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I just heard this from reliable Hollywood Guild sources. As you know, both the Writers Guild and the Directors Guild publicly protested this stupid decision by the Academy Of Television Arts & Sciences on grounds it violated their longstanding agreements for the Emmycast. I'm glad ATAS came to its senses despite the pressure it received from the networks. The statement follows:
"The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and CBS will present all 28 awards during the live telecast of the 61st Primetime Emmy® Awards. No award categories will be time shifted.
'This decision was made to mend relationships within the television community and to allow executive producer Don Mischer to focus his full attention on producing the creative elements in the telecast,' said Television Academy Chairman-CEO John Shaffner in making the announcement.
'Our goal is to celebrate the year in television, honor excellence and this year's great achievements with the support of our industry colleagues and our telecast partner, CBS.'"
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Improve ratings = Fire stale Mischer.
Good for the writers. Now let’s guess how few people will tune in to watch this thing. Last year’s broadcast drew a record low 12.3 million viewers, and most of last year’s major category winners are likely to win again. http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/media_entertainment/the-emmys-on-tv-historical-audience-ratings/
Prediction: 11.8 million viewers.
hahaha, thats just funny.
Yep, it’s official, the ratings will be even lower than last year’s mess.
I felt bad for writers and directors but at the same time, they’ve GOT to keep this show moving.
Doesn’t matter I’ll be out in the lobby bar anyway. Ugh.
Oh, goody. Now I can be bored to death in real time instead of “fake” time. Yippee.
The average person watching the Emmys wants to see famous people, and uses non-celebrity-thank-you broadcast time for going to the bathroom and/or kitchen. So from a non-industry viewer, thank you for giving me more time to crap and make snacks.
Nikki: When the Academy suffers a 50% reduction in license fee due to low ratings come the next negotiation (2010), is forced to move to a cable platform, and then has to seriously cut back all of its good works, especially at the Academy Foundation, who will be the “Jackasses”???
If they have time to waste talking about who the best reality host is they certainly should have the time to present the award to the people most responsible for creating the shows. Just look at what happened during the writer’s strike. Writer’s matter.
As far as the ratings question goes, it’s an awards show. You show people winning awards. People may not be as psyched to see what Damon Lindeloff is wearing on the red carpet but that doesn’t mean you demean the importance of writing.
Todd, Todd, Todd,
Whether the ratings go up or down is not the point. If you screw the writers on the awards, then you may, in the long term, screw your own self-interest.
The writers do deserve their day in the sun, even if the audience is in the toilet. It’s a recognition among their peers.
Pick your poison.
maybe you can have an hour of “industry” awards, so just put something special oin the other cghannell while yuou take AN HOUR OFF/…
shhh ?
I’m just a humble TV watcher. I end up watching the Emmys in a desultory fashion every year; I guess I keep hoping something fresh and just in the awarding.
I may enjoy seeing the celebs (most of them are not worthy “stars”) for what they’re wearing but the only part that makes it worthwhile for me is the technical awards, the writing and directing. They’re the backbone of all creativity. I’m happy that TPTB had to cave given the venality and dumbed down greed that runs rampant. I would like to think that literacy and creativity matter for something still even if it’s only in small installments.
Whew. Okay big hollywood, onto the next way you can possibly stick it to the writers. I’ll sit here and wait while you go and think about it.
People are fired over so much less, I don’t get it.
excellent. now that the writers and directors have had their second tantrum in a year, we are left with the same show that NO one watched last year. So when the ratings suck because it’s impossible to fit ANY entertainment in when you have to give out 28 awards on the show, will the writers and directors please stand up and take a bow and thank everyone for thwarting ANY attempt at change? I bet NOT! no, it’s all about the writers. Nikki, you did a shitty job of reporting on this and you know it! you presented the story with such a slant and you didn’t EVEN bother to get your facts straight OR to correct your errors. will you stand up on monday morning and talk about how great it is to hand out all those awards and have no entertainment in the show because all the time is eaten up by handing out awards? Don’t you DARE write a critique of the awards talking about how boring they were this year…you helped sink it finke. go sit in the corner with Brian Lowry.
The Emmys will probably be off the air within the next 10 years anyway. So they can have a nice quite celebration at some Hollywood hotel. After all that’s how the Academy Awards started. There is too many awards shows on television now, this can just save the networks a little cash, not having to pay for the Emmys.
The awards are not supposed to be about ratings. When they started they weren’t even aired.
If they have to go back to being what they were in the first place, industry dinners, so be it.
It’s stupid to not to air the writers or other non celeb awards because the avg. non industry person doesn’t know who they are. Excuse me, without writers there are no shows. Even “reality” TV has writers.
The show was terrible last year and it had nothing to do with the awards being given out. Get real. The show was badly produced with a lame concept. But go ahead and blame the writers speeches for a lousy show. Use your pent up strike anger and let them have it by pulling half their awards off.
