Voting Reform Widens Emmy’s Embrace

Voting Reform Widens Emmy’s Embrace,A change in the TV Academy’s voting process could lead to more TV shows and performances being recognized this year.

Voting Reform Widens Emmy’s Embrace

‘Abbott Elementary,’ ‘Ted Lasso,’ ‘House of Dragon,’ ‘Succession’ and ‘The White Lotus’Abbott: ABC/Gilles Mingasson. Lotus: Fabio Lovino/HBO. Dragon: Courtesy of HBO. Succession: David M. Russell/HBO. Lasso: Courtesy of Apple TV+.

How do you solve a problem like Peak TV? For TV viewers, living an era with hundreds of TV shows is pretty cool — the more choices, the merrier. But for the TV Academy and its members, it has presented a real dilemma: What is the most equitable way to approach Emmy voting when no voter can possibly have seen everything — or even a large share of everything — that’s out there?

In 2017, the TV Academy tried something that it thought might help to make things fairer. It ended its tradition of issuing nomination ballots with a fixed number of slots per category and instead began instructing members to nominate as many achievements in each category as “you have seen and feel are worthy of a nomination.”

Over the past six years, however, the unintended byproduct of this type of voting has been that the Emmy acting categories have been utterly dominated by performers from a small handful of “prestige shows” — those from popular networks or platforms that have strong word of mouth and substantial campaigns behind them — with large ensembles.

In hindsight, it makes sense. Even if voters are watching more shows than they did decades ago, not all are watching the same shows. The highest-profile series are the likeliest to be widely watched — and discussed online and endlessly covered in pop culture publications — and are therefore the likeliest to accumulate the most nomination votes.

Consider, as case studies, the past two years.

In the 2021 acting Emmy races, NBC’s Saturday Night Live landed 11 noms (including four of five comedy guest actors, three of seven comedy supporting actresses, two of eight comedy supporting actors and two of six comedy guest actresses). Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale scored 10 (including four of eight drama supporting actresses, three of eight drama supporting actors and two of five drama guest actresses). Netflix’s The Crown collected nine (three of eight drama supporting actresses and two of six drama actresses). And Apple TV+’s Ted Lasso netted seven (four of eight comedy supporting actors and two of seven comedy supporting actresses), as did Disney+’s Hamilton.

Then, in the 2022 acting Emmy races, HBO’s Succession landed 14 noms (including seven of 12 in the drama guest acting categories). Ted Lasso registered 10 (including six of 16 in the comedy supporting acting categories). And HBO’s first season of The White Lotus clocked in with eight and Hulu’s Dopesick with five of the 14 in the limited/anthology/TV movie supporting acting categories — in other words, two shows accounted for 13 of those two categories’ 14 slots!

These shows and many of the performances in them were excellent — but so, too, were many other shows and performances that were boxed out of any recognition at all.

For the past several years, I — and others — have argued that if voters were once again forced to nominate a finite number of performances, many would make a more deliberate effort to spread their votes among performances from a larger number of shows, which would better reflect the depth and breadth of quality TV than the current system. And I am pleased to report — though some high-profile shows may have been disappointed to learn — that on Dec. 20, the TV Academy announced that it was adopting this advice: “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. Members will no longer be allowed to vote for an unlimited number of selections in any category.”

When this season’s Emmy nominations are announced July 12, there will almost certainly still be some acting categories with multiple nominees from the same shows, and that’s not a bad thing. For instance, I think Succession could land multiple noms for drama actor (Brian Cox, Jeremy Strong and Kieran Culkin) and drama supporting actor (Matthew Macfadyen, Nicholas Braun, Alan Ruck and Alexander Skarsgard). I suspect that The White Lotus is likely to dominate the drama supporting actress category (Jennifer Coolidge, Aubrey Plaza, Meghann Fahy, Haley Lu Richardson, Sabrina Impacciatore, Simona Tabasco and Beatrice Grannò all have a shot). HBO’s Barry will probably account for several noms for comedy supporting actor (Henry Winkler, Anthony Carrigan and Stephen Root). And I’d be surprised if yet another HBO show, The Last of Us, didn’t land multiple noms in both drama guest acting categories. Those shows and many of their performances were that widely seen and that universally well regarded.

But will, say, SNL, Ted Lasso and The Crown dominate acting categories to the degree that they did in recent years? I suspect not.

We’ll see how things shake out, but if this reform of the nomination voting process results in a wider number of worthy shows landing at least some recognition (say, a nom for Jeff Bridges for FX’s The Old Man, Natasha Lyonne for Peacock’s Poker Face or James Marsden for Freevee’s Jury Duty) and/or performers with slightly lower profiles landing merited acting noms (like Bel Powley for Nat Geo’s A Small Light, Mo Amer for Netflix’s Mo, Zoe Lister-Jones for The Roku Channel’s Slip or Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Ayo Edebiri for Hulu’s The Bear), then to my mind it can be deemed a success.

After all, the TV Academy should point viewers toward truly excellent TV content, as opposed to just following the crowd. Otherwise, what’s the point of any of this?

This story first appeared in the May 24 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.