards, Netflix

Mad Men, AMC

Orange Is the New Black, Netflix

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series

Kyle Chandler, Bloodline

Liev Schreiber, Ray Donovan

Jon Hamm, Mad Men

Kevin Spacey, House of Cards

Bob Odenkirk, Better Call Saul

Jeff Daniels, The Newsroom

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series

Claire Danes, Homeland
Viola Davis, How to Get Away With Murder
Taraji P. Henson, Empire
Tatiana Maslany, Orphan Black
Elisabeth Moss, Mad Men
Robin Wright, House of Cards

Supporting Actor in a Drama Series
Jonathan Banks, Better Call Saul
Ben Mendelsohn, Bloodline
Jim Carter, Downton Abbey
Peter Dinklage, Game of Thrones
Alan Cumming, The Good Wife
Michael Kelly, House of Cards

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series

Joanne Froggatt, Downton Abbey

Christina Hendricks, Mad Men

Emilia Clarke, Game of Thrones

Lena Headey, Game of Thrones

Uzo Aduba, Orange Is the New Black

Christine Baranski, The Good Wife

COMEDY

Outstanding Comedy Series

Louis, FX

Modern Family, ABC

Parks and Recreation, NBC

Silicon Valley, HBO

Transparent, Amazon

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Netflix

Veep, HBO

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series

Anthony Anderson, Black-ish

Will Forte, The Last Man on Earth

Matt LeBlanc, Episodes

Jeffrey Tambor, Transparent

William H. Macy, Shameless

Louis C.K., Louie

Don Cheadle, House of Lies

Lead Actress in a Comedy Series
Edie Falco, Nurse Jackie
Lisa Kudrow, The Comeback
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep
Amy Poehler, Parks & Recreation
Amy Schumer, Inside Amy Schumer
Lily Tomlin, Grace and Frankie

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series

Ty Burrell, Modern Family

Keegan-Michael Key, Key & Peele

Adam Driver, Girls

Andre Braugher, Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Tony Hale, Veep

Tituss Burgess, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series

Niecy Nash, Getting On

Gaby Hoffmann, Transparent

Allison Janney, Mom

Julie Bowen, Modern Family

Mayim Bialik, The Big Bang Theory

Kate McKinnon, Saturday Night Live

ANIMATION

Outstanding Animated Program

Archer

Bob’s Burgers

Over the Garden Wall

South Park

The Simpsons

Outstanding Short Form Animated Program

Adventure Time

Disney Mickey Mouse

Regular Show

Robot Chicken

Steven Universe

Wander Over Yonder

The Emmy’s website obviously has the full list of nominees.

Source: BirthMoviesDeath, THR, THR,