THERE ARE WORSE THINGS THAN BEING MISIDENTIFIED: FYI, the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences has basically acknowledged that its leaving David Mills out of the Emmys "In Memoriam" tribute was an unintentional error. HBO's video tribute to Mills is here.
In other Emmy news, Variety is reporting that made-for-tv movies and miniseries may be booted from the primetime broadcast. No Big 4 network has had a miniseries nominated since 2005, with no network miniseries winning since 1996 ("Gulliver's Travels"); only three made-for-network movies have been nominated since 2000, with only one ("Tuesdays with Morrie") winning.
A simpler and fairer solution? Consolidate movies and miniseries, or allow miniseries (particular the HBO-sized ones like Pacific, John Adams) to compete in the main Drama category. Heck, "The Pacific" was basically the same length as the Mad Men and Breaking Bad seasons.
ReplyDeleteIt's just a bad use of broadcast time during the awards -- special events shouldn't take up as much time as 22-episode series or 4-5 night/week late night shows. I'd push it as far away from the broadcast as I could -- this would be like spending a half-hour of the Oscars on Best Short Film, Best Actor in a Short Film, Best Writing for a Short Film, etc.
ReplyDeleteHere's the thing--some years, there's a miniseries or TV movie that really is significant and/or filled with extraordinary performances (Angels in America, Band of Brothers, John Adams, arguably, The Pacific). I think it almost needs to be a year by year thing.
ReplyDeleteWhat was John Adams' average viewership compared with a moderately successful network show? I'd rather they spend time during the broadcast to do the 1-2 min "here's what was special about this show this season" intros to each of the nominated comedies and dramas like they do at the Oscars.
ReplyDeleteThey could do for movies/miniseries what they did for reality and variety---a couple of awards on air, but not all of them. Reality got, what, one award on air? While I felt like I saw at least half of the Temple Grandin telecast during the movies/miniseries section. Set aside the relatively low viewership of M/M these days---the fact is that one movie or miniseries tends to dominate in most years, which means that you spend 30-40 minutes largely celebrating one movie or miniseries. Out of a 180 minute telecast, that's huge.
ReplyDeleteRe: Mills, what a lousy statement from the NATAS flack. They couldn't even acknowledge him by name in the apology for leaving him out of the segment?!?
ReplyDeleteWait, that can't be right. Morrie was award....
ReplyDeleteOh, forget all that. Have you seen the DVD cover for Tuesdays With Morrie? Um...yeah.
I agree with Adam C. The Academy screwed up once by leaving out Mills. They then had a second chance to apologize and recognize him belatedly, and they screwed it up again. This wasn't an apology; it was an excuse.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the same is true of Mad Men and Breaking Bad, which average around 2M viewers an episode, which is well below anything on the Big 4, and about in tune with what "Gossip Girl" rates. John Adams averaged around the same level. True Blood, on the other hand? 5.4M on first showing, with additional viewers added on repeats.
ReplyDeleteThe one reason that I suspect the movies/mini-series keep popping up in the main Emmy telecast is because many of the productions involve either celebrated Shakespearian actors and notables or genuine movie stars, and the Emmys like to award actors who star in real, honest-to-goodness films on the silver screen. So it gives the Emmys a chance to bask in the warm glow of stars like Tom Hanks, Al Pacino and Claire Danes. But there's no reason that they should take up so much of the Emmy award ceremony when they're such a small part of TV. The amount of time that the show spent on reality this year should have been spent on movies/miniseries. If the networks want to give awards to shows people actually watch, the awards for reality host, comedy/variety series writing and the non-nonexistent award for comedy/variety performance should have all been part of the main awards show rather than the made-for-TV movie awards.
ReplyDeletePerhaps a 10 part series like The Pacific should compete with 13 episode series like Breaking Bad and Mad Men. Actually, Brian Cranston won the Emmy for Lead Actor in a drama series for the first season of Breaking Bad, which only ran for 8 episodes (due to the strike.) So yes, consider a mini-series in with series, give an award for best made for TV movie and move the rest of those awards to the Tech. Emmys.
Or special class program (documentary, mini-series, made for TV movie, news reporting) should be a category for the main awards show that gives the Academy the flexibility to award something deserving that isn't a dramatic, comedy or reality competition show.
Er, that should read the now-nonexistent award for comedy/variety performance. Not a double negative.
ReplyDelete