The last time Modern Family didn’t take home the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series was in 2009, the same year Bored to Death and The Good Wife premiered and Battlestar Galactica and ER went off the air. They’ve won it five years in a row, and co-creator Christopher Lloyd is understandably hopeful that it will soon nab a sixth trophy, breaking an Emmys record.
He has reason to worry.
The Hollywood Reporter has an interesting story on the Emmys’ new voting process, which went into effect in February. There’s a lot of insider-jargon, but tl;dr: The kids have the power. Before 2015, the Emmys were “determined by only a minuscule percentage of the TV Academy’s membership” called Blue Ribbon panels, and they voted on behalf of thousands of members. The panelists tended to be older than the average voter, which explains why the awards so often went to the safe choice (Modern Family), rather than the deserving one (Silicon Valley or Veep).
That’s no longer the case.
“In an effort to increase member participation in the voting process and to take advantage of the Academy’s extension of online voting to both rounds,” the organization said in a statement, “all voters eligible to vote in a category’s nominating round are now eligible to vote in that category’s final round, so long as they meet two additional requirements: Much like the former Blue Ribbon panel process, voters must watch the required submitted material online and attest to no specific conflicts of interest with the nominees.” (Via)
The same Powers That Be won’t be choosing the winners year after year, or at least they won’t have as much influence. That’s good news for the likes of Louie and Parks and Recreation, both of which should receive multiple nominations, and bad for Modern Family and Jim Parsons.
And that’s good news for us.
(Via the Hollywood Reporter)
