Why The Emmys Will Probably Never Honour Your Faves

Last night was the 68th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards, and while I’ll be the first to admit there were some pleasant surprises amongst the winners – hello Kate McKinnon – there were still plenty of missed opportunities to honour some of the very best in television.

Why?

In short, The Emmys are too busy playing catch up. We’ve had a number of years where Academy voters have just rubber stamped both their nominee choices as well as their winners, and the fact that the new final round voting changes have only just come into effect – The Emmy Awards are rapidly trying to back pedal and honour shows that should have been honoured years ago.

The Americans

FX’s superb cold war series has just concluded it’s fourth series and last night’s Emmys marks the first time that either leads, Kerri Russell or Matthew Rhys, have been nominated – and the show? Yeah that’s been snubbed all these years too.  But you what? It still lost. Yup. Russell lost to the other Emmy elusive winner/nominee Tatyana Mislany, who’s snub a few years ago really kicked the “Fight The Emmy Power” movement into full swing, so I can’t really complain. But all the same we’re only starting to see some of the performers and shows that have been held in high regard for many years take the podium. Let’s not forget that the TV powerhouse Game of Thrones only just started getting recognized by voters in the past several years, and it’s just concluded it’s 6th season.

So basically, no matter how much you want a show/performer to be nominated chances are they won’t be? Kinda, sorta. They could be, if – and probably only if – The Television Academy goes and ups the number of nominees in each category – something that many in the industry have been calling for for years. In a world where the conversation always turns to” too much TV”, the fact that ATAS hasn’t aknowledged this in their rule changes is a bit weird. There was literally hundreds of hours of scripted television made in the 2015-2016 season, so how are you expected to get all the top performances to the forefront? You can’t. You just have to hope either the fans or the studios scream the loudest.