I'm going to start with a little math. I'm sorry. I'll try to keep it simple, but it's the best way to illustrate my biggest point. In 2016, BoxOfficeMojo lists 736 films that were released in theaters. Let's say that's roughly the pool of movies for the Oscars*. Let's says those average out to 2 hours each. It's probably less, but I'm OK with that number. That means, to watch all the movies for that year, you would need 1472 hours - a little more than 61 days. On the Emmy nomination ballot, there were 180 series submitted for Outstanding Drama series. Those shows almost all last 42-60 minutes. Most are closer to 42 minutes, so let's say the average show is 45 minutes long per episode. Season lengths vary from as few as 6 episodes to 22+. To make this easy, I'm going to average it out to 13 episodes per season. That means, to watch all those shows, you would need 1755 hours - more than 73 days. That's 1472 hours (movies) to 1755 hours(drama series), and let me remind you that I purposely overestimated movies and underestimated the drama series lengths. By the way, there's also another 540 hours of comedies** and 140 hours of limited series. I didn't even make estimations for TV Movies, Variety Talk and Sketch series, Variety Specials, Special Class Programs, Short-Form Comedy or Drama Series, Short Form Variety Series, Children's Programs or Series, Reality (Structured, Unstructured, and Competition) Series, and Information Series. That is an unwieldy amount of things to watch in order to fill out an informed nomination ballot. Yes, it's true that, much like the Oscars, the nomination process is broken up by the different branches (i.e. Performers pick the performer categories, writers select the writing nominees, etc.), but I checked. According to the official Nomination Voting Procedures "All members are entitled to vote for outstanding program nominations. This rule does not include animated programs or documentary/nonfiction program categories". So, at the nomination stage, everyone votes for their top 5-7 series in all those categories.
*Technically, shorts, foreign films, animated films, and documentaries have their own processes that aren't exactly tied to theatrical releases that year. Then again, not every film submits for the Oscars, so I'm going to say it balances out.
** 104 series. 24 minute average length. 13 episode average season. That's a significant underestimation considering the number of hour-longs in the category and network 20+ episode orders.
*** 25 series. 45 minutes average length. 7.5 episode average season. Again, a significant underestimation.
The point I'm trying to make is that there's not enough hours in the day for even the most retired Television Academy member to cover it all. Most of the academy members are people who are still working though. What hope do they have?
Now, no one, not even for the Oscar voting, has seen everything. We all curate our selections. That's natural. TV curation is much harder than film curation though. There's two big reasons for this.
1) You can stop watching a TV show, but should you? A television series is a constantly evolving piece of content. How many times have you heard someone tell you "It gets a lot better after the __th episode"? For some shows, a pilot or a synopsis is plenty to judge it. I've been dead wrong about enough shows based on what I assumed about it that I don't really trust anyone who hasn't watched the whole thing. Think about how hard it would be to sell someone on a premise like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's a classic but it didn't get there until the end of the first season (if I'm being generous). And how many episodes is enough to judge a late night show? Do you know how many hours of The Tonight Show there are? I don't but I know it's a lot. How do you even rate one season of it versus an earlier season? I get why those shows get nominated based on reputation. I want to make it clear that I'm not wagging my finger at Emmy voters for not doing their homework. My argument is that it's an impossible amount of homework in the first place. It's no wonder that Emmy inertia* happens.
*Once something starts getting nominated, it keeps getting nominated and if something is snubbed, it stays snubbed.
2) Where are the precursors? Say what you will about the Oscars, but the endless precursor awards really help narrow things down for the Oscar season. There's all the critics awards first. Those are people who are paid to do nothing but watch movies. They weigh in and champion as many small movies as they can. Some movies take hold and move to the guilds to weigh in on after that. That's when the people who work in specific fields highlight the rock stars among their peers. All the while, the National Board of Review, Golden Globes, Independent Spirit Awards, BAFTA Awards, Gotham Awards, and others weigh in. By the time it gets to the Oscar nominations, you know the contenders. Your disappointment is tempered when your favorite film is snubbed because it's been ignored all along. Look, I loved The Nice Guys last year. I also knew it wasn't in the running for anything. The Emmys are different. I guess you can call the Golden Globes, SAG Awards, or PGA Awards precursors. They literally are following a different calendar though and carry very little momentum. For example, the Golden Globes and Emmy winner for Dramatic series has only matched up 7 times in the last 20 years. When the Emmy nominations are announced, literally anything feels possible. I tricked myself into believing that The Leftovers could really sneak in some major nominations this year because nothing was there to tell me I was wrong to think that. All I heard was the sounds of a lot of critics banging their drums for the series. Critics don't vote for the Emmys, thus, no nominations for The Leftovers.
I don't even know if the Television Academy knows what it wants to stand for. Does it want to recognize the highest quality shows on TV? Does it want to reflect what people are really watching? Does it want to represent what's best for the industry? Last year was a banner year for the critical community at the Emmys. Critical darlings on little seen shows like Tatiana Maslany, Rami Malek, and Louis Anderson came away with trophies. Master of None raked in nominations. Tired shows like Homeland and Modern Family were nominated but not taken seriously. I don't think I've ever been happier with a set of Emmy nominees. Granted, that was a hiatus year for The Leftovers, so I could excuse the lack of nominations. This year, things went back to business as usual, kind of. Many of the best shows on TV went minimally or un-noticed. The Leftovers got a token Guest Actress nomination. Rectify ends as a 0 time Emmy nominee. The Americans inexplicably fell out of the Outstanding Drama field. Those were left out to make room for shows like Stranger Things and This Is Us. As much as I like both of those shows, are they really the best shows on TV? I say "no". Then again, aren't these progressive picks in their own right? Both are massive audience hits, yes, but they each have formulas they tend to be ignored by Emmy voters. Stranger Things is a genre series with a very young cast. When was the last time something like that got nominated? The Wonder Years? Kind of, maybe. This Is Us is a broadcast network family drama: a genre some theorized was dead. It took Friday Night Lights five seasons and technically a move to cable to get this kind of Emmy attention (and it was never a ratings hit). Is there really a big difference between This Is Us and Parenthood or Brothers & Sisters? Is it so wrong for Emmy voters to recognize that broad appeal, especially in this fractured entertainment landscape, is a quality unto itself?
My point is that without an actual awards circuit around it, the Emmys have to serve as everything. They are expected to have the qualitative acuity of the National Board of Review or the LA/NY Film Critics, the populist "what's hot now?" fickleness of the Golden Globes, and the historical record austerity of the Oscars. And, it's supposed to do this across a broader spectrum of programming and with no precursor circuit for guidance.
It's great when your favorite show gets recognition you believe it deserves, but don't trust that the Emmys are the place to do it. I don't know if there is such a thing as a good system for recognizing the best that television has to offer. If there is, I hope someone finds it. As is, it's not the Emmys. I'll still be examining the nominations and winners because I find institutions like this fascinating. However, you really shouldn't get that worked up by it. There's too much good TV to watch to waste time complaining about what a bunch of people too busy to watch it think.
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