Emmy Rule Change Bans Mass Nominations for ‘Ted Lasso’ and Other Shows
The Television Academy is making some changes to the Emmy nominating process, including putting a cap on selections and new replacements for the Variety and Sketch Show categories.
As announced on Tuesday (December 20) morning, Emmy voters will no longer be allowed to vote for as many entries in a category as they want, which has been permitted since 2017. The new rule states, “The number of selections each voting member is allowed to make per category in first-round voting will now be capped at the number of nominations specified for that category.”
This means Television Academy members will be able to vote for just five or six candidates in each category, with a few exceptions (Oustanding Drama Series and Oustanding Comedy Series, for example, will allow for eight nominees). The change comes after complaints that the current nominating process causes certain shows, such as The White Lotus, Succession, Ted Lasso, and Dopesick, to flood some categories.
The rules will revert to how they were before 2017 when the biggest shows didn’t quite dominate the nominations to the extent they have in recent years.
Another big change comes in the Variety and Sketch categories, which will now be labeled Outstanding Talk Series, which includes shows that focus on “unscripted interviews or panel discussions between a host/hosts and guest celebrities or personalities”; and Oustanding Scripted Variety Series, which focuses on “programs that are primarily scripted or feature loosely scripted improv and consist of discrete scenes, musical numbers, monologues, comedy stand-ups, sketches, etc.”
This change comes after a significant decrease in sketch shows across the television landscape. In 2022, only eight shows were submitted in variety sketch, which led to just two Emmy nominees for the second year running: Saturday Night Live and A Black Lady Sketch Show.
A full list of the new rules can be found at http://emmys.com/rules/changes.
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