PASADENA, Calif. — The Emmy Awards ceremony is getting a makeover, and a lot of people in Hollywood are not happy about it.After last year’s ceremony drew the smallest Emmy television audience ever, a survey of viewers revealed that many found the awards to be focused largely on television shows that mainstream viewers did not know and were not interested in.So the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences has decided to pre-record eight awards this year to allow for more time to celebrate shows that are popular with the public — but that might not be winning the hearts of Emmy voters.
We’re going to try and connect the show more to the big picture of television,” Don Mischer, the executive producer of the Emmy telecast, told a meeting of the Television Critics Association here on Monday. The telecast will feature “memorable moments from shows that are familiar and loved, and some of those are going to be nominated and some may not be nominated.”
The potential changes have drawn the ire of many of the people who are eligible for and who vote for the Emmys, however, including many of the best-known creators and producers of broadcast television series. The Writers Guild of America, West, released a petition on Monday signed by more than 150 writers and executive producers protesting the proposal to remove some writing awards from the live Emmys broadcast.
In a town where self-recognition is a treasured tradition, the Emmys dispute has caused a stir — not least, perhaps, because the Emmy Awards ceremony will be broadcast on Sept. 20 on CBS, which ranked third out of the top four broadcast networks in Emmy nominations. Six of the eight awards proposed for elimination are in categories normally dominated by HBO, which often wins the most awards of any network.
Nina Tassler, the president of CBS Entertainment, told the television writers on Tuesday that the intent is simply to make the Emmys telecast more inviting. Almost no one disputes that it needs it: last year’s ceremony attracted only 12.3 million viewers.
Coming out of the telecast last year, everybody in the business knew we had to make a change,” Ms. Tassler said. “It will have no impact on the integrity of the program. This is about creating and producing an exciting and entertaining program. If the ratings are up, more people are going to be watching the new shows.”
At the session with television critics, Mr. Mischer presented a sample clip using footage from last year’s Emmy telecast. In it, the nominees for best made-for-television movie were introduced and the winner announced. Cuts were then taken from the time it took the winner to walk onto the stage and from the winner’s acceptance speech.
When those cuts are put together over eight awards, “you start to pick up time,” Mr. Mischer said. The Emmy telecast includes 28 awards over a three-hour telecast, or 2 hours and 9 minutes before commercials. To compare, the Grammys give out 10 awards in more than three hours, he said, while the Oscars give out 24 awards in three-plus hours and the Tonys give 14 awards in three hours.
But besides saving time, the intent is to highlight shows that are popular with viewers. Mr. Mischer noted that the top 12 shows in the ratings last year won only two Emmys.
What we need is to make the show more about broadcasting, not about narrow-casting,” he said.
The television academy has not yet disclosed which awards will be pre-recorded. But the academy vowed to choose two from each of the four main genres — writing, directing, acting and series. A preliminary proposal would pre-record the awards for best movie and miniseries; writing for drama series and movie/miniseries; directing for movie/miniseries and for variety, music and comedy series; and supporting actor and actress in move/miniseries.
John Schaffner, the president of the television academy, said he believed the change would be “quite fun” for those in the prerecorded categories. “Not only do they get to go up on stage and win,” he said, “then later in the evening they can sit in the audience and watch themselves win again.”
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