The 75th Primetime Emmy Awards were out of touch. The television award ceremony set to air in September was postponed four months due to joint SAG-AFTRA union and WGA union strikes for improved labor conditions. Yet, when the ceremony finally occurred on Jan. 15, the strike was mentioned only once in an acceptance speech by Sofia Manfredi, and the speech failed to capture the immense scale of the labor strike. While the delay of the Emmys was forced by the strikes, the strides made in labor rights may not last in future negotiations without institutional recognition.
In a post-strike era of television, the Emmys fail to hold their relevance. I think that viewers cannot sit through another glitzy award ceremony with the strikes forcing viewers to acknowledge the problems of the industry. Since 2013, the television award show has faced declining viewership, reaching an all-time low of 4.3 million viewers this year. The network faced competition with the concurrent streaming of the Iowa Caucus and an NFL playoff game, with over 33 million viewers combined. If the Emmys are not able to stay relevant, they will die out. I think if the Emmys addressed their own political limitations by paying homage to the efforts of the unions, only then could they fully celebrate the awardees and increase viewership.
Furthermore, the growing power of streaming services has dominated the Emmys at the expense of labor conditions. Streaming privileges the continuous, excess generation of content to attract more subscribers. HBO, through a subscriber-focused model, has led Emmy wins for 17 out of the past 20 years, according to The Washington Post, with “Succession” having six wins this year alone. Only recently, due to dwindling viewership, did streaming services look to maximize profits through cost-cutting moves of reducing the amount of shows ordered per year, canceling existing shows and conducting mass layoffs. With a renewed focus on quality content to attract subscribers, more streaming services are now invested in winning the Emmys. This year, the highest portion of show nominations, 27 out of the 41, were from streaming services. The Emmys hold a position to affect the future of streaming on labor negotiations but their complicity to address their own powers preserves the growing power of streaming, rather than the Television Academy, to recognize television’s bests.
Still, the majority of Emmy nominations being dominated by streaming services is representative of the primary contention of the strike: How are writers to be compensated for streaming views? Streaming prior to the agreement did not compensate actors based on the increase in viewership. Profits due to the work of actors would go toward the streaming service. Thus, the joint strike of the writers’ and actors’ unions sought fair compensation. Streaming negotiations made progress in providing a bonus, but not a percentage of the profits. While the four-month-long strike limited the production and profits of streaming services in the short term, streaming debates over time and through union negotiations will continue to define the fate of production.
Looking at the Emmys as a yearly signal of where recognition lies in the television industry, it is clear that the union won, given the impact on voting and delayed production. The show that used to precede the fall to spring schedule commonplace in cable television now aired during awards season, with the Golden Globes a week prior and the Oscar nominations released soon after, in line with the flexible schedule of streaming. The Emmys are centered on writers delivering content and, due to the strikes, the production was halted, along with reconsidering the recognition processes of writers. According to SAG-AFTRA union law, members are not allowed to promote their own projects during a strike. Thus, while Emmy nominations occurred during the strikes, writers and actors could not take advantage of the influx of media attention, and nominations were ideally based purely on the quality of the show. But next year, the Emmys have little incentive to continue to listen to their writers outside the strikes and failing to address these politics will further their decline.
The lack of diversity in the Emmys is outdated and viewers are dropping in suit. While an increasing number of winners are people of color, seven out of 20 this year, still nearly 75 percent of the voting population of the Television Academy is white. The Emmys need to diversify not only their nominations but the Academy itself, where control over nominations rests. Recognition of select diverse voices at discretion of the Academy cannot suffice the pressing need for broader systemic change or become obsolete.
Host Anthony Anderson, former “Black-ish” lead, delivered a lively monologue focused on celebration coupled with a song, yet lacked any direct mention of the strikes that postponed the award show itself. His hosting also occurred right after the Golden Globes, where host Jo Koy’s off-color comments on “Barbenheimer” were badly received, I believe adding to Anderson’s perceived need to not provoke any criticism.
“With our industry’s recent challenges behind us, we can get back to what we love—dressing up and honoring ourselves,” Anderson delivered, in reference to the strikes. Anderson’s attempt to toe the line of political correctness by alluding to the strikes instead of making the reference explicit makes clear the institutional priorities to simply celebrate without acknowledgement.
The Emmys and award shows can be and have been political. The 2015 Golden Globes publicized the burgeoning Bill Cosby allegations, political satire dominated in the wake of Donald Trump’s election as president in the 2017 Emmys and voted to permanently bar Harvey Weinstein from the Television Academy. The question the Emmys must address now is if the writers strikes and labor issues are worth political attention in their next installment.
Both television and the people who produce it deserve free expression and recognition for their work. The 75th Emmys lacked cultural relevance and failed to balance the scales of power of streaming. But looking ahead, the increase of delayed shows such as “Stranger Things” and “Euphoria,” as a result of the labor strikes, will force viewers to be acutely aware of the writers’ strike in their viewing experience long after the strike has ended. If the power structures underlying the rise of streaming are not contended with further in the Emmys and in equitable union negotiations, oversight will only grow over which stories are told, limiting what viewers may watch.