The ATAS as led by John Schaffner hates writers and goes out of its way to belittle them at every governors meeting. The producers board of the ATAS as well as the executives all hate the writers at the ATAS. They have a bug up their butt and what their pound of flesh.
the academy leadership has not proven itself as sophisticated enough to understand what makes an awards show work.
everyone keeps talking about last year’s debacle. which, in fact, was just the nadir of a long fall since they fired mischer in 2004.
the wheels really came off in 2005 when they first hired ken erlich. did Donald Trump not sing the theme from Green Acres on that show? did Earth Wind and Fire not sing some inept reinvention of “September?” was ellen degeneres not in the men’s bathroom with Les Moonves? (!!!!).
and last year’s attempts at entertainment were equally as poor (yes, lily tomlin is genius, but she was part of a train wreck). and what about academy president john schaffner’s “in the round” production design two year’s ago. ill conceived from the words “in the round.”
there is a long list of incompetent moves — and it originates from a board of governors that is populated with non-creators. just a lot of executives and retired below the line types who want to be “creative” but really don’t know where that begins.
please, don’t kid yourself academy members: just having more time to create “entertainment” on your show does not mean that you all will actually create anything entertaining.
the best show of the recent past was when conan hosted. and that was because he and his executive producer had, effectively, total control of the show (it was on nbc). and for what an awards show needs to be — a writer-driven medium shaped with humor, emotion, fun and charm — it was pretty near spot on. (those ratings hawks will need to concede that it had to be broadcast in August — not conan’s fault).
remember everyone – it’s an awards show. not CSI. there is only so much you can do.
frustrated academy members: you have only yourselves to blame. you routinely select producers who are not writers and creators (ehrlich, smith and mischer); rather these fellows (experienced as they are) rely on others to come up with the content — but they then never vet the content and improve on it, because it’s not in their DNA.
erlich and mischer have no story-telling track record and do better in event situations where the content is effectively “there” to be shaped. for the grammys – erlich knows sussman wants 97 performances in 3 hours (so just invite anybody who’s on the charts and put three of them in one song and they each get a verse and a chorus); at the super bowl, mischer has one artist; one performance.
the show will not be embarrassing this year as its been with ehrlich’s shows in the past (mischer has taste), but it will be endless because it won’t be entertaining because the same group of writers will be hired who will do the same lame schtick: “a director is the visionary who marries words and pictures…” blah, blah, blah, “and the nominees for best directing are:”
the upside is that there will be a slight bump in the ratings because the show is on a strong network with pro football as a promotional tool. other than that, it will be a big whatever.
what also must be kept in mind here is that this academy has an over-inflated sense of itself. nicki finke was not incorrect in lambasting this circus of scoundrels for the move some weeks ago. the problem was not that the basic idea of the change was unreasonable; rather it was the execution of it that was totally incompetent (blame the leadership; blame the producer, a member of the DGA).
how can you make such a drastic decision and not have had an agreement with the leadership of the guilds that this was what is in the best interest of television?
in any event… la plus ca change, la plus c’est la meme chose.
Hey “academy member”, if it’s all about ratings for you, why not stop nominating 30 Rock over and over and over and over again? To blame the writers and directors is ridiculous– they have every right to be treated with respect. also, Nikki Finke doesn’t owe you shit. If she wants to talk about how boring your show is, so be it.
The Academy is a for-profit organization built on a rather dubious business model: throw an awards show and charge participants left and right for the “privilege” of participating. They charge the networks for airing the show, they charge the nominees a membership fee (which is then covered by the networks), they charge the audience members for tickets, etc.
I remember Little League – getting a shiny trophy is fun. But who cares if the Academy’s money-making racket dries up?
Seems to be a new American tradition, industries that love to destroy themselves from the inside. Sure it’s peer recognition, but it’s also a show that provides jobs, like any other show. We’re in the business of trying to make things entertaining, whether it’s an award show or a film about a giant lizard eating New York. If we can’t do that and would rather pick the flesh off of each other to pocket another trophy then the end is truly near. So hurray, everyone’s an idiot except for all the entertainment bloggers – they’ll have to switch over to complaining about paint drying once this business is dead, sometime next year. Congratulations to you all, see you in the Wal Mart greeter training program, assuming you qualify.
JeanLeCritique:
“erlich and mischer have no story-telling track record and do better in event situations where the content is effectively “there” to be shaped. for the grammys – erlich knows sussman wants 97 performances in 3 hours (so just invite anybody who’s on the charts and put three of them in one song and they each get a verse and a chorus); at the super bowl, mischer has one artist; one performance.”
you should do a little research before making a statement like that… even 5 seconds on IMDB would show this as a wildly inaccurate statement
Tough one. Television is writing (much more so than film), but the Emmy audience doesn’t know that, or more importantly, care. The writers deserve their moment in the spotlight but it isn’t wonderful for ratings.
Nicki Finke should host the Emmy’s. Then they can give all the writer awards they want… but viewers will be glued!
If they don’t want to honor the people who actually create television during the television awards, fine; take the whole freaking thing off the air. But it’s gross to only honor the “famous” people so to whore up some ratings. The thinking heads behind the talking heads deserve their fair share of the credit.
Isn’t it fascinating that Todd Levitt is now serving as a cheerleader for the unfortunate leadership decisions in the Academy mess now known as “timeshifting-gate”. This whole PR debacle could have been avoided had the Academy chiefs , knowing they had iron clad clip waiver agreements in return for writing directing categories being presented live, only engaged the wga and dga in advance instead of blindsiding them with this sadly mangled and mis-managed emmy makeover. How ironic it is Mr. Leavitt that those 2003 agreements were in fact signed on the dotted line by – guess who – Todd P. Leavitt.
Our studies show that nothing can make the Emmys more interesting to viewers. They’re just not the Oscars. Never have been. The audience has never really cared. TV stars are not movie stars. Movie stars are global figures. Galactic figures. You can see TV stars all the time, for free. so why tune in? The demographic the Academy wants to attract by brooming the writing and directing awards can only be reached one way in our opinion — that is to have the awards handed out by newsworthy serial killers, school and college mass-shooters, child eaters, etc. Let Greta Van Susteren produce the show, she’s got the contacts in this field. Mischer can’t handle people like that but Greta talks to them all the time. Plus, she can get Sarah “Death Panel” Palin to host the segment where the Academy and public allegedly mourn those who died the year preceeding. Greta’s a friend and supporter and Palin will pull a HUGE number. Only in this way will the demographic the networks and the Academy wish to secure, in fact, show up for the broadcast.