It’s all but official that the Emmy telecast is moving from Sept. 18 to an unspecified date in mid-January, which is a bad sign for Hollywood’s double strike.
Though neither Fox nor the TV Academy has formally announced a move, and are said to be actively working on alternatives with both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA, the show’s vendors have already been notified that the idea of a September ceremony is a no-go.
That’s certainly understandable, given the level of planning necessary for such an evening, but the fact that the Emmys didn’t move to, say, early November or early December, is a troubling sign that the double strike may last even longer than expected.
I’ve put forth the theory that SAG-AFTRA would return to work in mid-to-late October, at the latest, and that the WGA would follow sometime in January. Now, with the Emmys moving to January, I wonder if at least one of these strikes will last through the holidays when there will almost surely be fewer presents under the tree/menorah/etc. Children shouldn’t have to pay for the financial mistakes that studios have made over the last few years.
Oddly enough, Phase Two of Emmy voting is still moving forward as planned, with final voting starting on Aug. 17. It seems bizarre that the Emmys will be celebrating Season 1 of The Bear, which came out in June 2022, when Season 2 of the show (and plenty of others) will be old news by then.
The reason that a new date has yet to be announced is that Fox is still figuring out its midseason plans, which are often designed around the network’s NFL package. Fox doesn’t want to mess with its football coverage, which is a huge money-maker for the network, so it’ll likely be another week or two before a new date is announced for the Emmys.
Fox and the TV Academy had no choice but to make a move, given that last year’s ceremony featured 25 awards, 16 of which went to actors or writers, the latter of whom are also responsible for writing material for the show’s host and its celebrity presenters, many of whom are also SAG-AFTRA members.
This year’s Emmy ceremony is especially important to the TV Academy, as it’s the 75th edition of the show. People are already tuning out of awards shows en masse, so the longer this one is removed from the series that it’s celebrating — and really, it’s tough to be in a celebratory mood in your new apartment because you lost your house due to the strike — the worse I expect the ratings will be.
The last time the Emmys were delayed was in 2001 when CBS and the TV Academy decided to push the show back to early November in the wake of 9/11. Obviously, that was the right thing to do at the time. If only the AMPTP would do the right thing now, as its members are starting to cut off their noses to spite their faces.
