Ahead of Thursday’s Emmy nominations vote, the Television Academy revised the Emmy rules regarding submissions and nominee counts. This update will have a significant impact on the scripted variant category, including “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” and “Saturday Night Live.”
The new Rules and Procedures document on the Emmys website, updated on May 22, details of changes under the Nomination Procedures section. Previously, categories with fewer than twenty entries required contenders to be screened by a peer group, with nominees needing at least 90% approval. If no entry met this threshold, the highest vote-getter would be declared the winner.
The updated rules have lowered the nomination threshold from 90% to 70% and limited the number of potential nominees to two.
In 2023, the script variants category had 12 entries, resulting in three nominees. This year, Variety has kept track of just four anticipated entries: last year’s winner John Oliver, “SNL,” CBS’s “After Midnight” hosted by Taylor Tomlinson and HBO/Max’s now-canceled “Painting With John.” Variety also confirmed that Netflix’s ‘The Magic Prank Show With Justin Willman’, which had planned its campaign in the scripted variety space, was not accepted into the race. Instead, it will compete in a superbly structured reality program alongside its streaming counterparts, “Love Is Blind” and last year’s winner “Queer Eye.”
One notable issue that has emerged in recent weeks is the lack of a specific peer group for ‘scripted variation’. Traditionally, this category is one of 17 races voted on by the entire membership, not by any particular group. The TV Academy responded to this by sending an email to its members on June 5, inviting them to serve on the jury. The viewing and voting period for juries is from June 28 to July 8 and takes place after the voting period for the nominations for all other categories, which runs from June 13 to 24. The deadline to register for the jury is June 21.
The vetting process requires members to list their involvement in scripted variety series and acknowledge that they will watch all videos before voting.
The scripted variety and talk series categories continue to face significant challenges that will likely lead to significant updates or a merger of categories in the next cycle. The Talk Series race, which had 19 entries last year, is expected to have just 13 this year. This would be a significant drop that could potentially leave just three nominees with names like Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, John Mulaney and Stephen Colbert in the running.
Other language updates to the rules were found under sound mixing and special visual effects awards. The first states: “There is no guarantee that all named participants will be approved by the Peer Group Executive Committee, regardless of prior statements.”
The latter can be found in the ‘voting’ section, which states: ‘A panel composed of voting members of the Special Visual Effects Peer Group will pre-screen all submissions to determine the nominations.’
Official entries will be announced when voting begins on Thursday, June 13.
